Milton

How does Milton grab the readers attention in the opening section of the poem.

Milton grabs the readers attention in as early as the first 26 lines, because of his very ambitious aim. Milton asks of a ‘heavenly muse’: ‘Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song’. By invoking a muse, Milton is showing how he is aware of Homer and Virgil and their epics, and showing how he is knowledgeable of their format and wants to be part of their tradition. But Milton’s muse is ‘heavenly’, the muse that ‘didst inspire that shepherd who first taught the chosen seed, in the beginning how the heavens and the earth rose out of chaos’. The sentence : ‘Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire’ ends with an iamb, putting extra emphasis on the word ‘inspire’, showing the importance of the muses powers to Miltons poem. By having a heavenly muse, Milton is showing how his ambitions go far beyond Homer and Virgil, helping create a poem that deals with matters of more fundamental importance to human beings. Having the poem open with him asking for God to inspire him shows the heights that the poem will reach: a poem inspired by the almighty, and this is an exciting idea. And while Homer and Virgil’s epics told the story of heroic men, Milton’s shall tell the story of all men, and he shall also ‘justify the ways of God to men’.

The poem then explains that Adam and Eve’s disobedience was partly down to a serpent, who ‘decieved the mother of mankind’. This serpent is Satan, and he has just been cast down into hell by god after losing a huge battle against him. So the first part of the poem is started in medias res and we are thrown straight into the action. We get an immediate description of the ‘fiery gulf’ that is hell, with ‘floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire’, with ‘ever-burning sulphur unconsumed:’, but still a place ‘in utter darkness’. Its certainly a spectacular place for the reader to suddenly find themselves in, the contradiction of darkness and fire throwing powerful images into the readers head.

Readers of Miltons time would also relate this story to very important events in their lives. Milton, in a disguised protest against the political regime of Cromwell, put Cromwell into his poem: as the character of Satan.

A final intriguing point, one that grabs the readers attention in the opening section of the play, is that Satan’s description is ambiguous: is he presented at all as a hero, or as a villain? Milton’s epic similes demonstrate this: Satan is described as a Leviathan. This almost makes him seem powerful and in turn heroic, as he is described as a huge whale like creature. However, this creature is also hinted to be a deceiver: sailors moor their boats on them, thinking them to be islands. It also could make us slightly wary of Satan, as in describing him as a mythical beast, we don’t know how big he actually is. Furthermore, in describing him as huge, straight after we learn he has been defeated by God, Milton could be showing the all powerfulness of God. So Satan is an interesting character, and one sure to grab the readers attention.