Satan attempts to destroy the hierarchy of Heaven through his rebellion. Satan commits this act not because of the tyranny of God but because he wants what he wants rather than what God wants.
Satan is an egoist. His interests always turn on his personal desires. Unlike Adam, who discusses a multiplicity of subjects with Raphael, rarely mentioning his own desires, Satan sees everything in terms of what will happen to him.
If Satan had been Prometheus, he would have stolen fire to warm himself, not to help Mankind. Milton shows his own attitude toward Satan in the way the character degenerates or is degraded in the progression of the poem. Satan is magnificent, even admirable in Books I and II. By book IV, he is changed.
Away form his followers and allowed some introspection, Satan already reveals a more conflicted character. Similarly, Satan's motives change as the story advances. At first, Satan wishes to continue the fight for freedom from God. Later his motive for continuing the fight becomes glory and renown. Next, the temptation of Adam and Eve is simply a way to disrupt God's plans.
And, at the end, Satan seems to say that he has acted as he has to impress the other demons in Hell. This regression of motives shows quite a fall.
Satan also regresses or degenerates physically. Satan shifts shapes throughout the poem. These changes visually represent the degeneration of his character. But his is a very seductive kind of evil, which makes him even more dangerous just think Tom Riddle from the Harry Potter series. Let's consider an example. We just said that God seems like a boring, authoritative figure; well, that's how he comes across. But that's also what Satan would love for us to believe about God. In Books 2 and 5 especially, Satan does a great job of portraying God as some type of fascist despot or tyrant who loves arbitrary power.
Sometimes, Satan even acts like he's some kind of innocent victim. OK, God's power is arbitrary, that much is true; but he's also the boss. It's his universe; he created it. All he wants from Satan, and everybody else, is a thank you in the morning for being allowed to live in Heaven…. Is that really so much to ask? Does that sound like despotism? Not really. But listening to Satan's impassioned speeches and their infectious rhetoric might make you think so. It turns out, conveniently and ingeniously, that Satan's speeches are uncannily like the animal whose shape he dons to tempt Eve: the serpent.
They are tricky, clever, wily, and anything but straightforward. He has a mighty stature so that, when he rises, the flames on both sides of him are driven backward and roll in billows. He carries a ponderous, massy, and large shield on his shoulder. This shield is compared to the moon as seen through a telescope. His spear is so big that the tallest pine tree would be but a wand by comparison, etc. This description may be valid if we consider the epic as showing Satan as a character who "materializes hope, basing his hopes to gain power on the acquisition of land" Fenton, n.
Combined to these great qualities, Satan was the first of created beings who, for endeavoring to be equal with the highest and to divide the empire of Heaven with the Almighty, was hurled down to Hell. His aim was no less than the throne of the universe. His ambition was the greatest, and his punishment was the greatest, but not so his despair, for his fortitude was as great as his sufferings.
Slotkin , as cited in Smilie, is also of the view that "God's punishments turn their victims into allegories of their own crimes" , a notion confirmed by Satan's famous assertion "Myself am Hell" IV. His strength of mind was matchless as his strength of body. His power of action and of suffering was equal.
He was the greatest power that was ever overthrown, with the strongest will left to resist or to endure. He was baffled, not confounded. He still stood like a tower, proudly eminent in shape and gesture. An outcast from Heaven, Hell trembles beneath his feet; Sin and Death are at his heels, and mankind are his easy prey. All is not lost; the unconquerable will,. And what else is not to be overcome. Yet Satan is not the principle of malignity, or of the abstract love of evil, but of the abstract love of power, or pride, of self-will personified.
His love of power and contempt for suffering is never once relaxed from the highest pitch of intensity … After such a conflict as his, and such a defeat, to retreat in order to rally, to make terms, to exist at all, is something; but he does more than this-he found a new empire in Hell, and from it conquers this new world, wither he bends his undaunted flight. The poet has not in all this given us a mere shadowy outline; the strength is equal to the magnitude of the conception.
Wherever the figure of Satan is introduced, whether he walks or flies, it is illustrated with the most striking and appropriate images: so that we see it always before us, gigantic, irregular, portentous, uneasy, and disturbed- but dazzling in its faded splendor, the clouded ruins of a god.
The deformity of Satan is only in the depravity of his will; he has no bodily deformity to excite our loathing or disgust. Milton was too magnanimous and opens an antagonist to support his argument by the bye-tricks of a hump and cloven feet.
He relied on the justice of his cause, and did not scruple to give the devil his due. Some persons may think that he has carried his liberality too far, and injured the cause he professed to espouse by making him the chief person in his poem. Considering the nature of his subject, he would be equally in danger of running into this fault, from his faith in religion, and his love of rebellion; and perhaps each of these motives had its full share in determining the choice of his subject.
The Romantic view has persisted since Blake and Shelley emphatically expressed it. The argument is, in brief, that, since God is so unpleasant and Satan is a being of such magnificent vitality. According to Prince , Milton must have "put his heart and soul into the projection of Satan" in spite of his consciously different purpose 3.
In the ancient epic the nominal hero seems to be greatly overshadowed by a character with whom we were not intended to sympathize. Both Dido and Satan, it appears, are much too great and attractive for their functional role as villains. It would seem, therefore, that Virgil, and Milton wanted to set forth certain orthodox principles but were carried away unconsciously by their hearts and imaginations Williamson, No doubt, artists have sometimes produced effects different from what they intended.
But both Virgil and Milton have clearly given us the impression of knowing what they were about. It would for this reason be impossible to believe that these poets should in their major works reveal a fundamental religious and moral contradiction.
The fact is simply that the modern world has moved quite away from the old assumptions and doctrines of religious, ethical, social, and cosmic order and right reason. Among the general reading public, three out of four persons instinctively sympathize with any character who suffers and rebels, and pay little heed to the moral values and responsibilities involved, because in such cases, the sinner is always right, and authority and rectitude are always wrong.
This instinctive response has grown the stronger as religion and morality have been increasingly undermined by romantic naturalism and sentimentalism. But even if there were no such preparation, the speech itself in every line should arouse horror and repulsion. It is a dramatic revelation of nothing but egoistic pride and passion, of complete spiritual blindness. The "potent victor in his rage" is blind and blasphemous description of God.
Nothing that the "victor" can inflict will make Satan "repent or change. These famous lines embody, not the spirit of the Puritan armies, but the spirit of Hitler. Satan sees only a conflict between himself, the world conqueror, and a temporarily superior force; he cannot see that it is a conflict between evil and good. In short, if we think that defiance is splendid regardless of what is defied and, if we read this speech with a thrill of sympathy in reading the speeches of such Shakespearean villains as Iago, Edmund, and Macbeth.
According to King , even Walter Landor, a romantic revolutionary, could say: "There is neither truth nor wit is saying that Satan is the hero of the piece unless, as is usually the case in human life, he is the greatest hero who gives the wildest sway to the worst passions" Those who admire the rebel of the first speech also admire him when he declares:. Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven. Of course, Satan has heroic qualities. He is brave, strong, generous, loyal, prudent, temperate, and self-sacrificing.
And if Satan has heroic virtues, so has Macbeth; both characters possess the emotional advantage of fighting against odds, while the representatives of goodness and right have irresistible power Williamson, The situation in fact is essentially the same. Satan is overthrown when Christ is armed with the might of God; Macbeth, who has leagued himself with the powers of Satan, is overthrown by the English army which is, says Malcolm, the instrument of the powers above.
Both poets, though imaginatively capable of creating a great villain, are constrained by their traditional faith in Providence and the ultimate triumph of good to bring divine power to the defeat of evil and, compared with the dauntless archangel and the bloody tyrant at bay, Christ and Malcolm may not win much of our sympathy. In a critical essay, Anderson states that, for the purpose of allowing readers to uphold or reject divine law, Milton includes elements in the poem contrary to the will of God.
It has been the practice of all epic poets to select someone personage, whom they distinguish above all the rest, and make the hero of the tale. This is considered essential to epic composition, and is attended with several advantages. His ability to reason and argue also deteriorates.
In Book I, he persuades the devils to agree to his plan. In Book IV, however, he reasons to himself that the Hell he feels inside of him is reason to do more evil. When he returns to Earth again, he believes that Earth is more beautiful than Heaven, and that he may be able to live on Earth after all. Satan, removed from Heaven long enough to forget its unparalleled grandeur, is completely demented, coming to believe in his own lies.
He is a picture of incessant intellectual activity without the ability to think morally.
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