PARADISE LOST is a Christian epic with a tragic core. John Milton portrays Adam in this epic not as a noble hero of any other Greek heroes but as a hero of “patience and heroic martyrdom”. Satan illustrates as a tragic hero of this epic. PARADISE LOST IX is considered the central part of the epic poem as it deals with “Man’s first disobedience” or the fall of Adam and Eve.

PARADISE LOST IX

• PARADISE LOST IX was Written in 1667.
• An Epic poem in blank verse divided into verse paragraphs.
• The subject of PARADISE LOST – Fall of man.
• Aim- to justify the ways of God to men.
• Length of PARADISE LOST -13355 lines.
• In the Romantic period, Satan is considered the hero of this epic.
• “Satanic School of Milton Criticism”- Dryden.

JOHN MILTON ( PARADISE LOST IX)

• “Lady of Christ”
• His first poem was written in his 15 years – “On the Death of a Fair Infant yin of Cough”.
• His first noteworthy poem – “Ode on the Mourning of Christ’s Nativity” (Christ is presented as a classical hero)
• Masques – “Comus”, “Arcade”
• Elegy – “Lycidas” (On the death of his friend Edward King)
• Poetic drama – “Samson Agonistes” (Last work; only successful Greek tragedy in English.)
• Milton was against the corrupted rule of that time.
• He challenged the rule of Charles I.
• He was a Puritan or Presbyterian.

OPENING

• Milton says he will not talk anymore of God and angels being friendly with Man.
• He tells the tragic tale of Adam and Eve’s disobedience to God.
• Their action brought them alienation, expulsion, and unhappiness in a world of suffering, sin, death, and misery.

PLOT

• Satan’s return to Paradise
• His entry into the sleeping serpent.
• Eve’s separation from Adam.
• Satan’s temptation of Eve.
• Adam follows Eve’s eating of the forbidden fruit and eats the fruit, their shyness at their nakedness.
• Their fall at variance and accusations of one another.
• Disobedience of Man, “The Fall’; leads to sin and death.

SATAN’S RETURN TO PARADISE

• Satan had been banished from Eden by Gabriel.
• He circled the earth for 7 consecutive nights.
• He circles the earth altitudinal for 3 days and longitudinal for 4 days.
• Milton follows Galileo’s theory of Earth being round and fixed by invisible poles in the south and north.
• He stealthily returned to Eden again, with more determination to destroy the man.
• He entered the place where the river Tigris shot up as a fountain near the Tree of Life.
• He makes a close search and studies every creature, to see which one is suited to assist his cunning scheme, and finds the serpent suitable (fittest imp of fraud).

SATAN’S SOLILOQUY (97-103)

• In an outburst of lamentation, jealousy and malice mixed before he enters into the serpent.
• Satan felt that God took revenge on him by making the inferior race of man the Lord of the Earth.
• He wanted to create a Heaven out of Hell, but he would make a Hell out of Earth, that would be Heaven for him.

He determines to destroy man (104-133)

• His aim is to destroy man for whom ‘all this earth was made”.
• The sight of pleasure could only bring him torments.
• Good to him is a curse.

Satan resolves to revenge God (134-178).

• his ambition and revenge.
• Here ends the soliloquy of Satan.
• Satan permeates into the serpent.
• Adam and Eve discuss the day’s work.
• Eve’s suggestion to Adam: If they work together that slow down their task. So Eve suggests that they work apart that day-the fatal day.

Adam advises Eve

• He expresses his fears that if she is alone; harm might befall.
• He recalls Raphael’s warning to him.
• He feels that their conjugal love might excite envy in Satan.
• So he advises, that it is not good on the part of Eve to leave “the faithful side that gave her being”.
• Eve persists: she expresses her sorrow at the doubt of Adam on her firmness.
• Adam expresses Eve as the “daughter of God and Man”.
• This is the last time Adam calls Eve “immortal” and describes her as untouched by sin and
• blame.
• If she was present with him, she would not allow anybody to overcome or overreach him.
• The phrases “domestic Adam” and “matrimonial love” denote joint strength and married harmony.

Eve perverts

• She feels hurt by his advice.
• She gets irritated as her ideas are not appreciated.
• Forgetting the warning issued by God through Raphael, she says that the Maker has not created Eden so vulnerable.
• Adam insists and Eve withdraws her hand.
• This is the last speech of the unfallen Eve.

Eve compared to

• Oread of the mountains.
• Dryad of the wood.
• Diana, the goddess of fruit. Ceres, the goddess of agriculture.
• Pomona, the goddess of fruit.
• Ceres becomes unhappy when her daughter Proserpine is carried away by Pluto, the ruler of the underworld, likewise Eve is going to be unhappy that her whole race is to be overtaken by Death.
• Milton laments that Eve has lost her rest and peace.
• Satan in Serpent admires Eve.
• Satan soliloquizes again.
• He feels he is not a match for Adam’s intellect, strength, courage, and heroic built physique.
• Satan nears Eve.
• The Satan-inhibited serpent could not catch Eve’s eye as his gentle dumb expression.

Satan flatters Eve

• He raises an implied question about the wastefulness of Eve’s beauty that ought to be enjoyed by a whole universe of admires.
• Eve is surprised, at how an animal could pronounce the language of man.
• The serpent explains that it was possible by eating the fruit.
• Eve enquires where the tree is. The serpent offers to lead Eve to the tree.
• Eve accepted its guidance.-“lead then”.
• Eve finds it to be the forbidden tree prohibiting eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.
• Satan’s posture is like a Roman or Athenian orator.

Satan rationalizes

• In a state of confusion, Eve cannot distinguish good from evil.
• Satan states that God’s idea of forbidding the fruit was to keep mankind “low and ignorant”.
• God knows if Man eats the fruit, he will rise to the level of God just as the serpent has assumed the power of man.
• The Temptation scene:
  • Three stages: 1. Praise beauty. 2. Poses as a friend. 3. Uses reason.
  • The beauty of the serpent is described in a Miltonic Simile.

Satan’s arguments

• Arguments
  • How could eating the fruit be an offence?
  • Is God envy man?
  • The fruit gives knowledge, not death.
• Eve’s senses appealed.
• Eve’s muses address Tree.
• Irony
  • Eve declares Serpent as the “Author Unsuspect”
  • God is suspect, as one who envies Man and plans death for a man
  • For sin, Satan is a father and author.
  • But Eve yields up to Satan as “Author Unsuspect”.
  • The greatest paradoxes and ironies in literature.
• Eve eats
  • The serpent slinks away-“she plucked, she ate”.
  • The author of the mischief slinks whereas Eve blinks.
  • She was unaware that she is “eating death”.

The fallen Eve soliloquizes.

• Eve confirms that Adam shall share in her fate and with him all deaths she will endure.
• Adam finds Eve near the tree (Tree of prohibition).
  • Adam awaited Eve’s return joyously, but she has not left the tree when Adam comes.
  • He saw she was returning with a bough of fruits in her hand.
• Eve relates Adam to the fruit.
  • Eve lied that it was for Adam’s sake, she ate the fruit.
  • She persuades him to eat the fruit to gain equality.

Adam realized that she is fallen.

• He detected the work of Satan and declares his sharing of Eve’s fate.
  • Adam resolves to die as he feels –“the link of nature” to be strong.
  • Eve is the flesh of his bone
• Milton points out that “the bond of nature proves stronger than the law of obedience”.
• Eve embraces Adam who eats the fruit.
• They lust after each other as intoxicated-“mortal sin/original”.
• Adam appreciates Eve. He became a woman-worshipper.
• They sleep after satisfying their lust and feel shame and guilt when awake.
• “The loss of innocence is a virtual emasculation”.
• Adam cries out for coverage. He feels the need to hide their sexual parts which appear unseemly and unclean now.
• They make loin cloth out of fig leaves.
  • The fig tree symbolizes the growth of human families in its indication of the banyan trees.
• Adam blames Eve for her willfulness.
• Eve blames the serpent and Adam.
• Adam is incensed and defends himself.
• They resort to mutual recrimination- “Desire plus life is Man/ Life minus desire is God”.

CONCLUSION

PARADISE LOST IX : The first real argument on earth starts with the blaming of Adam and Eve each other and the serpent. Here begins the corruption of the inner lives of humankind. Adam ate the forbidden fruit out of love for Eve but eventually, he falls out of true love with her as a result of disobedience.