Milton and I wouldn't be friends // Samantha Tedder

     I feel now I've come to the point where Milton and I would no longer get along. These long extended conversations between Adam and Eve and the angels do not have any point in which they can be drawn from in the text but are fully added from Milton's own mind. This poem is drawing upon the style of the epic poems of old as a retelling creation story. My issue comes not in the embellishing to further the point but the addition. In sermons, today pastors use commentaries pulling straight from the text and expounding on the meanings of words, culture, and history of the time the bible was written to better understand it. They also relate biblical stories to current-day stories with similar contexts to help us understand them. In these two books (and the one before it), Milton adds entire conversations between God and his angles, the angles, and man and man and woman that infer so many things nowhere to be found in the biblical narrative.     

    My other problem is that these conversations do not make the story any clearer but more confusing. How do two blissfully ignorant humans with no ability to understand the good and evil benefit from hearing the fall of Satan? A story that is entirely centered around the ideas of good and evil. It adds more of a layer of mystery to the already mysterious ways of God. God himself decided how mysterious he wanted to be when he inspired the text; there's no reason to make him harder to understand. I'm interested in seeing where this goes once we get to the actual fall since Adam and Eve have now received warnings, discussed the creation, and questioned why they cannot fully understand God with the angel Raphael. 

P.S. I will be commenting on Emma Dalgety and Haylee Lynd's posts

Comments

  1. Lily CaswellSeptember 21, 2021 at 8:50 AM

    I agree Samantha. I think Milton tried too hard and added far too much. And I agree with what you said about Adam and Eve not understanding the fall of Satan because they had no true knowledge of what evil and sin was.

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