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An Essay on Three Rebellious Figures Satan in Paradise Lost, The Monkey King and Song Jiang. Paradise Lost, the greatest epic in English literature history, was composed by John Milton in the year 1665, after seven years labor in the darkness. With great difficulty he found a publisher. Its success was immediate, though, like all his works, it met with venomous criticism.
Milton was persecuted by the defenders of the throne after the Restoration because he was a faithful advocator of the Cromwell Government. Hardness of life brought him blindness. But this hard period was the most fruitful time in his literary life. Paradise Lost, the story taken from the Holy Bible, was written in this period. The story is about how Satan rebels against God and the seduce of Adam and Eve and the lost of Eden, which is known by every Christian. In the end of Yuan Dynasty the great book on peasant rebellion in China, Heroes of the Marshes, was brought out by Shi Nai-an.
Shin based his novel on the real historical event combined with the folklore's. The story is about how Song Jiang leads his fellows to rebel against the harsh reality. They kill the corrupt official and distribute their money to the poor. But by following Song Jiang's ideas, he himself and the other rebels surrender at last and become the soldiers of the of the empire. The Pilgrimage to the West has been known by every child ever since the publication in the middle of sixteenth century. Like Heroes of the Marshes, Wu Cheng-En, the author of the novel, also based the story on the folklore's.
But the book, like Paradise Lost, is based on religious story and we cannot find archetypes of the most of characters in reality. The story begins with the birth of the monkey king and hes rebel against the gods, ends with the fulfillment of his mission. The body of the novel is about how the monkey king and his fellow escort their master Tang San-Zhang, an eminent monk, from China to India to fetch sutras. The monkey king succeeds in fighting with all the devils on the way to India. The monkey king is a half-monkey half-human thing.
Therefore his look and his behavior arouse childrens interests. However, its definitely not a simple Child book. The monkey kings rebellion against gods symbolizes the rebellion against authority and so much more. The significance of the novel enables it to become one of the four greatest classic novels in Chinas literary history. Some say that Heroes of the Marshes, The Pilgrimage to the West and Paradise Lost are incomparable. One is an epic; the other two are ancient Chinese novels.
Furthermore, the novels are quite different from English ones. They view comparative study from a stylistic way, not a thematic way. The three figures were born in different time, different countries, speaking different languages. However, when we exam these three, we shall find amazing similarities in their characters: brave, strong, firm and persistent and rebellious. Song Jiang was the earliest born one. Two hundred years later, the monkey king was brought forth by Wu Cheng-En.
Milton created Satan even later. But we should say Satan is the earliest. Because Milton's ideas were modeled on the Holy Bible, which was an old story made by Jews, while Heroes of the Marshes and The Pilgrimage to the West were based on the contemporary folklore. Although Satan is the earliest, his rebellious spirit is the strongest, we should say. This article is a comparative analysis of the spiritual contents of these three figures, that is to say, an analysis of their rebellious characteristics. All the characters in literary works are the fictional creations of the authors, but not merely fictional, the background has influence on the construction progress of the character.
Paradise Lost was written in the Restoration Period. It was finished in 1665, after Milton's seven years labor in the darkness. Milton was a faithful advocator of the Cromwell Government. After the collapse of the bourgeoisie's government, sadness immerged him, but he never lost his courage and fought on with his pen.
We cannot say Satan is Milton himself, but at least he is somewhat representation of Milton's and his fellowmen's spirits. The lower class rebelled from time to time as in the long history of feudal China. However, rebellion did not become a common theme of literary creation in the passed time. Wu Cheng-En and Shin Nai-an gather their stories from the folklore's, which were prevailing among common people.
Therefore, these three works actually are spearheads pointed at the mighty and the obstacles of the human history. Satan, monkey king and Song Jiang rebel for freedom, fight for their destiny. Life is an active fighting for the destiny. But life is cruel and human always has his weakness.
European literary works inherit the traditions of the evaluation criteria of lives of Greek tragedies, that is to say, the European authors esteem the challengers if they have courage and strong will, no matter how the challengers fail or succeed. They actually tend to understand life by analyzing the value of life of the loser. Paradise Lost is a typical story of this kind. When we read classic Chinese novels, we can easily find out the fact that most characters are not active fighters for their destiny, but merely the people fooled by their fates. They always follow the rules, live in the small world and close their doors to the outside. Just when the destiny strike them, their lives begin to change.
Most heroes in Heroes of the Marshes are these kind of people. They rebel because they have no choice, not because they want to change their lives or destiny. However, The Pilgrimage to the West is a different book. The monkey king is a not a passive character, he fight for his destiny and finally succeed. The monkey king is a rare figure in the classic Chinese novels. He has his free will.
But he still has great differences when we compare him with Satan. A comparative study should containing both similarities and differences analyses. This piece of writing will present similarities and differences of these three unsurpassed and hardly equaled works in Chinese and English literature history. (1) Traditionally, Milton's Satan has been compared with Aeschylus Prometheus, and the older edition of Paradise Lost mark many lines in Satan's speeches as echoes of Prometheus Bound. But it would be impossible to write a book exploring Milton's debt to Greek drama on the scale of the studies of his epic background. Why we compare Satan with Prometheus? Because they are heroes, because they are rebellious, because both of them fight against the superior god.
The freedom of will is the keystone of Milton's creed. Working through the tradition of an encyclopedic Christian humanism, Milton wrote Paradise Lost, intending to expose the ways of Satan and to justify the ways of God to men.
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Research essay sample on An On Three Rebellious Comparative Study
