Paradise Lost Book I

First thing to say about Paradise Lost is that it overturns common sense and knowledge of Satan. I am not a strong religious person, but even I know, that the bible does not contain biographical information about the fallen angel, Lucifer. While he is usually referred as the evil one, as he contributes solely in negative aspects of a person’s life, Milton’s novel portrays how his downfall from heaven was a failure to reach his goal – which was to be stronger and more significant than what the God had assigned him to be.

Honestly, the book blew my mind. Milton spun the readers’ minds as he conveyed that Lucifer was not full of atrocity. He had a reasonable excuse that made him unsatisfied with the position in Heaven; he could not stand working underneath the God’s son. This envious emotion is what led him to the rebellious war. As I read the book, it almost made me feel as if God, who most society believes to be the flawless, wonderful figure, was the main contributor of turning Lucifer into an evil symbol of Hell. After all, without considering Lucifer’s feelings at all and sticking to the idea of what we call is “monarchy”, the God used his overwhelming power to break Lucifer’s ambitions.

Now the book poses a question. Were Lucifer’s rebellion and the formation of Hell a bad thing? From my point of view, and reading the text, I think Heaven and Hell must coexist. It is like the idea of binary opposition that appears in post-structuralism. Additionally, Lucifer’s will to break the repetitive lives and work for a higher position in Heaven was a very understandable excuse. Now, I’m not saying that war was the best solution in order to solve this problem, but I think the action he took was so much more efficient than sitting as one of the many angels in Heaven, simply obeying what the God says. Otherwise, Heaven would be a Marxist state – very close to the ideas introduced in Brave New World Revisited – loss of self-identification, manipulations by stronger powers, etc.

As I read the book, I figured a strong connection between Paradise Lost and Grendel from Beowulf.  The author wrote the story from a new perspective that is usually ignored – thus through this, the readers can judge for themselves, whether Lucifer was the criminal or actually a victim.