Thesis on "Paradise Lost"

Thesis 10 pages (3405 words) Sources: 8 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Meeting of Opposites

John Milton's world in Paradise Lost is God's world -- a world that is highly ordered, fundamentally hierarchical and relentlessly dualistic. It is a world in which everything has a pair, an opposite, a mirror image. This is not a world of subtle differences and tones of gray. This is a world -- a universe -- in which there is a constant balancing of opposites that results in a series of judgments about who is right and who shall be left behind. This constant meeting up of opposites -- Gabriel and Satan, God and Adam, Adam and Eve, Eve and the Serpent -- creates the atmosphere of metaphysical violence that runs throughout the epic, that crackles through the poem like lightning flickering around the edges of a storm.

This tension never resolves, for Milton is not interested in giving us a tidy, happy ending. Rather, he is determined to give us a vision of the universe as he believes it to actually be: A cauldron in which the good and holy are always being tested -- and always overcoming -- its dark cousins . And, of course, even were Milton to want to give us a tidier ending, he is compelling to repeat the story that the Bible presents us with.

One of the most compelling aspects of the epic to me is the level of drama that Milton is able to conjure given that so very little actually happens in the poem. I believe that this sense of drama, the sense that we have as readers of pushing ever forward through the very fabric of the universe arises, through Milton's constant pairing of opposites. It is possible to read the epic as if it were a sort of divinely inspired version of War or other similar simple card games in which each player slaps down a card, only to be answered by another player and another card.

Yet we are caught up in the story as if we did not know what the ending would be is a testament to Milton's skill as a writer. Like reading Romeo and Juliet and hoping each time for a happy ending, we read Paradise Lost and hope this time to leave Adam and Eve happily munching anything-but-apples in the Garden of Eden.

Milton, I realize, might not have appreciated this analysis of his epic as a sort of metaphysical game of chicken, for he intentionally did not write a saga full of overt heroism. He did not want to write about evil and goodness fighting with literal armaments on a battlefield because he wanted his readers to be more thoughtful about the moral issues involved rather than simply listening like small children to a martial epic like The Iliad. Paradise Lost is more than anything else a series of conversations (and thus in many ways reflects classical traditions of discourse as the chief way to educate others). We hear what Milton's characters think as well as what they say.

When this happens -- when opposing characters come together to talk with each other -- we are witness to proselytizing. We become witness to a series of debates that illuminate the nature of God and goodness. In this work, beings speak with each continually, and as we watch they learn (or refuse to learn) the truth. And so -- or so Milton hoped -- we would each in turn learn the truth ourselves.

A Muse Higher Than the Muses

Milton's poem owes a great deal to the classical writers and their poetic and narrative traditions. He establishes this connection to the classical world throughout the first book initially by appealing to his Muse. And yet, even as we are pulled back into the classical world in which the Muses spoke to mortals to inspire them to greatness, Milton reminds us that his Muse is far greater than those other ones, for his Muse is no other than the Holy Spirit. Thus Milton's story is greater by far than any written by even the greatest of Greek and Roman writers because they were merely pagans, wooed by the feminine (and therefore no doubt treacherous) Muses of the ancient world.

This is the first fundamental opposition that Milton sets up for his readers. There are two kinds of stories, Milton tells us. There are those of the pagan world that, while they may be beautiful and may call out to us, are forever limited because they are divorced in fundamental ways from the Truth. And then there are stories that only a man of faith like Milton can tell us, stories that are inspired by God, stories that will endure forever. It is hard not to hear in this something very much like an overweening sense of pride -- not a very Christan feeling. But this runs throughout the poem, this sense that Milton has of being in possession of the most important of truths. Which raises an important question: When does surety in one's faith become arrogance?

Milton presents us in Book One with a series of fallen gods -- those whose stories will not endure as they increasingly eclipsed by the Christian God.. Milton's description of them is a continuation of this initial opposition that he has established, the difference between the pagan and Christian (and more specifically between the pagan and Protestant) world. This is how Milton describes the dead pagan gods to us:

And Devils to Adore for Deities: Then were they known to men by various Names, And various Idols through the Heathen World. Say, Muse, thir Names then known, who first, who last, Rous'd from the slumber, on that fiery Couch, At thir great Emperors call, as next in worth-Came singly where he stood on the bare strand, While the promiscuous croud stood yet aloof? [ 380 ]?The chief were those who from the Pit of Hell-Roaming to seek thir prey on earth, durst fix-Thir Seats long after next the Seat of God, Thir Altars by his Altar, Gods ador'd-Among the Nations round, and durst abide [ 385 ]?Jehovah thundring out of Sion, thron'd-Between the Cherubim yea, often plac'd-Within his Sanctuary it self thir Shrines, Abominations; and with cursed things

(Book One, lines 373-389)

This is an important passage for it serves three separate functions for Milton. First, it helps him near the beginning of the epic establish his dualistic world and -- secondly -- it furthers his message that this dualism specifically divides the world into realms in which all things in his Christian world of light are contrasted with other, darker images. As he builds up evidence as to the way in which the world is divided into -- as it were -- the lambs and the goats, he is also raising the overall tension. By the time that we meet Adam and Eve, with whom we identify as the protagonists, the level of discord and discontinuity between the forces of darkness and light has risen to the point that it is almost unbearable -- at least for us, the readers. Adam and Eve, however, remain in ignorance both of their own fate and of the more general sense of doom.

Finally, the passage cited above serves as a reminder that transformation is possible. For this is an important element of Milton's universe: The world is divided into darkness and light -- but the position of any being (except for God) can shift from one of these realms to the other. Indeed, the shifting of beings from one side of the bright line that lies between goodness (and God) and evil is the entire action of the epic. No one -- no being divine, semi-divine, or mortal -- can straddle the line, But they can change sides.

A Bright (Broken) Line

It might seem that the theme of potential transformation (in which entities can change their allegiance from good to evil or evil to good any number of times) might undermine Milton's vision of a dualistic universe, for a world in which things are either on the side of God or not (and especially a world as hierarchically structured as is Milton's) might seem to be one that is highly static. But Milton's vision of dualism and his insistence on the necessity of allowing for transformation both arise from his own understanding of Christianity. For his world is one in which there must be an unequivocal difference between good and evil. And yet it is also a world in which there must be the constant possibility of redemption, for if there is not the possibility of shifting from the darkness to the light then the God whom he worships would not be the merciful God of his understanding.

We see one of Milton's most masterful expositions of the intersection of dualism and mutability in the poet's description of Satan when he flies out of the lake where he has been imprisoned and suffering. After his own departure this fallen Prince of Light… READ MORE

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