Study Questions
1. What does Satan feel is his greatest fault?

2. How does Satan feel about his own free will?

3. Where does Satan (in the form of a bird) alight when he first enters Paradise?

4. What is God’s only prohibition to Adam and Eve in the garden?

5. Which mythological character does Milton allude to in Eve’s story of her first day on Earth?

6. In what forms does Satan appear in Paradise in Book IV.

7. Where do Adam and Eve sleep in Paradise?

8. How does Uriel travel from his post in the sun to Paradise when he comes to warn Gabriel about an evil spirit that is loose?

9. What does Satan tell Gabriel when he is asked why he has left Hell?

10. Why does Satan finally leave Paradise?

Answers
1. Satan feels that his pride and ambition have brought him down to his miserable state.

2. Satan feels that he has been created free to fall.

3. Satan alights in the Tree of Life as a cormorant or bird.

4. God prohibits Adam and Eve to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.

5. Eve’s story, recalling her love for her own reflection, alludes to the classical myth of Narcissus.

6. Satan appears as a cormorant (bird) in the Tree of Life, a lion and tiger among the beasts, and a toad at Eve’s ear.

7. Adam and Eve sleep in a bower prepared for them by God.

8. Uriel glides down to Earth on a sunbeam.

9. Satan tells Gabriel he has left Hell to escape the pain.

10. God sends a sign from Heaven, preventing disaster and showing both Gabriel and Satan that they are powerless without God.