Miltons Limitations Essay

541 Words3 Pages
Before Milton focuses on human limitations and their weaknesses, he explores the nature of the relationships between God and the angels and man, before man fell from grace. He describes a scene where “God or Angel guest/With Man,” a key idea that reinforces the idea, from the bible, that God created “Man in our image, after our likeness.” The use of the word likeness may suggest that it is not merely in image that we are similar to God but also in reason and judgement. It suggests that humans have free will because God also has free will. Therefore the influence of impulsive behaviour or bad management, of free will is the aspect of human weakness that Milton explores. The essay will also incorporate “The Black Lace Fan my Mother Gave me,” to act as a comparison to Milton’s view of human limitations and their weaknesses. Eve is the first to display her weakness of reason, she allows the serpent to seduce her by using superficial compliments such as “Fairest resemblance of thy Maker fair.” This error of reason, not seeing past the compliments ultimately results in the fall of man. Milton is pointing towards man’s desire for earthly wealth in general and specifically man’s vanity. The literary theorist Stanley Fish said that “Eve substitutes the law of reason and the evidence of things seen for the law of God.” Milton enhances this point when by eventually making it Eve who asks the serpent to “Lead then,” highlighting Eve’s, and in more general terms mankind’s inability to look beyond flattery and use reason. In “The Black Lace Fan my Mother Gave Me,” there is a similar idea of desiring something to such a point, that the other possibilities do not cross the mind. When the woman in the poem “looked down the Boulevard des Capucines” the suspense waiting for the man to come is “killing,” her, suggesting that she has not rationally thought about the possibilities about
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