Paradise Lost, Milton

The obvious theme of this poem is the religious idea of the fall of mankind. The reader can realize this before even starting the book, just through the title. Paradise is commonly understood as heaven, and to lose heaven is to sin against God. The teaming up of all of these forces against man was a powerful symbol to me. The forces I am talking about is; The devil, his offspring sin and death, chaos, and the rest of the legion. This painted a very clear picture of all of the "demons" that we fight as humans daily. However, in this blog post I want to discuss the significance of the characters Satan's legion is composed of.

The other fallen angels that find themselves cast away to Hell with Satan include some of the powerful gods that rule throughout much of great historical poetry that Milton would have been included in Milton's education. The fact that these gods are placed in Hell in Milton's story shows a great separation from Milton and the earlier great poets such as Homer. This separation can also be seen earlier in his poem as he asks for the help of his muse as the story begins. Asking for the presence of a muse is not what makes this different, but what does is the fact that his muse is the Holy Spirit. Milton also presents these fallen angels as great warriors and introduces each character as if they could be the hero of an epic, however, these "hero's" have just been defeated in a war and banished to Hell. Hell, which is a place that some of them would rather be destroyed than remain in.