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    Theme of Paradise Lost11

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    ajay devgan
    The overarching theme of Paradise Lost is man's disobedience and fall from grace through eating the forbidden fruit. Milton also explores the themes of God's eternal providence and the justification of God's ways. The story follows three parts - man's disobedience in Eden, how God responds with love and mercy despite evil, and how God's nature allows free will while ensuring all things serve his good purposes.

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    Theme of Paradise Lost11

    Uploaded by

    ajay devgan
    397 views2 pages
    The overarching theme of Paradise Lost is man's disobedience and fall from grace through eating the forbidden fruit. Milton also explores the themes of God's eternal providence and the justification of God's ways. The story follows three parts - man's disobedience in Eden, how God responds with love and mercy despite evil, and how God's nature allows free will while ensuring all things serve his good purposes.

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    John Milton

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    The overarching theme of Paradise Lost is man's disobedience and fall from grace through eating the forbidden fruit. Milton also explores the themes of God's eternal providence and the justification of God's ways. The story follows three parts - man's disobedience in Eden, how God responds with love and mercy despite evil, and how God's nature allows free will while ensuring all things serve his good purposes.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    397 views2 pages

    Theme of Paradise Lost11

    Uploaded by

    ajay devgan
    The overarching theme of Paradise Lost is man's disobedience and fall from grace through eating the forbidden fruit. Milton also explores the themes of God's eternal providence and the justification of God's ways. The story follows three parts - man's disobedience in Eden, how God responds with love and mercy despite evil, and how God's nature allows free will while ensuring all things serve his good purposes.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 2

    The Theme of Paradise Lost:

    In the opening lines of Paradise Lost, Milton announces that he is going to tackle a lofty theme of
    Man’s first disobedience and fall from grace.

    “Of Man’s first disobedience and the fruit

    Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste

    Brought death into the world and all our woe.”

    In his Invocation to Heavenly Muse, Milton states the theme and purpose of his epic. “…I may assert
    Eternal Providence/And justify the ways of God to men.” Indeed, Paradise Lost was, for Milton, the
    fulfillment of his long cherished ambition. Milton chose a towering theme for his epic which ranks it
    with the great epics like those of Homer, Virgil and Dante. In his Invocation Milton resolved that his
    “adventurous song” intended to soar “with no middle flight”. Accordingly, he invoked Heavenly
    Muse to inspire him so that he might be successful in undertaking, the like of which had yet not been
    attempted “in prose or rhyme”.

    Raleigh remarks:

    “The theme of Paradise Lost is vaster and more universal. It concerns itself with the fortunes not
    of a city or an empire but the whole human race, and with that particular event in the history of
    race which has moulded all its destinies.”

    The story of Paradise Lost is Biblical and theme falls into three parts—theme of disobedience,
    manifestation of Eternal Providence, and justification of Divine ways. The first part of theme implies
    that the obedience to God’s commandments is imperative at all costs. In Paradise, God imposes only
    one condition on Adam and Eve—not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. The prohibition is not so
    much a matter of fruit of a tree as it is obeying God’s ordinance. By not obeying God’s
    commandment, Adam and Eve brought calamity into their lives, and the lives of all mankind.

    Milton’s theme of Paradise Lost, however, does end with the idea of disobedience—Milton says that
    he will assert Eternal Providence. If man had never disobeyed God, death would have never entered
    the world and Man would have become lesser angel. Because Adam and Eve gave into temptation
    and disobeyed God, they provided an opportunity for the manifestation of God’s love, mercy and
    grace so that fall ultimately produces a greater good than would have happened otherwise.

    A.C. George remarks:

    “We can state essential theme of Paradise Lost as the sustained opposition between love and hate;
    God responds to the destructive challenge of Satan with the creative expression of love…The former
    theme is the direct conflict of Celestial battle and the latter is Satan’s challenge of God—indirectly
    through his own creation, Man. The second theme arises out of the first.”
    The doctrine of free will is such an idea which has been insisted on consistently throughout Paradise
    Lost. God does not interfere with the free will of individuals though He has free knowledge of
    everything. In case of Satan too, God allowed him his freedom and;

    “Left him at large to his own dark designs

    That with reiterated crimes he might

    Heap on himself damnation…”

    The third part of Milton’s argument is justification of God’s ways. Touching upon this theme, Milton
    emphatically declares that the nature of God is such that to turn everything, even evil, to good as
    when He creates earth and men to replace rebel angels, or when He sends Christ to redeem fallen
    humans. This clearly differentiates God from Satan, the great egotist, who thinks only of his own
    interest; and who had vowed to revenge himself on God by turning all good to evil. Everywhere
    Satan spreads his lies about God’s tyranny and his own “injured merit”. He pretends that laws are
    made by God to keep Him in power and subjugate others.

    Regarding the theme of Paradise Lost Coleridge remarks:

    “It represents origin of evil and the combat of evil and good, it represents matter of deep interest
    to all mankind, as forming basis of all religion and true occasion of philosophy whatsoever.”

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