ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author applies John Milton’s four-degree characterization of death, a conception developed in his incomplete A Treatise on Christian Doctrine, to explore the fates of Adam, Eve, and Satan as depicted in Paradise Lost, and what they teach about Milton’s views on the relationship between human morality and mortality. Milton categorizes death as punishment into four degrees: guiltiness, loss of divine grace, bodily death, and finally death of the soul. These four degrees of death are progressive; each degree builds in severity, and culminates in the complete destruction of the human being. According to Milton’s account, Eve is created in order to provide Adam with a companion, and to facilitate procreation. She immediately displays an interest in self-examination and fascination with her own beauty, which could be dismissed as vanity by the casual reader. In Milton’s view, the initial death of the human body is accompanied by the death of the human soul.
