Reaction Paper: Paradise Lost by John Milton

Reaction Paper: Paradise Lost by John Milton

Sabrina Scott
Richard Geuter
Honors Brit. Lit.
14 August 2007
Reaction Paper: Paradise Lost by John Milton
An epic battle in Heaven did arise
Between the rebels and angels in the skies.
Lost the rebels did,
Waiting on the Father’s bid.
The rebel angels thus alienated,
Satan’s greed never to be sated.
Escaping the infernal pit, Lucifer did flee
The dreadful Hell to corrupt the paradise newly came to be.
Saw he where Adam and Eve did lie,
In the form of a cherub he did spy.
Not deterred by the banishment of Gabriel,
Tempting the beloved pair’s reason the evil found itself capable.
In the form of a serpent, Satan did acknowledge
Eve’s eating the fruit of knowledge.
Thus came the fall of humanity
Only to be exonerated by the Son’s charity.
This poem seemed at first to me as just another dumb book I had to read. I knew I probably would not like it, but I figured I could give it a chance. I would simply read the book, and then move on with my life and forget all about it. That assumption was very inaccurate. After reading Paradise Lost, it is, in my mind, impossible to forget anything about the novel.   There are so many elements of this fantastic poem that I can’t possibly ignore. After reading this book, my understanding of life was at a higher level.
Good and evil exist in everyone of us, but it is our morals and judgment that determine who we are. If God didn’t give humans the ability to choose their own fate, or only instilled us with the ability to choose good, we would not be the same people. Eve’s judgment was affected by Satan, but she chose on her on what she would do. I realized that we have many of the same qualities of evil, but if we weren’t made of good and evil qualities, humans would not have the ability to be good. Sometimes to be good, we must be evil.
Milton is in my opinion one of the most amazing poets in history. Paradise Lost is one of the truly great epic poems along side the Aenied, Iliad, and the Odyssey. Many...