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One often reads a book or watches a movie and finds a specific meaning behind the whole story, a moral. After watching American Beauty it is easy to see a resemblance in the characters to that of Paradise Lost. In this way you could say that by reading Paradise Lost the characters in American Beauty could have related and changed the way they handled their situations. In particular, Lester Burnham could have saved his life …

…chance for redemption. In a sense, Lester falls in American Beauty. At first he lives a life which would be considered acceptable to society: a normal job, a normal family. But as he becomes tired of his normal life, Lester becomes an outcast to society. Through knowing the consequences of the falls in Paradise Lost, Lester could have saved himself from his mid life crisis by realizing that such a fall could end up disastrous.