Milton’s Paradise Lost Essay, Research Paper

One often reads a book or watches a movie and finds a specific meaning behind the whole story, a moral. After watching American Beauty it is easy to see a resemblance in the characters to that of Paradise Lost. In this way you could say that by reading Paradise Lost the characters in American Beauty could have related and changed the way they handled their situations. In particular, Lester Burnham could have saved his life if he had only read Paradise Lost.

Today society is constructed around the notion that happiness is found through material success: a rewarding big-money job, a nice house in a quiet neighborhood, a fancy car, and a great spouse. American Beauty’s Lester Burnham, on the surface, seems to have it all. In reality he is rapidly beginning to realize that his lifestyle has left him without a soul. Burnham is an advertising writer who finds his job unbearable, his wife frigid, his teenage daughter a stranger, his life in general intolerable. While masturbating in the shower one morning, Lester declares this event to be as good as it gets all day.

So he takes a fall. Lester Burnham complicates his life further when he becomes infatuated with his daughter’s best friend. After seeing this young girl at a basketball game, Lester succumbs to his delusion of a new and improved life. What he does not realize is that his motivation for this change is superficial, rather than earnest. Lester quits his job, gets a job in a fast food drive-through, buys drugs from his neighbor’s son, and buys a sports car he has wanted for years. Lester’s reaction to his unhappy life causes dismay to the lives of those around him, which ultimately causes his death. All of this may have been avoided if he had only read and understood the central themes of Paradise Lost.

One of the most obvious connections to Paradise Lost is Lester Burnham’s resemblance to Satan. Lester realizes that he is miserable, and begins to question the direction his life is taking. After a while, Lester’s judgement becomes clouded and all hell breaks loose. The way he handles his situation is based on irrationality and poor judgement. Lester starts to think with his naughty bits instead of using reason, completely ignoring the fact that he is acting like an immature child. All of his actions can be compared to the way that Satan acts in Paradise Lost. Like Lester, Satan questions his actions and becomes angry about choices he made. After a while he realizes that he must make the best of his situation and “make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven” (PL.I.255). Thinking like this can be a good thing if used in the right manner. Satan accepts this epistemology as a means to take revenge on God, which, in effect, ends up condemning him to Hell for all of eternity. Lester starts to think in a similar way; but instead of improving his situation, he recreates his life based on a fantasy.

One of the major themes in Paradise Lost focuses on the question: Where is Paradise? Paradise is not a physical thing that one can touch or see. It is found within ones self. The paradise that Adam and Eve find is their togetherness, “Imparadised in one another’s arms” (PL.IV.506). In order for someone to find their paradise they must look inside themselves and figure out what they really want in life. Lester Burnham did not do this until it was too late; and the paradise he discovers remained exterior. He based his early life on material possession and eventually realizes that was not what he wanted. So what does he do? He attempts to relive his teen years and in doing so affects those around him; consequently killing him. If Lester had known that he could find a paradise in himself, he could have lead a different life: one that was his own paradise.

The main purpose of Paradise Lost is to portrait the fall of man as a deplorable, yet faith-reaffirming event. The fall of man begins with the fall of Satan. Satan rebels against God, falls, then decides to seek revenge by destroying mankind. The consequence of his fall is very horrid and terrifying. The fall brings him darkness, sorrow, and a Hell that will be within him forever. The fall of Adam and Eve brings with it death, sin, pain, suffering, etc. into the world. The fall of mankind seems to be the death of everything perfect. It introduces death and pain to the world, but it also unveils the chance for redemption. In a sense, Lester falls in American Beauty. At first he lives a life which would be considered acceptable to society: a normal job, a normal family. But as he becomes tired of his normal life, Lester becomes an outcast to society. Through knowing the consequences of the falls in Paradise Lost, Lester could have saved himself from his mid life crisis by realizing that such a fall could end up disastrous.