By: Norman Hilker
If we as readers need anything for a central character in a story to develop and build our sympathetic trust for them, we need them to accomplish something when faced with dire odds. Satan seems like a character that is impossible to sympathize with, but in Paradise Lost, author John Milton makes it so we can be able to with not just the hero that is Satan, but his overall character. Over the course of the epic poem, we see him devolve from a spearhead of evil to a patron of madness, as his process of decision-making interferes with his and his followers’ personal agenda. Through these events, it is heavily implied how heroic Satan’s actions actually are, but not in a traditional way.
Before delving into the vital events that shape Paradise Lost, we must first dissect Satan. The poem starts when he’s cast out of Heaven by God, and he takes his “fallen angels” to create a new following and hopefully spread evil throughout God’s newest creation: humans. Milton’s use of description help identify the concept of good vs. evil as not so much as a moral dilemma, but one that is two sides of the same coin. God and Satan are practically at war with each other, but while God was dictatorial in the Old Testament, Satan was democratic among his followers. This may help to “[distinguish] and [isolate] the different senses of heroism and heroic virtue” (Steadman 254), because Satan’s virtue is to contribute to a society that he and his followers believe will do the most good for the world, or in this case, evil. To his followers, his humble, often diplomatic display of moving forward makes him heroic. If we were to disregard his mental state, Satan is described as something even greater, “…his ponderous shield ethereal temper, massy, large and round…the broad circumference hung on his shoulders like the moon…His spear, to equal which the tallest pine hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast of some great ammiral” (Milton 1502-3). From Milton’s use of epic similes, this is a figure that is not only physically imposing, but is one that’s as revered as God. These are the first hints of Milton attributing Satan to those past heroes of epic British literature that exhibited chivalry and courage, but his psyche seems to be more complicated than most.
At this point, we see Satan’s assembling of fallen angels as a major characteristic of the epic genre, and when he resorts to becoming the King of Hell rather than a servant in Heaven, his following is proven to be definite. But when he finally reaches Heaven in Book IV, his vision and quest in general become foggy. When Adam and Eve come out, a voice tells Satan, “What thou seest, what there thou seest fair creature is thyself” (Milton 1564). Digging into the subtext as well as the rest of the events that follow in Book IV, what Satan sees is two humans that are aiming to do good, the same that he is in trying to fulfill the spreading of evil. He’s confused and at ease, unable to interfere with Adam and Eve or even fight Gabriel. Is what he’s doing good or evil in his eyes? Is what Adam and Eve doing good or evil? What exactly is good and evil? One could say he is “…stripped of his pseudo-heroic mask” (Steadman 270), because in the end, he is really taking Hell wherever he goes. The followers that he has gained, and even the inner turmoil that’s engulfed him, is something that’s now a part of him that will be very difficult to disassociate from.
After a break, Satan returns in Book IX in the form of a serpent to hopefully take on humanity through Eve eating from the Tree of Life and influencing Adam to do the same. When the two are discharged from Heaven, “That space the Evil One abstracte stood from his own evil, and for the time remained stupidly good, of enmity disarmed of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge; but the hot hell that always in him burns” (Milton 1653). Satan’s final act will have a major impact on humanity for now, but it’s an act that would be praised by his followers. In doing so, he realized that the low point he faced shouldn’t matter as he had a mission to complete, and he stuck with it till the end. That consistence and sticking to personal core values is what makes him maintain a heroic virtue, and even “…the transition from the archangel who had sought equality with God to the serpentine tempter of Eve” (Steadman 272) goes to show how far he was willing to go to make sure his beliefs would persist. The tragedy of his hero correlates with the tragedy a good-hearted reader would face reading this: the loss of mankind.
Paradise Lost is literally about loss, as well as Satan’s way of coping with it by dumbing himself down in order to interfere with the natural way of life. As the story revolves around military-esque characters, Milton strives for it to be the epic British poem to end all epic British poems, and he succeeds by looking at Genesis through an evil lens. After realizing that Earth was better than Heaven and letting humanity, the actions Satan displayed can be considered heroic from a certain perspective.
Works Cited
Puchner, Martin, et al. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. W.W. Norton & Company, 2018.
Steadman, John M. “The Idea of Satan as the Hero of ‘Paradise Lost.’” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 120, no. 4, 1976, pp. 253–294. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/986321.