Paradise Lost by John Milton

A Spoiler Free First Read Review

I feel the need to give a quick background of my religious upbringing, given the subject matter of this book and my thoughts on it. I was brought up Lutheran. Went to a Lutheran school from preschool through 5th grade. I went to church almost every Sunday from the time I was born (I’m pretty sure anyway) until I was 18 and could stop. I went through a “Profession of Faith” class when I was 13. Sometime after this, I became (and remain) Agnostic for reasons that might become clear as I review Paradise Lost.

I feel like Paradise Lost ended up highlighting a GIANT issue I have with the Judaeo-Christian religions. I’m sure that wasn’t Milton’s intention, but it was my takeaway. The issue is God’s supposed Omnipotence and Omniscience. I’d just like to know why He apparently has to be a dick with his creations, angels and humans both. I just keep coming back to Why?? Why do all this shit? Why allow it? Why not just skip it? And no, the answer of “God works in mysterious ways” does not actually answer anything. It’s just infuriating. I was infuriated through a good chunk of this by the decisions of God.

I also know that this isn’t to be taken literally and with more metaphor than I probably read it. However, that lovely religious upbringing of mine kicked in and I took things more exactly as written rather than looking at the philosophy that’s apparently there… which I don’t read much into in most of my reading anyway so… yeah. Reading between the lines has never been my forte.

I also spent a good chunk of Paradise Lost being confused as to what was going on, in all honesty. Reading poetry isn’t really a thing I do, like, at all, so even getting through this one was impressive for me. Just spent a lot of time flowing with the words and not knowing what was going on or who was talking at any given moment.

The last batch of “books” were somewhat amusing to me in their cherry-picking and rushed telling of the Bible stories. A large chunk devoted to Noah, a tiny bit about the Tower of Babel, Abraham, and the barest mention of David before picking back up with the Nativity. I was legit rolling my eyes by this point, not going to lie. Let’s just skip over giant portions of the Old Testament, like everyone seems to do… but that’s an entirely other thought train I don’t have time to follow right now. I was definitely not at all into the ending parts of this and was just ready for it all to be over.

Definitely not my favorite or anywhere close to the top. Not terrible, though. Made me rage a lot as I was reading, in all honesty.