John Milton's Paradise Lost - Essay Example

John Milton wrote his epic poem, Paradise Lost, with Satan as the main protagonist. This essay explores Book One’s character of Satan. Satan is portrayed in a similar vein to the Satan in the Bible. The comparison is made using the Bible’s Genesis where Satan, in the metamorphosis as a serpent, misleads Eve and Adam into eating the forbidden fruit. The poem describes the chronological exploits of Satan that follow closely the stories of the Old Testament in the Bible. He is blamed for all the bad that the Old Testament prophets face.

There are different versions in the various bibles, but generally, this is a difference from the Bible because the Bible says that God sends the good and bad events while the Satan here directly claims responsibilities for the natural and unnatural disasters he wrought upon mankind. Satan has his own angels and followers who live in a separate world from Heaven which he says is equal in regard to Heaven. (lines 652-653). The difference is that the Bible says that Satan and his evil angels are ‘lesser angels’.

Satan says that there is a new world and a new being to be created. Satan says that the new being will be created in accordance to Heaven’s prophecy. The poem ends with Satan and his army having a meeting to discuss this matter. This part is new and different from the Bible and standard belief systems. Anne Finch’s poetry was among the first women poets’ poetry published in England in 1713. Her society did not approve of women poets and Finch kept her poetry to her husband, Heneage, and herself.

Her poem, “The Introduction”, reflects her circumstances as an unsung poet in her patriarchal society. Finch used biblical parallels to compare with the political and social climate of her society. Michal, Saul’s daughter, used to love David in the Bible’s 1 Samuel 18 and was married to him, but by 1 Chronicles 15, she secretly hated him. Judges 4-5 has been mentioned because Jael, a woman, has killed Sisera, the Canaanite king Jabin’s commander, by deceit and unfair means.

Thus, the Israelites triumphed against the Canaanites. Finch was a loyal Jacobite and became a Nonjuror because she refused to forsake her oath of allegiance to her old monarch, King James II, when the new monarchy of King William ruled. This allegory to the Bible’s stories refers to herself who, unlike Jael, cannot betray her former monarch. Finch referred to the woman ruler Deborah in Judges 4-5 because she wanted to remind that women are just as capable as men. She desired rights to be accorded to the female gender and ends her poem lamenting that her poetic Muse cannot be accepted by her English society because she is a woman.

Finch wrote “A Nocturnal Reverie” to praise the fantastic visions of the beautiful scenery. Finch offers observations of how Nature changes when night falls. The mind is at peace to relax in the quiet solitude of the night. Her night’s fanciful musing will become confused in the daytime because of ‘tyrant man’ who is awake in the day to disrupt Nature. She ends her poem by saying that people are too busy chasing earthly desires in the daytime even as pleasures are seldom obtained. The end.