Paradise Lost
Now, before I get into the specifics of Paradise Lost and the theme of disobedience, I wanted to attach this video because it hits on the idea of Satan’s disobedience and is largely entertaining at the same time. I really like how this you-tuber starts off talking about the different ways Lucifer has been viewed, either a handsome demon/human or a completely hideous monster/serpent of some sort.
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This video also helped my grab the concept of the story as well, but made me laugh saying that the devil has “daddy issues” which is why he is jealous of Jesus being the favorite and wants everyone else to fall like him. They also explain that most authors will make gods of other religions “inferior” or into demons because they do not fit into their viewpoint in life and in the book. It was not a necessary fact, but I thought it was a very interesting one that they are included, but fairly disrespected when they cold have just not brought it up at all, but oh well.
After watching the video shown above, I was finally able to grasp the aspects of book 1 and 2 of Milton’s Paradise Lost. The three main aspects are disobedience of man, the results of said disobedience, and “justifying God’s ways to man”. I will be focusing on the initial aspect of man’s first disobedience, which is Adam and Eve being coerced into eating the forbidden fruit by the shape-shifting serpent, Lucifer. However, the disobedience started when Lucifer defies God and starts a war (that he loses) and gets kicked out of Heaven to live eternity in hell. But as we all know, he doesn’t stay down there long. Once he hears about God’s new creation, mankind, he wants revenge for God kicking him out of heaven. So he makes Eve disobey Adam, and then Adam and Eve both disobey God by eating the fruit of wisdom. You can see this in the painting above: Eve eating the fruit that the serpent convinced her to eat and then sharing it with Adam, while Lucifer happily lets his plan of disobedience fall into place. Once they eat the fruit, the have more wisdom than ever before, and come to recognize that they were naked the whole time and need covering. They understand the wrongs they’ve done and are ashamed, but they can no longer live in the perfect garden God created for them. That story is the story of Original Sin, which is the sin that we are all born with at birth, because of Adam and Eve disobedience and we are the descendants of them.
I think that this book is such an interesting take of the fight between good and evil or right and wrong, and it was definitely created before its time. People couldn’t understand why he was talking about religion in this way and they looked down of Milton for writing the book in English, which was a commoner language during the time he was alive. One last crazy fact about Paradise Lost: Newstatesman.com says that Paradise lost is actually referenced in Frankenstein and the monster finds the book and reads it. He relates to Adam saying “like Adam, I was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence”, and this made him wonder why he did not have someone like Eve, a companion for life. He also describes his relationship with his creator, saying it is just like how “God treated Satan” and three lines from Paradise Lost is directly quoted in the book: “Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay / To mould me Man, did I solicit thee / From darkness to promote me?”
