Reaction to Paradise Lost

            Paradise Lost, an epic poem by John Milton is quite the tale, or should I say spin on the Bible.  John Milton wrote an exquisite back story on what happened after the fall of Satan.  This I felt was a really cool idea since Lucifer’s fall from grace is only mentioned a few times within the Bible.  All there is in the Bible is that he fell and now he is all things evil and more.  But what happened during that time in between?  What was Lucifer doing when he first fell?  When God created man?  Luckily for me, John Milton answered those questions with his epic poem, Paradise Lost.  Paradise Lost is divided into different sections, or books, twelve books to be exact.  Each chronicles the escapades of Satan and his loyal minions otherwise known as demons. 

                        Look, can I just say two things.  Mind.  Blown.  I mean seriously, John Milton is the man.  He took a well recorded and well written chunk of history and gave it an elaborate back-story.  I mean c’mon but that is really hard to achieve (giving a pre existing story a back-story) without being lame.   I think that John undertook a hard task, being able to give a back-story as good and as elaborate as a story from the Bible itself, the mother of elaborate.   The Bible is an ever present cultural, religious, and social symbol.  You can’t really mess around with that without things going awry, yet Milton did a fantastic job.  I feel like this was a part of the Dead Sea scrolls, a part of the Bible that was meant to be in there.  Lines 240 to 270 of book one are most likely the most recognizable lines from Paradise Lost.  This is due to the famous “Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven” quote.  During this passage, Lucifer is coming to terms with the fact that he has been cast out of heaven and must now call this place, hell, his home.  He then urges all the other demons to take part with him in ruling in hell and to stay.  Lucifer is depicted as a strong commander in chief who successfully talks his losing army who was thrown out of heaven because of him to stand with him against God in hell since it’s better to be a king in hell than to have to be subservient to God above.  This definitely fits with the modern Christian image of Lucifer as a sort of king in hell.