On His Blindness- Critical Analysis

Some of my thoughts on the poem "On His Blindness" 

                   - by John Milton...

God works in mysterious ways.

For aeons, one question remains unanswered-- is God benefiting from humanity?

This essay tries to answer that proposition and discuss how Milton's personal experiences are universalised as justification of the ways of God to men.

Milton goes blind age of 44 (roughly half his lifetime). 

Losing one's eyesight is obviously a profoundly troubling one. The blind person is suddenly at risk in all kinds of ways. 

The special tragedy of this particular speaker is that he loses his sight at an unusually early stage of his life. He now inhabits a world that seems "dark" as well as "wide", thus doubly challenging.

Predicaments happen to all. Whether one gets out of it or gets inundated in it largely depends on one's outlook. Here we are given an example of a physical disability of Milton.

To help his/her creation God or nature has designed the human psyche in such a way that it has its own distinct way of compensating for a physical disability. 

At the dawn of the new millennium came the news of the human genome had been decoded. All the 20,000 genes that we carry today are similar to those of our ancestors.  

It is said that God or nature has given us this instinct because the need to achieve, like the need to reproduce, the need to eat, and the need to drink, is too important to be left to chance. 

History shows that the hunger for achievement is a highly evolved one and undoubtedly the strongest. Humans have succeeded in the battle of survival of the fittest only due to this inherited psyche. 

It has given man the throne of blue marble.

Losing one's physical ability is a deeply troubling one. For a lucky few their disability can be rectified but others find themselves in a challenging position. For the latter, it is only acceptance that takes them forward. Their worlds are depressing for a while but as they say, time heals everything.

All of us get frustrated at times and many blame the creator. Milton in his poem too gets frustrated and angry at God, but only during those periods of nebulous drift that one introspects and gets an understanding of life.

Thus, every problem is an opportunity.

At the volta of the sonnet, the answer to Milton's foolish question is given by patience- a virtue that has been decorated by Christian art because of its role in helping one to achieve courage and wisdom.

God does not need man's work (= his own gifts), it is like a child trying to feed its mother. Of course, the love is appreciated but it is obvious. 

Milton, for example like a true Christian desires, to work for God by serving him, but this desire of his stems from his wish to avoid being chided on the judgment day. 

Milton compares God to a king. Kings have unlimited resources, especially if they control land as large as earth (= God). 

The comparison is done to contrast God with the Lord in the biblical parable.

He has plenty of minions to do their bidding. It does not matter if one fulfills the role or not.

To answer the proposition posted in the introduction, we must understand why we are on this planet. Charles Darwin made a monkey out of us and the theory of evolution given by him 150 years ago says that we are here by chance, from inanimate things life evolved; so the question of whether God benefits from humanity is answered in the negative. 

They only serve him who "best bear his mild yoke".

When we exercise humble acceptance of the circumstances and rely on God to sustain us, we inevitably become stronger.