cllllllass notes

Today we had a BONUS quiz on Paradise Lost. It covered lines 27 up tooo 83. Then afterwards we continued to talk about the rest of the epic. After Satan addresses Beelzebub, lamenting about what they both once were (Arch angels). He resolves not to give up the fight against god. He's clearly not sorry and satan says he will not surrender that easily... despite laying in a lake of fire in hell. A little before line 124, we get a more personal view of satan because he thinks he is the good guy. He wonders who put god in charge of anyone and why he should have to bend his knee to god, the apparent tyrant. This is something people can relate to because we as humans don't like to be told what to do by whoever is in charge, especially if we did not give them the power in the first place.
We then skipped ahead to lines 210+ where Satan (who's EXTREMELY large) uses his free will to stand up. He also has a plan! At first he tried to reason with god, who would not listen. Then they faught but satan lost in battle so therefore, he can't fight god in battle again. So if he cannot destroy god, satan will try to destroy what god has created. In the last 15 lines satan says a few things about how he can percieve the world as he chooses and he can think of hell his heaven because he feels he'd rather reign in hell than serve in heaven. This is possible denialll or it could be legitamite because hell is as far away from god as possible.
We then ended class discussing whether we would prefer to reign in hell or serve in heaven. I would go with reigning hell over serving in heaven. Only because I can understand where satan's coming from. Why was god in charge? I mean i don't know the extent of what serving god meant and what the arch-angels were required to do. But I still see his point- plus he didn't know anything but being beautiful and happy.(and rebellious) So he wasn't happy or beautiful if he never experienced anything else and he never had anything to compare it to. I mean granted he takes destroying god a little far, but i guess if he didn't there wouldnt be a story.
-Emily (7 more days of school left)