Paradise Lost, A Brief Introduction

John Milton wrote Paradise Lost over the course of nearly 10 years, while blind. He claimed that the inspiration came to him from divine guidance while he slept. Consider him inspired or consider him a bit crazy, I hold that Paradise Lost is one of the ultimate works of poetic writing in all of recorded history. After all the agonizing, rewrites and changes, it was first published in 1667.

General Story

The epic poem is around 10,000 lines long, written in iambic pentameter. It traces the beginning of human existence in a highly Christian light. We see Satan in hell, God and his son in heaven and Adam and Eve in Eden. At the end of the tale, Adam and Eve have wrought their own expulsion from paradise, and they leave to enter the mortal world as we know it.

Eve

Supremely beautiful, a little vain, a little self-possessed, Eve would have reveled in modern-day luxuries.

Eve's Vanity (Book IV, 456-469)

Eve recounts her first experience of life as this:

“I thither went
With unexperienc’t thought, and laid me downe
On the green bank, to look into the cleer
Smooth Lake, that to me seemd another Skie.
As I bent down to look, just opposite,
A Shape within the watry gleam appeard
Bending to look on me, I started back,
It started back, but pleas’d I soon returnd,
Pleas’d it returnd as soon with answering looks
Of sympathie and love; there I had fixt
Mine eyes till now, and pin’d with vain desire,
Had not a voice thus warnd me, What thou seest,
What there thou seest fair Creature is thy self”

Fascinated with her own reflection, she resists following her intended, Adam, even when he calls to her.

Satan

Tempter, seducer, architect of destruction: the foul serpent himself.

The Destroyer Destroyed (Book I)

Satan, the misguided angel who tried to battle God. In retribution, he was cast
“With hideous ruine and combustion down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In Adamantine Chains and penal Fire,
Who durst defie th’ Omnipotent to Arms.” (46-49)

Satan exists as a creature of “obdurate pride and stedfast hate” (58).

A Stop Near Eden

Book I, Lines 1-4 (The Beginning)

Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden…

God

If He made the world, these have got to be some of His favorite spots.

God to Adam (Book VIII, 319-332)

And so God said to Adam:

“This Paradise I give thee, count it thine
To Till and keep, and of the Fruit to eate:
Of every Tree that in the Garden growes
Eate freely with glad heart; fear here no dearth:
But of the Tree whose operation brings
Knowledg of good and ill, which I have set
The Pledge of thy Obedience and thy Faith,
Amid the Garden by the Tree of Life,
Remember what I warne thee, shun to taste,
And shun the bitter consequence: for know,
The day thou eat’st thereof, my sole command
Transgrest, inevitably thou shalt dye;
From that day mortal, and this happie State
Shalt loose, expell’d from hence into a World
Of woe and sorrow.”

One rule. Just one. That was all that Adam and Eve needed to follow.

Adam

Beloved of God, lover of Eve, Adam had it pretty good. He spent his days tending the garden and doting on his wife.

Adam the Worshipper (Book VIII, 275-282)

While Eve was created without intrinsic knowledge of the divine, Adam acknowledged there must be a creator with one of his first breaths.

“And ye that live and move, fair Creatures, tell,
Tell, if ye saw, how came I thus, how here?
Not of my self; by some great Maker then,
In goodness and in power præeminent;
Tell me, how may I know him, how adore,
From whom I have that thus I move and live,
And feel that I am happier then I know.”