Surprised by Sin

1. Surprised by Sin The Reader in Paradise Lost

2. The Lure of Satan • What though the field be lost? • All is not lost; the unconquerable will, • And study of revenge, immortal hate, • And courage never to submit or yield: • And what is else not to be overcome? • That glory never shall his wrath or might • Extort from me.

3. The Lure of Satan …To deify his power, Who from the terror of this arm so late Doubted his empire, that were low indeed, That were an ignominy and shame beneath This downfall; since by the strength of gods And this empyreal substance cannot fail, Since through experience of this great event,

4. The Lure of Satan In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced, We may with more successful hope resolve To wage by force or guile eternal war Irreconcilable, to our grand Foe, Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy Sole reigning holds the tyranny of Heaven.

5. So spake the apostate angel, though in pain, • Vaunting aloud, though racked with deep despair

6. The reader who is stopped short by Milton’s rebuke (for so it is) will, perhaps, retrace his steps and note more carefully the inconsistency of a Tyranny that involves an excess of joy, and the perversity of “study of revenge, immortal hate” (a line that had slipped past him sandwiched respectably between will and courage.

7. If one observes what is happening one sees that there is hardly a great speech of Satan’s that Milton is not at pains to correct, to damp down and neutralize. He will put some glorious thing in Satan’s mouth, then, anxious about the effect of it, will pull us gently by the sleeve, saying “Do not be carried away by this fellow: he sounds splendid, but take my word for it, he is not…

8. Nor had they yet among the sons of Eve • Got them new names, till, wandering o'er the earth • Through God's high sufferance for the trial of man • By falsities and lies the greatest part • Of mankind they corrupted to forsake • God their Creator, and th' invisible • Glory of him that made them to transform • Oft to the image of a brute, adorned • With gay religions full of pomp and gold • And devils to adore for deities:

9. But the line's assertion that as polar opposites devils and deities should be easily distinguishable is complicated by the fact that as words "devils" and "deities" are close together, beginning and ending with the same letter and sharing an "e" and an "i" in between. The equivalence suggested by sound (although denied by the sense) is reinforced by the mirror-structure of "adore for," a phrase that separates devils from deities but in fact participates in the subliminal assertion of their likeness.

10. Milton consciously wants to worry his reader, to force him to doubt the correctness of his responses, and to bring him to the realization that his inability to read the poem with any confidence in his perception is its focus.

11. Milton’s purpose is to educate the reader to an awareness of his position and responsibilities as a fallen man, and to a sense of the distance which separates him from the innocence once his; Milton’s method is to re-create in the mind of the reader the drama of the Fall, to make him fall again exactly as Adam did.

12. Find 3 points in Book 1 in which you find yourself confused by the syntax and reading the line over again. • Describe what is so confusing about the line. Are subjects and verbs reversed? Does the subject of the line become separated from the verb by many, many words? Etc.