Samson Agonistes

In ‘Samson Agonistes’, Milton's last great work, he addresses questions that pressed insistently on the imagination of all who were unhappy with the changes wrought by the Restoration. How do we respond to the experience of defeat and to fears of having been abandoned by the divine? How do we know when our actions accord with divine will or when they are fuelled instead by our fallen desires and weaknesses? At what point do accommodation and compromise with an enemy become a failure of will? What constitutes true heroism? To what extent is violence justified in the cause of freedom?