As someone that does not know too much about religion, reading through Paradise Lost was a struggle for me to comprehend. However, there was one line that stood out to me.
“The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n”
I found this line interesting because I believe there to be truth behind it. We can always find the bad of a good situation, but we can also always find the good in a bad situation. Things are how you make them.
The thing I found most interesting about this text was that it told the story, focusing mainly on Satan. It was an interesting twist to a religion story, making Satan a protagonist and telling the story about his army and their battles. Since I do not have a large knowledge on religion, I pictured Satan as a short, little red man with horns before I eventually did learn that he is actually a fallen angel and since then, I have found that to be so interesting. It offered a new twist and I think ties into the idea of sympathizing Satan a little bit as seen through this text.
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That’s a great line to pick apart. There’s a lot that can be said about it, but I think you said it best: finding the good in the bad and vice versa. Given Milton’s religious background, it can also be seen as a way of excusing behavior; making a heaven out of hell as in doing something “bad” and explaining it away, saying it’s not really that bad. Milton toes a line between right and wrong, especially by making Satan (the classic Bad Guy) into a protagonist. It’s a lot of weird, morally-grey, philosophical metaphors and poetry that he plays around with in Paradise Lost.
Note that this line gets flipped early in Book 4, both by the narrator and by Satan. It’s possible that for Milton, the first version about is a lie: individuals don’t actually have control over reimagining their present circumstances as heaven or hell! This is the brilliant and frustrating thing about Milton. He pits these ideas against each other and creates active, ongoing debates in his story. (For what it’s worth, I vote for the power of imagination!)