Paradise Lost Religion Essay

The view on how religion should impact a person’s life has changed steadily throughout much of English history. These changes can be seen through much of their writing in which the earlier writing has Christianity playing a key role, while, in more recent writing, religion plays a much smaller role in the more modern writings. Strong religious messages can be seen in the earlier writings, such as “The Wanderer” and “Everyman”, but becomes more questioned in later writings, such as “Dr. Faustus” and “Paradise Lost”; and in more current writings, such as “Oroonoko” and “Fantomina”, we see no religious teachings, but the protagonist is still faced with the same struggles as seen in the earlier writings. Within “Everyman”, it shows the basic thought
The author does this by telling of how Satan was not necessarily in the wrong, but simply had a difference of opinion. By saying this, the author gives Satan a new light in which he is not someone who is evil, but someone who stands for something entirely separate from God. He goes even further with this by saying “how all his malice served but to bring forth infinite goodness, grace, and mercy, shewn on man by him seduced…” This shows, to some, how God is not the only choice and that Satan can provide for his followers, thus taking followers from God’s
This is comparable to the story “Dr. Faustus”, in which the main character becomes obsessed with necromancy over God. Fantomina follows this man to understand him, but each time she is left on the losing end by wasting her time. This is very much like Dr. Faustus who wasted his time on trivial pursuits and later regretted it. When Fantomina becomes pregnant it shows that she is out of time with the man she has been tricking throughout the story, and so she must end the façade. This is comparable to when Dr. Faustus is out of time on earth and must face Satan to pay his debt. However, unlike Dr. Faustus, Fantomina is sent to a monastery in France, but no further info is given about this. This shows that the stories are comparable through the struggles the protagonist faces, but Fantomina is not corrected through a religious