God’s speech from his throne in Book 3 lays out the most difficult problem in Christian theology, the conflict between human free will and the doctrine, stated by Paul in Romans 8-9, that God predestines every human being either to salvation or damnation before we are even born. The Father pronounces humanity guilt, “Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall,” but how can that be reconciled with the idea that we are saved only by God’s grace, which he withholds from some for reasons no one knows? Milton’s daring liberalization of predestination, in which everyone is given sufficient grace, even if some are given extra. Also, the problem of how Satan, Adam, and Eve ever chose evil if he created them perfect. And finally, the issue of why atonement is necessary if God is love—why does God demand a human sacrifice?

The bizarre, satiric reunion of Satan with his daughter, Sin, and their offspring, Death, a parody of the Trinity, among other things. The shift of style to allegory for satiric purposes. Satan’s journey through Chaos on his way to earth. Chaos as “the deep” of Genesis 1, but also the Chaos of the Creation myths of Hesiod, Ovid, and Lucretius. The surreal picture of an undignified Satan having to fly, creep, swim, as Chaos turns moment by moment from solid to liquid to gas. The moving personal invocation to God as an inward light at the opening of Book 3, compensating for the painful solitude of Milton’s blindness. One of the most beautiful parts of the poem.

Milton’s analysis of why revolutions fail: what Blake called the “mind forg’d manacles” that imprison the would-be revolutionaries within. Moloch, Belial, and Mammon represent various false attitudes that subvert any revolution, good or bad—as they did in the French Revolution in the Romantic period, as they did in the Sixties. The devils’ attempt to pass the time while Satan goes on his spying expedition: the various ways people try to distract themselves from their sense of life’s meaningless futility.

The incantatory epic catalogue of pagan deities that the Devils will later become in human history. The discovery of gold by Mammon, and the building of Pandaemonium, the palace of the Devils, by Mulciber. The deceptively beautiful story of Mulciber’s fall, suddenly revealed as a lie. Milton’s demand for active interpretation, the responsibility of the reader of Paradise Lost.

The epic plunges in medias res, into the middle of things, and begins in the aftermath of the war in heaven. Satan and the rebel angels lie stunned on a burning lake in hell. Satan rouses his second-in-command, Beelzebub, and delivers two famous speeches of great dramatic power. Paradise Lost was originally conceived as a drama, and retains many dramatic features. Satan has been a strangely attractive figure to many intelligent readers, including famous ones like Blake and Shelley. Why is this so in an epic that wants to justify the ways of God to men?

Milton’s extraordinary achievement, writing his epic at the end of his life when he was old and blind, the Puritan revolution defeated. His choice of a Biblical rather than Arthurian subject. The famous Invocation, invoking a Muse that is really a symbol for divine inspiration. The real chronology of the poem’s events, though they are recounted out of order. The beginning “in the middle of things” in Book 1, with Satan and the rebel angels in hell just after their defeat in the war in heaven.

The rewards of reading Milton with or without a religious commitment. The magnificence of verse informed by a sophisticated knowledge of music. Milton’s sense of a total vision in which the Bible, Classical mythology and literature, and other writers, from Plato to Shakespeare, form an interconnected whole, what Northrop Frye calls the order of words. You can get a whole humanistic education from studying Milton. Milton’s revolutionary values in religion, politics, and the domestic realm. God as an Inner Light or inward presence, a main source of the later Romantic theory of the imagination. Milton’s part in the English Civil War in the cause of liberty, a forerunner of the democratic revolutions of the Romantic era. Milton’s attempt to liberalize as far as the Bible permitted the relationship between men and women, including his argument for the freedom of divorce. Milton’s great prose work Areopagitica, an argument in favor of freedom of thought and expression.

Achilles still grieves for Patroclus while the gods debate on Olympus. Zeus sends Iris down to arrange for Priam to go to Achilles and collect his son’s body. The tough, irascible Priam and his equally tough wife, Hecuba. Hermes, in disguise, conducts Priam to Achilles’ tent. Priam’s heart-rending speech, which stirs a new and unexpected compassion in Achilles. The mystery of Achilles’ new humanity. The parable of the two jars of Zeus. The return of the body, and the speeches of three women: Andromache, Hecuba, and Helen. The final line of the poem given to the noble Hector.

The building suspense between book 18, when Achilles learns of the death of Patroclus, and book 22, in which Achilles and Hector engage in the final showdown. Achilles is lured off the battlefield to give the two armies time to clear the field, the Trojans going back inside their walls. All of Troy begs Hector to come inside, but the heroic code demands that he refuse. But he panics, and runs from Achilles three times around the wall of Troy. What do we think of this? Even if we do not subscribe to the heroic code, do we think less of Hector for running? Reasons why perhaps we should not. The final showdown and Hector’s mortal wound.

Achilles goes to the ramparts and cries his chilling war cry three times to scare off the Trojans, so that the Achaeans get Patroclus’s body back—but minus Achilles’ armor that Patroclus had been wearing. Hector refuses to retreat, a refusal he will live long enough to regret. Thetis goes to the wondrous workshop of Hephaestus on Mt. Olympus to get armor for her son. The elaborate ekphrasis, or description of a work of art inside another work of art, detailing the scenes on the shield of Achilles. What is the artistic purpose of this description, which interrupts the narrative. The Olympian perspective of art.