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Death in Paradise Lost and Triumph of Life

 

       In the “Triumph of Life”, death and life as the title of the poem suggests are two major themes. However, the question of what life is never explained. In the poem we see well-known thinkers and people who made unprecedented efforts in their lifetime such as Plato and Ceaser. Despite their success and fame, none conquered death. We see the same image in “Paradise Lost”. Michael is ordered to explain what will happen to human-kind and in his speech, we see the earth being destroyed. Description of what will happen to Earth reflects the process of life. People will die and born, and in the great scheme of things, this process cannot be obscured. Therefore, in both Poems, it is not necessary to understand what life is as it is not changeable, in order words, life is stationary. As a result, the question of what life is, becomes unanswerable, even Michael states that human sense cannot understand him. Ultimately, both poems force us to ask the question, what life is? But they do not answer such a question and leaves us to draw our own conclusion. In this essay I will argue that both poems see death as a cycle of life that is inevitable and powerful and hence, they present life as something that is not understandable but ought to be endured.

       In “Paradise Lost”, Adam is given a clear instruction from Michael, “Add virtue, Patience, Temperance, add Love.” (p.35) All Adam should do with this knowledge from Michael regarding how the world will end, is to have virtue and have patience. Michael touches upon the corruption people caused, the sins they committed and how people are responsible from the destruction, however, he through advising to have virtue and patience implies the lack of control people have. Milton approaches the life as an uncontrollable cycle as we see from Michael’s speech. In “Triumph of Life” we see multitude of people going towards death, although some were famous and they all have different lives, death make them insignificant. “Old age & youth, manhood & infancy, / Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear,” Here, we see multitude of people with different backgrounds but there is only one death that is always the same. In other words, death is so powerful and singular that it reduces everyone to the same level.  However, if death creates such destructive effect, it is impossible to reduce the meaning of life to one single common definition and this definition in both poems is not clear and not answered, the conclusion left to us.

 

Day, Jean. The Triumph of Life. Insurance Editions, 2018.

Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Univ. Pr., 1980.

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