Analysis of Milton's poem “Paradise Lost. Characteristics of heroes based on Milton's "Paradise Lost"
The poet reflects on the reason for the disobedience of the first couple of people who violated the only prohibition of the Creator of all things and were expelled from Eden. Enlightened by the Holy Spirit, the poet names the originator of the fall of Adam and Eve: this is Satan, who appeared to them in the form of the Serpent.
Long before the creation of the earth and people by God, Satan in his exorbitant pride rebelled against the King of Kings, involved part of the Angels in rebellion, but together with them he was cast down from Heaven into the Underworld, into the area of pitch darkness and Chaos. Defeated but immortal, Satan does not accept defeat and does not repent. He prefers to be the lord of Hell rather than a servant of Heaven. Calling on Beelzebub, his closest companion, he convinces him to continue the fight against the Eternal King and to do only Evil in spite of His sovereign will. Satan tells his minions that the Almighty will soon create new world and will populate it with creatures that he will love on an equal basis with the Angels. If you act with cunning, then you can take over this newly created world. In Pandemonium, the leaders of the army of Satan gather for a general Council.
The opinions of the leaders are divided: some are in favor of war, others are against. Finally, they agree with Satan's suggestion to test the truth. ancient tradition, which talks about the creation of a new world by God and the creation of Man. According to legend, the time for the creation of this new world has already come. Since the way to Heaven is closed to Satan and his angels, one should try to seize the newly created world, expel or entice its inhabitants to their side, and thus take revenge on the Creator. Satan embarks on a perilous journey. He overcomes the abyss between Hell and Heaven, and Chaos, its ancient ruler, shows him the way to the newly created world.
God, sitting on his highest throne, from where He sees the past, present and future, sees Satan, who flies to the newly created world. Turning to His Only Begotten Son, the Lord predetermines the fall of Man, endowed with free will and the right to choose between good and evil. The Almighty Creator is ready to have mercy on Man, but first he must be punished for the fact that, having violated His prohibition, he dared to compare with God. Henceforth, man and his descendants will be doomed to death, from which they can be delivered only by those who sacrifice themselves for their redemption. To save the world. The Son of God expresses his willingness to sacrifice himself, and God the Father accepts it. He commands the Son to incarnate in mortal flesh. The angels of heaven bow their heads before the Son and give thanks to Him and the Father.
Meanwhile, Satan reaches the surface of the outermost sphere of the universe and wanders through the gloomy desert. He passes the Limb, the Heavenly Gate, and descends into the Sun. Taking the form of a young Cherubim, he deduces from the Ruler of the Sun, Archangel Uriel, the whereabouts of Man. Uriel points him to one of the countless balls that move in their orbits, and Satan descends to Earth, to Mount Nifat. Passing the paradise fence, Satan in the guise of a sea raven descends to the top of the Tree of Knowledge. He sees the first couple of people and ponders how to destroy them. Having overheard the conversation between Adam and Eve, he learns that on pain of death it is forbidden for them to eat of the fruits of the Tree of Knowledge. Satan is ripening an insidious plan: to kindle in people a thirst for knowledge, which will force them to break the Creator's prohibition.
Uriel, descending on a sunbeam to Gabriel, guarding Paradise, warns him that at noon evil spirit from the Underworld he was heading in the form of a good Angel to Paradise. Gabriel speaks in the night Watch around Paradise. In the bush, tired of the day's labors and the pure joys of sacred marriage love, Adam and Eve sleep. The angels Ituriel and Zephon, sent by Gabriel, discover Satan, who, under the guise of a toad, lurked over Eve's ear in order to influence her imagination in a dream and poison her soul with unbridled passions, vague thoughts and pride. Angels lead Satan to Gabriel. The rebellious Spirit is ready to fight them, but the Lord shows Satan a heavenly sign, and he, seeing that his retreat is inevitable, leaves, but does not abandon his intentions.
In the morning, Eve tells Adam her dream: someone like the celestials tempted her to taste the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge and she ascended above the Earth and experienced incomparable bliss.
God sends the Archangel Raphael to Adam to tell him about the free will of man, as well as about the proximity of the evil Enemy and his insidious designs. Raphael tells Adam about the First Rebellion in Heaven: Satan, inflamed with envy for the fact that God the Father exalted the Son and named Him anointed Messiah and King, drew legions of Angels to the North and convinced them to rebel against the Almighty. Only Seraphim Abdiel left the camp of the rebels.
Raphael continues his story.
God sent Archangels Michael and Gabriel to confront Satan. Satan called the Council and, together with his accomplices, invented devilish machines, with the help of which he pushed back the army of Angels devoted to God. Then the Almighty sent his Son, the Messiah, to the battlefield. The Son drove the Enemy to the fence of Heaven, and when their Crystal Wall opened, the rebels fell into the abyss prepared for them.
Adam asks Raphael to tell him about the creation of this world. The Archangel tells Adam that God wanted to create a new world and creatures to inhabit it after He cast Satan and his minions into Hell. The Almighty sent his Son, the Omnipotent Word, accompanied by the Angels to carry out the work of creation.
Answering Adam's question about movement celestial bodies Raphael cautiously advises him to deal only with such subjects that are accessible to human reason. Adam tells Raphael about everything that he remembers from the moment of his creation. He confesses to the Archangel that Eve has an inexplicable power over him. Adam understands that, surpassing him in external beauty, she is inferior to him in spiritual perfection, however, despite this, all her words and deeds seem beautiful to him and the voice of reason becomes silent in front of her feminine charm. The Archangel, without condemning the love pleasures of the married couple, nevertheless warns Adam against blind passion and promises him raptures heavenly love, which is immeasurably higher than the earth. But to Adam's direct question - what is the expression of love in the heavenly Spirits, Raphael answers vaguely and again warns him against thinking about what is inaccessible to the human mind.
Satan, disguised as a fog, again enters Paradise and dwells in the sleeping Serpent, the most cunning of all creatures. In the morning, the Serpent finds Eve and with flattering speeches persuades her to partake of the fruits from the Tree of Knowledge. He convinces her that she will not die, and tells how, thanks to these fruits, he himself acquired speech and understanding.
Eve succumbs to the persuasion of the Enemy, eats the forbidden fruit and comes to Adam. The shocked spouse, out of love for Eve, decides to perish with her and also transcends the Creator's prohibition. Having tasted the fruits, the Ancestors feel intoxication: consciousness loses clarity, and an unbridled voluptuousness alien to nature awakens in the soul, which is replaced by disappointment and shame. Adam and Eve understand that the Serpent, who promised them inescapable raptures and unearthly bliss, deceived them, and reproach each other.
God sends his Son to Earth to judge the disobedient. Sin and Death, who previously sat at the Gates of Hell, leave their refuge, striving to penetrate the Earth. Following in the footsteps laid by Satan, Sin and Death build a bridge across Chaos between Hell and the newly created world.
Meanwhile, Satan in Pandemonium announces his victory over man. However, God the Father predicts that the Son will overcome Sin and Death and revive His creation.
Eve, in despair that a curse should fall on their offspring, invites Adam to immediately find Death and become her first and the latest victims... But Adam reminds his wife of the promise that the Seed of the Woman will erase the head of the Serpent. Adam hopes to propitiate God with prayer and repentance.
The Son of God, seeing the sincere repentance of the Ancestors, intercedes for them before the Father, hoping that the Almighty will soften his harsh sentence. The Lord Almighty sends the Cherubim, led by the Archangel Michael, to drive Adam and Eve out of Paradise. Before fulfilling the order of God the Father, the Archangel elevates Adam to high mountain and shows him in a vision everything that will happen on Earth before the flood.
Archangel Michael tells Adam about the future destinies of the human race and explains the promise made to the Ancestors about the Seed of the Woman. He talks about the incarnation, death, resurrection and ascension of the Son of God and how the Church will live and fight until His Second Coming. The consoled Adam awakens the sleeping Eve, and the Archangel Michael leads the couple out of Paradise. From now on, the entrance to it will be guarded by the flaming and incessantly turning sword of the Lord. Guided by the Providence of the Creator, cherishing in their hearts the hope of the coming deliverance of the human race, Adam and Eve leave Paradise.
Adam and Eve are the first people best creations God, tempted by Satan out of revenge and punished by God by exile from the earthly paradise - Eden. The first people were immortal and sinless, they did not know suffering, pain, torment of jealousy and envy, the burden of labor. Their life in Eden is beautiful and happy. Adam and Eve are conceived as the embodiment of a religious ideal: obedient to the right hand of God, they live in bliss, like heroes of idylls. God forbade the first people to touch the tree of knowledge: “... do not seek other happiness and know how not to know”. Their bliss is unconscious, due to the rejection of the temptation of knowledge. The serenity of the first people is caused by the fact that they have no contradictions, they have no being, no development. Thus, the paradise idyll, although beautiful, is limited. Satan tempts Eve with knowledge and forces her to partake of the forbidden fruit. He proves to her that without knowledge people cannot comprehend the essence of things: that without knowing death, people cannot appreciate how beautiful life is; not knowing evil, they cannot judge good; knowledge is great power, it gives power and equates to God.
The first people in Milton's work were warned of temptation. Adam violated God's prohibition not out of ignorance, but deliberately, out of love and compassion for his girlfriend. This means that they are responsible for their actions, for the sin they have committed. Adam and Eve are driven out of Eden, and the archangel Michael tells them future history mankind: sins, death, illness, cold, hard work await people, their descendants will commit crimes. But the first people expelled from Eden acquire true humanity: from idyllic heroes they turn into people of tragic fate. Philosophically Milton justifies the Fall: he glorifies labor as the main purpose of man, condemns social calamities - wars, tyranny, intolerance, inequality; he glorifies humanity, which goes forward, finds the truth in suffering and delusion.
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The skill of Milton the artist is clearly reflected in the description actors poems " Lost heaven". gradually reveals in it the versatile images of his heroes. So, for example, having shown first Adam and Eve together, Milton characterizes them separately, using the technique of a kind of narrowing, limiting the picture: first all Eden (paradise), then one of its lawns, then people, finally, separately Adam and separately Eve.
Milton's image of Adam embodies valor, wisdom, courage. These qualities are combined with the living human charm of Adam, which inspires his words and gestures. The regal, courageous and charming Adam is presented in Paradise Lost as a harmonious image of man.
The inner world of Adam is rich. According to Milton, it is composed of reason, imagination, feelings, passions and "free will."
Milton was convinced that "free will," guided by reason, would help humanity find true path that will lead people to happiness and justice. John Milton expressed his belief in the power of reason and human goodwill allegorically. Unlike many other writers like puritanical, and the Catholic direction, which considered a person a toy in the hands of "Providence" or "Predestination", Milton (generally sharing Calvinistic the doctrine of predestination) glorifies in "Paradise Lost" the "free will" of Adam as a great active principle that moves man forward.
Next to Adam, the image of Eve, remarkable in its attractiveness, appears in the poem.
Having showered Eve with praises of an abstract nature (chastity, beauty, kindness, gentleness, etc.), Milton at the same time creates her lively and individual appearance.
Singing the love of Adam and Eve, Milton poetically portrays the family happiness of a married couple, attentive and tender in their relationship, sincere and pure, inextricably linked by their feelings, sharing grief, work and joy.
Some features in the description of the relationship between Adam and Eve give reason to talk about the Puritan tendencies of Paradise Lost. Milton, for example, insistently calls their relationship a marriage that is "sanctified from above." But the poetry of family happiness, permeating these pages of the poem, is higher than the teachings of the Puritan and Quaker preachers - and here Milton's connection with folk art, with the people's ideals of true and pure love.
Adam boldly crosses the line separating him from the "sinner" Eve. By this act, he also commits a "rebellion against authority" and justifies Milton's characterization of his image as a man of courage and determination. Description of the act of Adam is one of those episodes of "Paradise Lost" that are closely associated with humanist ideology. Satan in the poem "transgressed the law", succumbing to lust for power and envy; Adam sins in the name of his love for another person, and if for the Puritan-rigorist both passions were equally "vicious", Milton viewed them differently. By condemning Satan, the poet exalted Adam. His image is truly beautiful at the moment when, together with his girlfriend, he confronts all the forces of heaven and hell, which will not hesitate to take up arms against him.
However, next to the image of Satan, Adam Milton is sometimes clearly lost, loses. In conversations with angels, Adam is more inquiring than he himself says, or he simply remains mute. Before the "messengers of God" he immediately becomes a being of a lower order, ready to accept any injustice.
This is how the Puritan Milton paralyzes those qualities of the "royal" man, which he himself put into the image of Adam. First of all, the poet is in a hurry to limit the possibilities of the human mind; in response to Adam's inquiring questions about the universe, Raphael sternly pulls him back, reminding Adam that he is only a man and let him not dream of penetrating into some of the secrets of the universe.
In this interpretation of the image of Adam, the influence of Puritanism manifested itself much stronger than in the theme of love and family. Milton's man, overwhelmed by the multi-level hierarchy of his strict heavenly overseers, became poorer and more primitive than man from dramas Shakespeare.
The religious principle of “Paradise Lost”, which deprived Adam of the opportunity to be a true hero of “free will,” was even more pronounced in the images of God, his son and angels.
The impersonality, monotony of godlike angels is not simply the weakness of Milton the poet. It is a consequence of the theory that angels are passionless, the same light of the same mind is poured into them. True, in the verses of Paradise Lost, the angels frown, get angry, rejoice. But these are conventional grimaces of "beautiful" masks, untouched by passion and therefore lifeless. Outwardly humanoid, Milton's angels are abstractions, because they repeat each other, they are the expression of one idea. These are gilded automatons, ready to punish and preach with the same measures and the same words.
In the automatism and soullessness of the outwardly spectacular crowd of angels, the anti-humanist essence of Calvinism was expressed with special force. She forced Milton to exalt the despot god, cruelly punishing the courage of man. But even in this group of images of Paradise Lost, the deeply contradictory essence of Milton's poem is revealed. The picture of the final defeat of Satan's legions, scenes of the triumph of the ruthless Puritan deities of Milton over their opponents was an expression of the poet's firm belief that the restored Stuart system would collapse and his supporters would be severely punished. Merciless heavenly thunders in Milton's poem fall not just on man, but on the "serpent" and "dragon" Satan and his lords.