Heroic depiction of Satan
About the Author
John Milton was born in London on December 9, 1608, into a middle-class family.He was the son of another John Milton, a scrivener (a combination of lawyer and money lender),who was not only financially very successful but also a talented musician and composer. He sent his son to St. Paul’s school where he learned to write in both Latin and Greek. Then Milton went to Christ College Cambridge (1625-32) where he came fourth in his BA and then stayed in to do his MA. In 1632, Milton came back to Horton in Buckinghamshire to prepare himself to become a poet, learning French, Italian and Hebrew and reading classical literature.
At the age of 30, Milton travelled to Italy, where he was already famous for his Latin and Italian poetry. However he became so concerned about the rising political and religious turmoil in England that he returned the following year, and in 1641 decided to put poetry aside and become a freelance commentator on events.
Milton’s chief polemical prose was written in the decades of the 1640s and 1650s, during the strife between the Church of England and various reformist groups such as the Puritans and between the monarch and Parliament. Designated the antiepiscopal or antiprelatical tracts and the anti-monarchical or political tracts, these works advocate a freedom of conscience and a high degree of civil liberty for humankind against the various forms of tyranny and oppression, both ecclesiastical and governmental. In line with his libertarian outlook, Milton wrote Areopagitica (1644), often cited as one of the most compelling arguments on the freedom of the press.
While Milton’s impact as a prose writer was profound, of equal or greater importance is his poetry. He referred to his prose works as the achievements of his “left hand.” In 1645 he published his first volume of poetry, Poems of Mr. John Milton , Both English and Latin, much of which was written before he was twenty years old. The volume manifests a rising poet, one who has planned his emergence and projected his development in numerous ways: mastery of ancient and modern languages—Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Italian; awareness of various traditions in literature; and avowed inclination toward the vocation of poet.
The symptoms of failing eyesight did not deter Milton , who from an early age read by candlelight until midnight or later, even while experiencing severe headaches. By 1652 he was totally blind. The exact cause is unknown. Up to the Restoration he continued to write in defense of the Protectorate.
One of the central issues of Paradise Lost is the nature of freedom, and it was freedom that Milton defended all his public life. Milton also defended the freedom of press. He makes a vivid comparison between books and the fruit of Tree of Knowledge forbidden to Man in the Garden of Eden.
The most important of Milton’s public writings are political, and they reflect his increasing involvement in the opposition to King Charles 1 which developed during his eleven years of tyranny (1629-40).Milton’s important tract OF THE Tenure of Kings and Magistrates is one of the publications that support the execution of king. When ten years later Milton was to write Paradise Lost, he gave to Satan the same defense that he attacked God (the equivalent of Charles 1)in order to give his followers freedom.
Milton went blind and retired in 1663.It took him seven years to complete Paradise Lost. His other famous works include Samson Agonistes, Paradise Regained, Lycidas, etc.
Heroic Depiction of Satan:
The main idea behind Paradise Lost is the importance of obedience to God. The first words of the epic poem state that the poem’s main theme will be “Man’s first Disobedience” and his “Fall from Grace”.
Milton invokes a heavenly muse. The action begins with Satan and his fellow rebel angels who are chained to a lake of fire in Hell where they have been thrown by God in an attempt to overthrow him.
Satan, formerly called Lucifer, is the first major character introduced in the poem. He was once the most beautiful of all angels, and is a tragic figure who famously declares: “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” Following his failed rebellion against God, he is cast out from Heaven and condemned to Hell. Satan’s desire to rebel against his creator stems from his unwillingness to be subjugated by God and his Son, claiming that angels are “self-begot, self-raised,” and thereby denying God’s authority over them as their creator.
One deciding factor that insinuates his role as the protagonist is that most often a protagonist is heavily characterized and far better described than the other characters, and the way the character is written is meant to make him seem more interesting or special to the reader. For that matter, Satan is both well described and is depicted as being quite versatile in that he is shown as having the capacity to do evil whilst retaining his characteristic sympathetic qualities and thus it is this complex and relatable nature that makes him a likely candidate for the story’s overarching protagonist. Satan says “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”
The view has been expressed that Satan is the real hero of John Milton’s great epic poem Paradise Lost, or that Milton permitted Satan to develop into a character far more appealing than Milton’s theology could have allowed. In the words of Banisalamah, people of the seventeenth century were encouraged to and inspired by the revolutionary writings of Milton, who was a Puritan poet, to seek freedom from the king and the Roman Catholic Church, in order to improve their conditions and live a more pleasant life, and this is represented by Satan’s revolt against God, a revolt which makes him appear as if he were a hero in the eyes of some critics and readers. This view originated during the Romantic age, with its rebellion against all established forms of authority and its emphasis on the development of personality (whether in the author or in one of his characters.) It was Blake who expressed this view most emphatically by saying that Milton was of the devil’s party without knowing it. He expressed this opinion chiefly in relation to the portrayal of Satan who, according to him, has been depicted as a character possessing certain grand qualities worthy of the highest admiration. Other romantic critics supported this view with great enthusiasm.
The most eloquent and balanced expression of the Romantic view has been given by William Hazlitt. Hazlitt (1818) shows both the strength and the limitations of this view, and according to him, Satan is the most heroic subject that was ever chosen for a poem; and the execution is as perfect as the design is lofty. In the poem, Satan was endowed with certain attributes which are worthy of epic heroes, and which make him a sympathetic, almost tragic character.
The very descriptions of Satan’s physical dimensions and the size of the tools he carries mark him out as a kind of hero. His limbs are long and large; his bulk is as huge as that of the Titan who fought against Jove or that of Leviathan which God of all His works created hugest that swim the ocean stream. 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 given the fact that Satan’s character is the most well described in the epic. Combined to these great qualities, Satan was the first of created beings who, for endeavouring 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 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.” 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. Milton’s has rightly said in Book I:
All is not lost; the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield,
And what else is not to be overcome.
The above words indicate that the sense of Satan’s punishment seems lost in the magnitude of it; the loss of infinite happiness to himself is compensated in thought, by the power of inflicting infinite misery on others. 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. 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. In the ancient epic the nominal hero seems to be greatly overshadowed by a character with whom we were not intended to sympathize. The common fallacy begins with a basic misunderstanding of the beginning of Paradise Lost, namely, Satan’s first speech delivered as he surveys his followers rolling in the fiery gulf, confounded through immortal. “Our response to this speech is prepared for through the picture of the archangel torn by wholly evil passions” claimed Murray (1967: 50). 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.” This phrase is a rejection of all Christian teaching. Satan’s “injured merit” is a figment of his own egoism, quite the opposite of the real and selfless merit of Christ. 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, it is seen that defiance is splendid regardless of what is defied. There is no conflict here (in this first speech of Satan) between Milton’s intention and the result, and there is none later, even when Milton leaves dramatic speech to create its own effect. Those who admire the rebel of the first speech also admire him when he declares:
Here at last
We shall be free …
To reign is worth ambition though in hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.
But to those who understand and realize Milton’s principles, which are everywhere made clear, such words show how far Satan is from understanding true liberty. The tyrant of Milton’s poem, as some have seen, is not God but Satan.
Of course, Satan has heroic qualities. He is brave, strong, generous, loyal, prudent, temperate, and self-sacrificing. Also Satan has heroic virtues and possesses the emotional advantage of fighting against odds. The figure of Satan has always fascinated readers of Paradise Lost. Some have claimed him as the secret hero of the story. But actually an adversary of God had to be massive dramatic stature, and it was a triumph that Milton succeeded in drawing him to such a scale. 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. It renders the unity of the subject more sensible, when there is one principal figure, to which as to a center, all the rest refer. Blake made the following observation regarding Paradise Lost: “The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of angels and at liberty when of devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet and of the devil’s party without knowing it.” In Blake’s opinion, Satan was a symbol of desire, energy, and the vital creative force which enable man to live most fully. Certainly the conventional Heaven and rationalizing God of Paradise Lost are pale and unconvincing when compared to the descriptions of Hell and the tremendous energy and courage of Satan. Satan has been imagined and described in this poem with a wealth of vivid detail which no other character in it can equal. Satan is, by any standards, a character of epic stature. Satan may be perverse, but his desire for revenge gives him energy, and his energy makes him exciting and interesting. He has all the attributes of an epic hero and all the attraction. Milton’s devil is superhuman, but he also shows the full range of human characteristics.
In depicting him, Milton departed from the crude tradition of earlier religious epics and seems to have adopted ideas from the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage. Satan is proud, of course. But beneath this pride lies a tormenting sense of despair. This despair overwhelms him until at last only the desire for revenge reigns supreme in his nature. In Book IV, he experiences “troubled thoughts” for:
Within him Hell
He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell
One step, no more than from himself, can fly
By change of place. No conscience wakes despair
That slumbered; wakes the bitter memory
Of what he was, what is, and what must be. (20-25).
Thus we see that Satan is, in spite of having some heroic qualities of courage and prudence is still a tyrant. His character looks appealing due to its massive dramatic stature and Milton has used all of his dramatic and poetic powers for the portrayal of Satan that creates a perception of Satan being a Hero in Paradise Lost.