The ‘invocation’ is the very beginning of the epic in which Milton prays to the Muse, the Christian spirit, to help him write well. He took an apparently very simple story of the “Fall” from the Bible, but he blended within it his puritan thoughts, Renaissance humanism, his political as well as domestic ideals, and many such meanings. This simple story of ‘fall’ has become a locus of many times after Milton used in his epic.
Metaphorically, they fell from the original bliss of god’s grace to the present state of mortality, guilt, shame and suffering. They walked from the heights of paradise to the barren plains below. After Michael gave Adam and Eve this vision, they were pacified, especially because they saw that their children would be saved. Adam and Eve thought of committing suicide, but Michael, the angel sent by God, gave them new hope he gave Adam a vision of life and death, the rise and fall of kingdoms and empires, and also showed them how the future Adam and Eve’s progeny would go through their evil days, to the flood when God would destroy all life except the good seeds preserved by Noah, and be finally redeemed through Christ’s incarnation, death, resurrection and ascension as the redeemer. He replaced the eternal spring with the changing seasons he created the violence and misery of storms, winds, hail, ice, floods and earthquakes he sentenced Adam and Eve to expulsion from Eden. He went back to hell to see that his followers had all become hissing snakes. Satan sent sin and Death as his ambassadors on Earth. As Christ announced the punishment, Death and sin, left the gates of Hell to join their father Satan on Earth. Adam, said Christ, would eat in sorrow, would eat bread only by toiling and sweating. He also announced punishment of Eve her sorrow would be multiplied by the bearing of children and that she would be the servant of Adam to the end of time. Christ sentenced the serpent to be forever a hated enemy of mankind. The guardian angel came to earth to pass judgment. Just after eating the forbidden fruit, the couple knew lust for the first time. Eve gave the fruit to Adam, who was at first horrified, but who in his love for Eve, also ate the fruit.
Alone, Eve was accosted by the serpent, which flattered her into tasting the fruit of the Tree of knowledge. Adam, remembering the warning of Raphael, opposed her wishes, but Eve prevailed and the couple parted. In the mourning Eve proposed that they work apart. After the departure of Raphael, Satan entered the body of a sleeping serpent. Adam then told how he had been warned against the Tree of knowledge of God and Evil, and how Eve was created from his rib. He told of the creation of the world and how the Earth was created in six days and angelic choir singing the praises of God or the seventh days. Raphael told Adam and Eve in detail the story of the Great War between the god and the bad angles (many of such stories are told in such conversation and flashback). After the sinful act of disobedience had been committed, God sent the angel Raphael to the garden to warn them. Eve, in her strange dream had been tempted to taste the fruit of the Tree of knowledge. God’s angel Gabriel under the command of God, appointed two other angels to safeguard Adam and Eve, but they arrived too late to prevent Satan. It was Beelzebub’s proposal to investigate this new creation, seized it, and seduces its inhabitants to the cause of the fallen angels, and saw Satan approaching Earth. Beelzebub, second in command, arose and informed that God and created Earth, which he had peopled with good creatures called humans. Mammon proposed peacefully improving hell so that it might equal and rival Heaven. Belial recommended a slothful existence in Hell. The devils built an elaborate palace, Pandemonium, in which Satan organized a conference to decide on immediate action. Arousing his friends, he did his best to bring them to spirits, and decided that his purposes could be achieved by guile rather than by force he decided to take revenge on God by spoiling his latest creation the Eden and the human beings there. Then Lucifer arose from the burning pitch and resolved- though at the same time despairing – that “all was not lost,” that he would take revenge on God.
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