We’ve all heard about the classics and assume they’re

Milton’s “Paradise Lost”

18

It is not necessary to 

deny 

everything that 

secular readers claim 

about Milton’s Satan; 

all that is required is 

that we do not mistake 

partial truth for the 

whole truth. At one 

level, Milton’s Satan 

is grand; that does 

not make him good or 

sympathetic. A literary 

critic named Stanley 

Fish claims that Milton 

uses the technique of 

the guilty reader. This 

means that he carefully 

contrives to get readers 

to be swayed by Satan 

and then inserts data 

into the text that gets 

them to see that these 

responses are shoddy 

and evil. We are “sur-

prised by sin” (a phrase 

in 

Paradise Lost and 

the title of Fish’s book) 

as we read, confronted 

with evidence of our 

own fallen condition. In 

fact, with these wrong 

responses we reenact 

the fall ourselves.

A good organizing 

strategy that will unify 

our experience of 

Book 1 is to complete 

the formula “images 

of . . .”—images of 

defeat, of evil, of 

pain, of confusion, 

of irrevocable loss, 

and so forth. Having 

completed the list, it 

will be evident that we 

do not admire these 

epic; it will not, however, be an ultimately depress-

ing story; it will be loaded with biblical allusions).