Monday, May 12, 2014

In Sonnet XIX by John Milton, the speaker feels that the purpose of his talent is to enable him to serve God. What dilemma does this connection...

The speaker's dilemma is that, although he wants to serve God through his talent for writing, he's having a hard time doing so because he's recently gone blind.


He's caught between the impulse to write (and thereby honor his god) and the pragmatic concern of how to get that done without being able to see. Keep in mind that this poem was written in the 1600's, long before technology provided a way for blind writers to compose and revise their work.


This new blindness is not just a practical problem for the speaker but also a spiritual one. He worries that if his blindness prevents him from writing enough--or causes him to stop writing altogether--then maybe God will punish him for letting his talent go to waste.


Modern readers familiar with Christianity might suggest a logical solution to the speaker's dilemma: an acceptance of the notion that the Christian god only gives burdens to people who are strong enough to bear them, and further that this god has a detailed plan for everyone in the world--meaning that the speaker's blindness was given by God himself. Who could blame the speaker, under those circumstances, for struggling with the practical repercussions of his blindness? Certainly not the omniscient, benevolent god of Christianity.


However, the speaker resolves the dilemma in his own way, which might come as a surprise to readers today. He reasons that God as a supernatural being doesn't literally need the speaker to write. Instead, God needs the speaker to show patience and to deal with his blindness gracefully. Doing this will also make the speaker a good servant of God, he thinks.

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