![]() ![]() Whose fault?Īdmittedly, a reading of Paradise Lost that deifies the devil and demonizes God would seem to depart somewhat from the poet’s intentions. Sole pledge of his obedience so will fall Does this sound like the benevolent patriarch you’d want to sing hymns to in heaven unless compelled to do so on pain of expulsion and eternal torment?įor man will hearken to his glozing lies, What kind of God spends all of eternity devising tortures for his enemies and then blames them for mistakes he has always known they would make? Well, no one has ever solved the problem of theodicy, least of all John Milton, who, as William Blake famously observed, was “of the Devil’s party without knowing it.” The problem with God in Paradise Lost isn’t so much doctrinal as tonal. But God the Father, whom the rebel angels quite properly term the Thunderer and the Torturer, is bad news from start to finish. He is, after all, the devil, and as the poem progresses Milton steadily darkens Satan’s allure until, as early as Book IV, we find him “squat like a toad” at Eve’s ear. I can certainly see why some readers might resist Satan’s magnetism. And yet if a sober, dispassionate reading of Paradise Lost entails carefully weighing the claims and counterclaims of that petulant, treacherous, and sadistic autocrat who passes for God, then a sober, dispassionate reading would seem not merely misguided but contemptible. Then again, why should you read Paradise Lost as a boringly contextualized treatise in early modern “energies” when you can read it as a splendidly baroque science fiction with one of the most fabulous bad guys in all of literature?īecause you might be misreading it? No doubt. Some scholars contend that this debate has outlived its usefulness, that the war between the pro-Satanist and the anti-Satanist camps reduces a great and complex whole into a distorted and schematic dichotomy. In truth, you can easily load the dice for or against him depending on how you select the evidence, and readers have been selecting the evidence ever since Paradise Lost was first published in 1667. He’s a bit of a snob, somewhat lascivious, and, gravest of all, willing to harm innocent third parties in his battle against injustice. ![]() He speaks some of the most beautiful English ever composed, even when just muttering to himself. He’s also several hundred feet tall (when he wants to be), does celestial cartwheels when flying between the earth and sun, can turn into a cormorant when occasion arises, and despite his onerous responsibilities as a leader of men, manages to be pretty good family man, though his spouse is Sin and his offspring is Death. My hero is fearless, proud, resolute, farseeing, self-sacrificing, and profoundly engaged in the struggle against tyranny and oppression. ![]()
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