John Milton Essays (3664 words) - Abrahamic Mythology, Heaven, Hell

John Milton Paradise Lost is an epic - poem based on the Biblical story of Adam end Eve. It attempts to justify and explain how we came to be what we are today. The central question to Paradise Lost is where does evil comes from? Throughout the poem we receive information about the origin of evil. At the beginning of John Milton's work we are given the Biblical explanation, of Adam and Eve eating from the tree of knowledge and being expelled from the Garden of Eden. This was man's first disobedience, which brought him mortality, and at the same time this first act gave source to all evil. This was the effect of ambition. Adam end Eve both ate the apple from the tree in order to achieve a level of knowledge compatible to God's. The same way according to Paradise Lost, Satan is also known to be the source of evil. Satan was sent to Hell as cause of ambition. For the second time ambition and the desire to become more powerful or knowledgeable, was the basis of evil. Satan challenged God, and was co ndemned to evil. The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. Hell is clearly a state of mind. According to the non-physical aspects of Hell described at the end of the poem, one can conclude even from the quote mentioned above, that Hell is what we think of it to be. Can the human exploration for answers, ambition for knowledge, and curiosity reach a level that then threatens humans themselves? The answer to this question is YES! If we examine subjects such as human cloning, nuclear weapons and medicine there may be different responses. My personal feeling is that anything that alters, or changes life itself, in exception to medicine, is not to be studied nor developed. We humans are curious, and this is simply innate. We will continue to ask questions and explore even outside of our world. I believe we humans, do not have the power to create nor destroy life, by any other means than normal sexual creation and accidental death. I feel medici nes are a positive element and part of our lives because medicine does not threaten the lives of others, unlike nuclear weapons and cloning. Furthermore medicines ameliorate our lifestyles. Does nuclear destruction and radiation do the same? aradise Lost is one of the finest examples of the epic tradition in all of literature. In composing this extraordinary work, John Milton was, for the most part, following in the manner of epic poets of past centuries: Barbara Lewalski notes that Paradise Lost is an epic whose closest structural affinities are to Virgil's Aeneid . . . ; she continues, however, to state that we now recognize as well the influence of epic traditions and the presence of epic features other than Virgilian. Among the poem's Homeric elements are its Iliadic subject, the death and woe resulting from an act of disobedience; the portrayal of Satan as an Archillean hero motivated by a sense of injured merit and also as an Odyssean hero of wiles and craft; the description of Satan's perilous Odyssey to find a new homeland; and the battle scenes in heaven. . . . The poem also incorporates a Hesiodic gigantomachy; numerous Ovidian metamorphoses; an Ariostan Paradise of Fools; [and] Spenserian allegorical figures (Sin and Death) . . . . (3) There were changes, however, as John M. Steadman makes clear: The regularity with which Milton frequently conforms to principles of epic structure make his occasional (but nevertheless fundamental) variations on the epic tradition all the more striking by contrast. The most important departures from epic decorum--the rejection of a martial theme, and the choice of an argument that emphasizes the hero's transgression and defeat instead of celebrating his virtues and triumphs--are paradoxically conditioned by concern for the ethical and religious decorum of the epic genre. On the whole, Milton has retained the formal motifs and devices of the heroic poem but has invested them with Christian matter and meaning. In this sense his epic is . . . something of a pseudomorph--retaining the form of classical epic but replacing