Which Paradise Lost Character Are You?

The premier authority figure and final decision-maker in Paradise Lost. If you’ve received this result, you probably don’t have many friends. I bet you answered “I made the playlist” on question one. Well guess what—you didn’t ‘discover’ Kendrick Lamar and whoever’s playing along is probably just afraid of you.

God holds a peculiar position in Paradise Lost. Unlike the other characters whom the reader might visualize quite easily, such as Satan, God’s image is described only as it relates to other characters. For instance, the reader knows that Adam was created in God’s image, and that the Son of God is “the radiant image of his Glory,” but what that Glory actually looks like is unclear except for that it resembles a bright light, reminiscent of stars (3. 63). The reader, given only abstractions and comparisons, never directly sees God.

It is possible that Milton maintains this distance between God and the reader to demonstrate a Calvinist idea that God’s nature can never fully be understood. Yet, if Paradise Lost is a poem about the cost of peace, what are the implications of God’s role as an omniscient voice? The answer may very well be that Milton intended God to personify the abstract, objective truth that separates the unfallen from the fallen. In Paradise Lost, this truth appears to be poorly understood even by the angels, and the primary proof that this truth is not completely arbitrary is its juxtaposition against Hell. In other words, God personifies a moral code that the reader may conclude is just, simply because Hell has suffering while Heaven does not.

The clearest example of a character in Paradise Lost who values choosing his own path over the bliss that Heaven offers. To Satan, Heaven and Freedom are mutually exclusive; they cannot exist together. This is because in order to ensure peace, God eliminates all opportunity for individual choice, and thus freedom as Satan understands it can only live outside the safety God’s rule offers. It is for this reason that when addressing his fellow fallen angels, Satan embraces the pains of Hell, proclaiming “Hail horrors, hail / Infernal world” (1. 250-51). The pain of Hell only affirms that Hell is indeed a free land. Freedom brings with it the suffering inherent to a realm where individuals have no unifying code to follow. In a free world, every choice a man makes is evil to somebody, because a free society deprives men of the option to say “I had no choice.”

For Satan, the war in Heaven had been a matter of separating himself from what he perceived as a false peace brought on by a tyrannical God who could only offer happiness to his subjects if they relinquished their independent consciousness to enter a collective mindset. He views Heaven as an oppressive regime, wherein the angels are uniform in personality, and even those who lean towards autonomy like Raphael are still simple liaisons that repeat and propagate God’s doctrine. When approached from this light, it is understandable why Satan would find it “Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n” (1. 263).

Perhaps best illustrated through his need to categorize the world around him, Adam embodies the moral dilemma most central to the poem: applying God’s laws to the human world. He acts as the intermediary between Heaven’s school of thought—which is based heavily in the value of discipline for discipline’s sake—and Eve, a type of blank slate. It is his job to translate what he has been told and taught into terms that Eve can understand, which is to say that he must render divine teachings into their human equivalency. However, Adam is no angel, and at Eve’s fall, he too resolves to eat the fruit, unable to allow Eve to perish without him.

As he relates to the cost of peace in Paradise Lost, Adam initially appears to be the model for how man should have been if not tempted by the nefarious Eve. But the reader must note that Adam possesses longing; he longs for companionship. For Adam, companionship is given in the form of another human, Eve, who in the poem is farthest from God in terms of intimate knowledge with his laws. This is contrary to Adam and the Angels.

The reader might suppose that Adam’s compatibility with Eve indicates a part of Adam that pulls him away from Heaven. This notion is supported by Adam’s speech to Eve before he eats the apple, where he declares: “I feel / The Bond of Nature draw me to my own, / My own in thee, for what thou art is mine” (9. 955-57). This passage reveals Adam confessing, feasibly, that he feels naturally attracted to what aspects of himself he perceives in Eve. One might further extrapolate that Adam possessed an inclination to transgress God’s command all along. If his decision is read through the Satanic view of freedom, that any choice made in the name of self-interest is necessarily in defiance of God, then Adam’s character serves to argue that the same natural self-interest that defines Eve persists in Adam as well, and not even God’s command may overwhelm this impulse.

Significant foremost in her role as the only character born without knowledge or memory. Her only innate quality is an affinity for nature, for within it she recognizes herself.

Milton marks her as a natural being when describing her awakening in Book IV, where she gazes into a pool of water and sees her reflection “with answering looks / Of sympathy and love” (464-65). This scene occurs before she meets Adam, and thus Eve from her genesis is characterized as identifying with herself first, and Godliness second. Adam is Eve’s guide in living according to God, after first looking upon Adam, she reacts by perceiving herself as more attractive.

It is also worth mentioning that Eve possesses a grand, pervasive unawareness of what is going on around her. Her naivety positions both Satan and Adam as agents of their respective ideologies, each attempting to pull her to their side, and Eve is highly impressionable.

The reader may identify with Eve because Eve embodies Liberty in a way separate from Satan. Satan treasures liberty, as long as it’s under his reign. Eve, contrarily, is born with a free consciousness but knows not to put it into these terms. She knows only that she feels closest to what she identifies as containing aspects of herself. Taking this into account, Eve’s character prizes individuality over the collectivity God requires.

Little to say of you, other than Congratulations! You’ve escaped eternal damnation.

Boesky writes of Heaven’s militaristic structure, citing the strict discipline of that military hierarchy as the overarching, defining quality of God’s Heaven. The benefits of such a system include widespread unification. The angels all agree that following God is the only way, and that stepping beyond the boundaries of His ordinances is synonymous with sin.

However, even the angels with all their loyalty, are not automatons. They possess the knowledge that transgression is an option, but choose not to do so. It is their willingness to obey and the fervor with which they carry out God’s commands that mark them as heavenly, because for God it is not simply enough to follow orders, or even to believe in the merit of those orders. In fact, God sends angels on missions which have no explicit purpose, just to see if the angels will do them: “he sends upon his high behests / For state, as sovereign king, and to inure / Our prompt obedience” (8.238-40). God requires a double-think reminiscent of Orwell’s 1984, wherein the angels possess awareness of their ability to take advantage of the option of acting in self-interest, but never do. Those who do take advantage are fallen.

This raises some interesting questions about where the angels stand in terms of consciousness. They seem to be perfectly conscious of themselves and remain an independent identity, but systematically, they have relinquished all notions of a self. They’ve given themselves to the larger body of God’s army, which many will react to with repulsion (thus yet again Milton shows us how fallen we really are), but is not without its benefits. The suffering of freedom only comes when conflicting interests arise. But if you’re one of God’s angels, there are no conflicting interests, and thus no internal conflict. The angels have faith in the system, and it is because of their loyalty that Heaven ensures peace.