When we hear someone say that Satan is the true hero ofParadise Lostor that God's ways are manifestly unjust, most of us are disturbed. We are disturbed not because such an interpretation violates our traditional feelings about God and Satan, but because it violates our sense of literary propriety. We might easily accept Satan as the hero of a novel or poem, regardless of our own feelings. What we cannot accept, or at least what most of us have been educated not to accept, is that a great writer, who is obviously in full command of his powers, could have set out to justify God's ways to men and succeed in doing the opposite. IfParadise Lostis really a great literary work, how can it fail so completely in carrying out the intention of its author? Or, if it is indeed a work which fails in doing what it has set out to do, if the narrator tells us that we should see and feel God's justice and mercy and the average reader admires Satan and feels that Adam and Eve are justified in their disobedience, how can we say that it is a great poem?