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Paradise Lost

John Milton · epic poem, 1667·6 hrs in the original·original at Project Gutenberg
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  • Satan gets the poem's most quotable line, and it's a rationalization. Cast down to Hell, he declares "The mind is its own place, and in it self / Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n... Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n," turning a catastrophic defeat into a philosophy on the spot.
  • The Devil's recruiting pitch to Eve is airtight logic built on false premises. The serpent argues God forbids the fruit only to "keep ye low and ignorant," that death is an empty threat since the serpent itself ate and lived, and that eating simply makes humans what God secretly fears they could become: godlike.
  • Eve doesn't just fall for flattery, she talks herself into it. After the serpent leaves, she stands alone reasoning through the logic herself, concluding the fruit's benefits are being hidden from her, before Milton writes the fall in six blunt words: "she pluck'd, she eat."
  • Adam's fall is a different sin from Eve's, on purpose. When Eve confesses, Adam's wedding garland drops from his hand in shock, but he chooses to eat anyway, deliberately and clear-eyed: Milton specifies he was "not deceav'd, but fondly overcome with Femal charm," choosing loyalty to Eve over obedience to God.
  • God's judgment on Adam and Eve is a punishment with an escape clause already built in. Cursing the serpent, God promises that Eve's offspring "shall bruise thy head," the poem's Christian reader would recognize as a prophecy of redemption arriving inside the sentence of exile itself.
  • The ending refuses easy despair. Expelled through the Eastern Gate under a flaming sword, Adam and Eve "dropp'd" some natural tears but "wip'd them soon": "The World was all before them... They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow, / Through Eden took thir solitarie way."
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•Why it earns a slot

Why it earns a slot: Milton wrote it to defend God and ended up writing the most sympathetic account of rebellion in the language, William Blake's line that Milton was "of the Devil's party without knowing it" is a debate this poem still wins on its own terms.

Milton set out to "justify the ways of God to men" and produced the most persuasive villain in English literature instead.

This distillation is written from the freely available original, which is always the better read when you have the time: Project Gutenberg.

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