29 pages • 58 minutes read
John MiltonParadise Regained
Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Adult | Published in 1671A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Book IIIChapter Summaries & Analyses
Book III Summary
Jesus’s argument against Satan’s proposed form of wealth and power (an argument that closes the previous Book) as reduced Satan to silence and bafflement. Calling attention to Jesus’s apparent virtues, Satan criticizes Jesus for hiding his gifts and calls upon Jesus to become a leader. Yet Jesus is not swayed, responding that true excellence is related not to the deeds of war and conquest that Satan values, but to the lifestyle of self-discipline, righteousness, and obedience to God exemplified by the prophet Job.
In response, Satan claims that God seeks and even enforces glory from all created beings. Jesus, however, retorts that praising and honoring God is not an imposition. Glorifying God is a reasonable acknowledgement of God’s goodness, while turning away from God is a sign of ingratitude. Returning to the topic of achievements, Satan points out that Jesus is the prophesied successor of the legendary King David and insists that Jesus should be working to free the people of Israel from oppression. Jesus responds that God’s plan cannot be forced to completion—that patience and trust in God are necessary. He also expresses suspicion about Satan’s motives in urging action, since Jesus’s glorification will necessarily involve Satan’s destruction.
Satan explains that he no longer harbors any hope of redemption. He wants Jesus to show mercy and lessen any punishment that God might inflict. Returning to his argumentation, Satan points out that Jesus lives in a provincial area that provides opportunities for perfecting one’s understanding of human nature; he transports Jesus to a promontory, and from this vantage point Jesus can survey the great civilizations of the past and present. Satan exhorts Jesus to follow David’s example as a conqueror and displays two armies, the Roman and the Parthian, that would be of use in martial endeavors. Jesus is unmoved by such a display of force. He points out that Satan has led righteous civilizations, including David’s own nation of Israel, into destruction. Jesus reaffirms that the time for him to assume authority in the affairs of men has not yet arrived.
Book III Analysis
While continuing to clarify Jesus’s values system, Book III of Paradise Regained also lends new lucidity to the set of principles that is directly opposed to Jesus’s: Satan’s. There continues to be, as Milton construes it, an element of backwards, transgressive quality to Satan’s logic. For instance, in urging Jesus to selfishly pursue worldly glory, Satan conflates the pursuit of individual fame with the pursuit all-encompassing goodness that is characteristic of God. As Satan describes the one true divinity, “Glory he requires, and glory he receives, / Promiscuous from all nations” (III.117-118), applying to God a phrasing (“Promiscuous”) that makes the pursuit of virtue seem counter-intuitively scandalous or obscene.
Satan is willing to voice his contempt for God and is immensely power-hungry, convinced that displays of might and influence are powerful temptations and eager to undermine Jesus’s role as the Messiah. Yet Satan is also aware of how steeply the odds of success are stacked against him, and is apparently cognizant of his own sinfulness: “My error was my error, and my crime / My crime” (III.212-213). But does he really appreciate his own sinful nature? Here, Satan voices responsibility for his own evil in a manner that a Christian reader would find reasonable, and that is exactly what makes Satan’s admission of guilt so suspicious. Such an admission may be little more than a duplicitous attempt to win Jesus’s sympathy—little more than another rhetorical tactic. Indeed, wouldn’t a genuine sense of “error” cause Satan to feel true remorse, avoid inflicting any further harm on humanity, and leave Jesus to his good work?
Jesus rightly recognizes Satan’s part in perpetuating injustice through history. Moreover, he recognizes that the pagans are not the only victims of Satan’s evil influence, explaining to Satan that even the Israelites have fallen from God’s goodness and made themselves “distinguishable scarce / From Gentiles” (III.424-425). Though indeed the merciful Son of God, Jesus does not seek to save those who do not work to save themselves from sin. If Satan locates power in commanding many followers, Jesus understands true power as a matter of refining oneself—of finding virtuous participants in God’s goodness, not of forcing one’s will upon civilization.
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