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... immortals except to the biggest Bodhisattvas. They think that they are superior, at least equal, to the Gods. However Song Jiang is not the same case. He is very loyal to the emperor.
An imperials edict can make him do anything. Some may say thats because Paradise Lost and The Pilgrimage to the West are fairytales while Heroes of the Marshes is based on somewhat reality. Yes, man in reality always has his weakness, and the weakness is due to his social and historical background and his personality. Maybe thats why people like to read fairytales. Satan is a great hero when he addresses his fellow angels. He says: In dubious Battle on the Plains of Have, And shook his throne.
What though the field be lost? All is lost; the unconquerable Will, And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield: And what is the else to be overcome? (Line 104 - 110 Book I) Although trapped in Hell, he never loses his courage and ambition. But it is only in the first two books of the Paradise Lost that Satan seems heroic. There is grandeur but no heroism in his later soliloquies and after the seduction of Eve he departs to Hell, leaving to world to his vice-gerent's Sin and Death. The first shock to any admiration for him in a readers mind comes when he meets his allegorical daughter Sin and his incestuously begotten grandson Death at Hells gates (Book II 678 - 883). There is no doubt of Milton's intent to degrade him, step by step, down to the scene of his second and involuntary appearance in serpent form in Book X.
In Heroes of the Marshes, we see Song Jiang as a great hero when all the one hundred and eight heroes and heroines gather in the Liang Shan Bo. Before Song Jiang go to Liang Shan Bo, he is very generous to the people, after he goes there, he is very kind to his fellowmen and fights together with them. But at the end of the story he betrays many of his fellows will and leads them to the unhappy ending. After we read the whole story of the monkey king we cannot but call him a great hero. He succeeds in fighting with the evils and finally ends his story with a gratifying ending. He is a big winner.
However, the readers of Paradise Lost and Heroes of the Marshes are bewildered: after reading these two books, they remember the first parts of the stories much clearer than the ending. The heroic deed and speech give them the deepest impression. When they think about Satan and Song Jiang, they still take them as great rebels. Here the culture backgrounds must have their influence. According to Aristotle, western poetry should put emphases on the imitation, conflict, structure plot and characteristics whereas Chinese put more emphases on the moral content of the stories. Some say Paradise Lost is an epic built out of dramas.
From Ben Johnson to Shakespeare, western playwright began to put much more emphases on the characteristics of the characters than before. Hamlet is the best example. In Milton's period, characterization was of great importance. God is unsurpassed, omnipotent and omnipresent while Satan is the father of all the evils.
If we set our eyes only on the moral content of the Paradise Lost, Satan is nothing but a devil. What westerners treasure is his nature, the nature of strong-willed beings. Satan's speech is the best testimony. Chinese Classic novels always start with a break and change of a peaceful situation. A virtuous man encounters troubles and the cause of the troubles is always some specific evil power, tragedy of nature is something rare to find in various ancient Chinese novels. Persecution and anti-persecution are the plot but not the theme of the stories.
The authors are trying to do two things: one is trying to find out the moral causation of all these troubles; the other is to evaluate good and evil. The criteria of the evaluation of good or evil are very simple: loyalty, faithfulness and morals. One should be Loyal to his majesty and loyal to his friends and to people and faithful to his family and superiors. Yue Fei is a bona fide hero because he is loyal to his majesty and to all the Chinese. Viewed from a modern mans eye, Song Jiang's heroic deeds are not very heroic because he shows too much loyalty to the emperor. In ancient China rebellion is condemned by morals.
Ever since the beginning of the rebellion, he thinks that his rebel is not a righteous thing. And entering the political state is the home to return to. His thoughts lead the heroes to a miserable ending. However, the gratifying ending of the monkey king story seems not that gratifying. We like to see the monkey to do whatever he likes, to live in an unbound way, not to become a Bodhisattva. It seems the cute, rebellious, bellicose monkey becomes a lamb. (4) Satan's rebellion is the most complete and the least weak-kneed among these three rebels.
The monkey king believes in nothing and belongs to nobody at the very beginning. After he is buried under the Wu-Zhi Mountain, his mind begins to change. In order to get out from the foot of the mountain, he chooses to obey the Bodhisattva and becomes prentice of Tang San-Zang. In fact, the monkey kings obedience is only with the Bodhisattva. He is never afraid of or obedient to the immortals and evils, no matter whatever position they own in the Asgard.
Even the layman of Chinese culture knows the importance of Buddhism. We cannot assert that the monkey kings obedience to the Bodhisattvas is just his weakness. On the contrary, the monkey finds the home to return to, which is the Buddhism. But at least we can say: the monkey king cannot find the home he belongs to if the Bodhisattvas dont force him and if he doesnt obey. Why the heroes go to the marshes? Because most of them have no choice.
If they dont rebel, they have to run from place to place to hide or they will be put to death. Song Jiang would never rebel if he could still survive. Rebellious nature is rooted in every human being as the nature of weakness is. Maybe we can say Song Jiang has more weak points in his nature than the other two is because Shi Nai-an was creating a real person. And real persons always have more weakness than we expect. Many rebellion leaders in ancient China did have Song Jiang's personality.
In recent years Satan has been too often and too easily compared with Mussolini and Hitler, but such analogies are not very helpful. Nor is it helpful to compared Satan with Cromwell. It is clear that in drawing his portrait of Satan Milton was objective. Its weakness is its greatness-its power to fool readers into its own delusion of power and make them say that Milton's Satan is a noble anticipation of Nietzschean superman. If, to give the devil his due, we must say that in the first two books of Paradise Lost he is drawn with too many virtues, the answer is perhaps in the Socrates words in the Republic when he says that the finer virtues-courage, temperance, and the rest-belong to the most evil men.
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Research essay sample on First Two Books Paradise Lost
