The Paradise book: themes and literary significance

Paradise Lost Book I

Explain why Satan and his crew are cast out of Heaven.

Milton identifies the reason why Satan and the other angels are cast from Heaven at line 36: "Pride." In Milton's account here, apparently Satan's pride assembled a "host of rebel angels" because he was, with their help, "aspiring / to set himself in glory above his peers" and thus Satan "trusted to have equal'd the most high" if he had been victorious (lines 37-40). For a being (such as Satan) created by a perfect God to "trust" to "equal" that perfect God cannot be ascribed to any motive other than stupidity or hubris, and Milton's Satan does not seem stupid. In fact, Milton's grammar seems to make a gesture in the direction of gratifying the Satanic hubris, as the poem states "Pride / had cast him out of heaven," rather than God. The ambiguity of the grammar manages to ascribe some agency to Satan himself, if the cause of Satan's fall was a quality inherent in himself: it also manages to avoid blaming God for the whole business. But the ambiguity of the grammar also seems to cover up some of the weird logical difficulties that are entailed in describing a fight against God himself: at line 49: Satan is described as a being "who durst defy th'Omnipotent to arms." It is not clear what picking a fight with an Omnipotent God might even entail, since an Omnipotent God by definition is always going to win every fight.

2) Explain how Satan rallies them to reorganize in Hell.

Satan rallies his troops in Hell to reorganize by first talking one-on-one with Beelzebub: both of them do a bit of Monday-morning quarterbacking, to suggest that until the moment they rebelled against God and were punished, it was not possible to know that God was indeed omnipotent. "Till then who knew / The force of those dire arms?" Satan asks at 93-4. Beelzebub confirms this in his parenthetical remark at lines 143-5, when he refers to God as one "whom I now / of force believe Almighty, since no less / Than such could have o'erpower'd such force as ours." The suggestion seems to be that the combined force of all the rebel angels was thought to be sufficient to dethrone God, and put Satan in his place -- they thought they had a chance, but it was only by rebelling that they were able to truly understand God's actual power and strength.