Status Updates From John Milton Classics: Parad...

Book 2. In giving Sin the key to Hell, God seems to implicitly encourage Satan’s escape and therefore the temptation and fall of humanity. This presents a paradigm - if God is all-powerful, then nothing can happen against his will, but many evil things do happen, so God must at least allow this evil or plan for it.
Hell is continuously presented as a mirror to heaven, complete with Satan's authoritative rule.

I've just finished book 1 (of 12). I'm unabashedly excited to see where this goes - the setup, structure, and prose are emulating the Aeneid wherever/whenever possible. The two points Milton has really strived to make are 1. It's better to reign in hell than serve in heaven (bars) 2. The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. More on that later ;)

It's a much shorter poem than you might think. Here ends the poem; the rest is Bible excerpts, religious essays Milton wrote, others' essays ABOUT the poem... I'm just reading the poem.