29 pages • 58 minutes read
John MiltonParadise Regained
Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Adult | Published in 1671A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Book IIChapter Summaries & Analyses
Book II Summary
This segment of Paradise Regained opens with a shift away from Jesus and Satan: Milton considers the perspective of the onlookers who witnessed Jesus’s glorification at the baptism. Some fishermen, who are followers of Jesus, gather together and call upon heaven to send the Messiah to save Israel from oppression. Moreover, Jesus’s mother Mary is worried that her son has not returned from his baptism. She too is aware of Jesus’s purpose as a savior and—despite her qualms about her son’s whereabouts—accepts that her role is to wait for Jesus’s actions to play out according to a divine plan.
Jesus continues to roam the desert, reflecting on the momentous purpose that has been set before him as the Son of God. Meanwhile, Satan returns to his fellow fallen spirits. As the tempter explains, Jesus has proven much more difficult to lead into sin or transgression than Adam and Eve; for this reason, Satan requests the advice of his subordinates. One of these spirits, the lustful Belial, advises Satan to present Jesus with women to seduce the would-be savior. As Belial points out, even the wise Solomon was vulnerable to women’s charms. Satan is not swayed by this advice: he points out that Belial is advising based on personal preference, that not all men are especially vulnerable to women’s wiles, and that Jesus is Solomon’s superior in virtue.
Ultimately, Satan decides that he will present the weakened Jesus with nourishment and hospitality in order to gain the upper hand. Jesus is, after all, in the middle of an intense forty-day fast. By this point, Jesus’s isolation from society has become absolute—at least until he comes in contact with an apparently pleasant and well-dressed man who asks whether Jesus is hungry. This man is quickly revealed to be Satan. Jesus explains that he does not have any need for food at present, but Satan conjures a luxurious banquet and urges Jesus to enjoy the delicacies that have been set forth. However, Jesus explains that he himself could conjure such goods if he so wished. He denounces the banquet as little more than evidence of Satan’s trickery.
Satan banishes the feast, and points out that Jesus’s time in the desert seems to be ill-spent. Although Jesus seems to have been created for a grand purpose, he is—according to Satan’s logic—wasting the opportunity to gain wealth and followers by wandering in isolation. Jesus refutes this argument. Without the guidance of virtue, the wealth and status that Satan praises would only be misused and lead to chaos.
Book II Analysis
Although Book I of Paradise Regained points to Jesus’s eventual triumph over evil, Book II begins with a series of doubts and anxieties. Milton first explores the perspectives of Jesus’s followers, who give voice to their “Unexpected loss and plaints” (II.29); he then shifts his focus to Jesus’s mother Mary, whose own “troubled thoughts” (II.60) are delivered in a separate monologue. All of these individuals feel strong emotions due to Jesus’s disappearance, yet all arrive at roughly the same conclusion. Despite the fortunate omens that have attended Jesus, it is necessary to patiently wait for God’s plan to unfold, and to accept that God’s ways, though fundamentally good, may also be deeply mysterious to humans.
One of the proofs of Jesus’s fundamentally human nature is his participation in such doubt and questioning. He may be a perfect man, but as a man wearied by his time in the desert and wonders “Where will [this fast] end?” (II.265)—he is not so different from the vulnerable, uncertain mother and followers whom he has temporarily left behind. And like these other pious individuals, Jesus is not expected to fully understand God’s design. Rather, his real challenges are to resist individual temptation after individual temptation, to recognize Satan’s offerings as “no gifts, but guiles” (II.391), and to trust that God will honor such displays of good judgment.
While Jesus continues to display judiciousness and fortitude, Satan finds new ways to tempt the Son of God. Appealing to sensual pleasures, for instance, has manifested itself as a flawed strategy: Jesus (on the basis of Book I) has no interest in performing miracles that will ease his condition and (on the basis of Satan’s dismissal of Belial’s advice) has no desire to lose himself in luxury or debauchery. By the end of Book II, Satan has attempted to manipulate Jesus’s sense of virtue, arguing that Jesus’s values of “virtue, valor, [and] wisdom” (II.431) are futile without the resources at Satan’s disposal. This ploy is perhaps better suited to Jesus’s personality than a mere offer of food or women, but it is a ploy nonetheless. Jesus recognizes that power without “virtue” is destructive, and that Satan—in a move that distorts the proper logic of worldly authority—has assumed power is of higher priority than virtue.
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