The epic poem 'Paradise Lost' by 17th century poet John Milton is about the biblical story of God, Satan, Adam and Eve and their abode in heaven. The poem begins after Satan tempts Adam and Eve to commit a sin and they are sent to Earth while Satan is condemned to hell. Satan declares war against those who will henceforth try to follow God's orders. The rest of the poem follows the arrogance of Satan and his adherence to the famous quote "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." After becoming the fallen angel, he becomes the quintessential villain for all of eternity. He is the ultimate monster who is the primogenitor of all imaginary and real beasts and devils to come. He is the example to be followed and emulated. Instead of asking …show more content…
Is it someone who has courage and has the ability to challenge authority? In this case both Prometheus and Satan are heroes. Or is a hero someone who fights injustice? Does his motivation matter? Does it matter which side of the argument he is on? Everybody's concept of hero is different but I think what constitutes the characteristics of a true romantic hero is someone who rebels against an unjust tyranny but most importantly in order to right a wrong. The title of a hero is priceless and should be accorded to those who have courage and nobility of purpose. Intention is what sets the course, determines the direction taken and ultimately the results achieved. I believe all deeds are based on intention, it is the soul of the deed and what determines its value. The deed is sound if the intention is sound and the deed is wicked if the intention is corrupt. Satan is not an object of admiration as most heroes are. He displays tremendous vanity and pride and devotes himself to evil. Some critics argue that Satan broke the confines that God had caged the humans in. Adam and Eve were shackled to heaven and were little more than indentured slaves and Satan granted them freedom. However that was not Satan's design, his intention was to isolate the humans from God and what followed was a vestigial effect he did not anticipate nor intend. Satan is associated with either a bright light or fire with no particular physical configuration; he can …show more content…
As a period rift with anxiety over changes in faith and the subsequent loss of it, political climate of the time permeates in Milton's writings. Even though Satan is residing in hell, he is free to not worship God. Satan's mind is not only unconquerable and unconditionally opposed to God, but he also influences other minds to use their free will to oppose the will of God. This concurs with my claim that Satan's sinful acts are intentional, God's other creations, Adam and Eve made a mistake but they are repentant, whereas Satan's actions are calculated and meaningful. He is an eloquent orator; his power of persuasion is compelling. The two major events in the poem would never take place if not for his forceful sermons, he persuades the angels to rebel against God and he tempts Eve to eat the fruit. One leads to the damnation of all the angels who follow into his footsteps and the other leads the whole human race astray. Therefore evil is not an essential attribute, something existing in itself. It is not independent and exclusive from that which is good. Evil is rather something chosen, acting through free will in conscious opposition to God's
In John Milton’s epic, Paradise Lost, the author establishes Satan as the most complex and thought-provoking character in the tale through his depiction of Satan’s competing desires. Throughout the first four books of Paradise Lost, Satan repeatedly reveals his yearning both for recognition from God and, simultaneously, independence from God. The paradox that prevents Satan from achieving his desires may be interpreted as a suggestion of Milton’s establishment of a sympathetic reading for this character, as he cannot truly find happiness. In actuality, the construction of Satan’s rivaling aspirations evince Satan’s repulsive depravity to Milton’s audience and encourage readers to condemn his character.
In considering Aristotle’s idea of hamartia, someone who is a good person, but fell from grace, and apply it to Satan then it seems reasonable to interpret Satan as having hero like characteristics. Aristotle would say that a courageous person is inspired by confidence, faces dangerous, and acts appropriately to this courage (Nicomachean Ethics). Not only is Satan a courageous figure, but starts off as a good character even though he makes mistakes along the way. In the first two Books Milton does this very thing of portraying Satan as a hero to appeal to the readers so that they are able to identify with his charact...
From the very beginning of time, many people believe that Satan is evil because they weren’t taught otherwise, but john Milton proves it in his poem that Satan is very much just like us, and you can be sympathetic for Satan because he disobeyed God .In paradise lost by John Milton, Satan is a sympathetic character because he comes off more like man then the figure of God. Anything he does, Feels, or acts on is just like a human
According to my sources, Satan is displayed as the hero, while God is the evil deity, and Milton was wrong in writing Him as so. In this essay, I will show my thoughts on the subject of Satan as an evil deity, and other’s opinions on the matter. Satan is thought of as the tragic hero in Book 1 and 2 of Paradise Lost because he is shunned by God for trying to overthrow Him, and being ambitious enough to think he could be God. Satan, in my opinion, is not as much an evil individual, but more juvenile, and ignorant. He is displayed as juvenile because of his intentions to defeat God in Book 1, and in Book 2, when he comes up with the plan to corrupt God’s creation.
Milton uses many events like the ones listed above to encourage the reader to view Satan as a hero. "Satan is described to be the brightest and most important angel" (McColley 32). These traits of Satan show how one might recognize Satan as the second in power right below God, who was the highest power of all. Before Satan decides to give up what he has and to rebel against God, he was one of the wisest and most beautiful of all the angels in heaven (McColley 24). Although Satan was beautiful, the most important trait that makes him fit into the hero category is that he was the most powerful angel in heaven.
Beowulf contains an Anglo-Saxon epic about a powerful warrior and leader facing many trials where the readers can find strength from his courage. Paradise Lost includes a Christian epic poem where the readers can understand the fall of Adam and Eve in a different light and become familiar with Satan’s side of the argument. Beowulf, the protagonist in the Anglo-Saxon poem, displays a very admirable hero and leader. Unlike Beowulf, the attention leads directly toward the antagonist, Satan in Paradise Lost. In this poem, Satan almost seems pitiful, the opposite of the courageous Beowulf.
In writing an epic, Milton had a daunting task ahead of him as he looked to transform Satan, a historical character in the Christian bible, into what seemingly is the epic hero of his renowned literary work, Paradise Lost. Throughout this process, Satan is humanized into a character that has his ups but also downs, and Milton’s use of literary techniques let us eventually realize how evil Satan is despite the sympathy readers may have for this tragic figure. Ultimately, not only does Satan grow more evil in the epic, the close interaction we get of Satan’s character allows us to see his wavering mind before being completely submerged by evil.
As described, heroism and its appearance are similar traits that are easily confused. However, assigning these qualities to (Aeschylus’s) Prometheus and (Milton’s) Satan makes these traits appear very different. Prometheus is a heroic character that is comprised of the very definition of heroism. Satan appears heroic; however, he his filled with cruel intentions and egotism that eventually exposes his character as a villain. “Paradise Lost” and “Prometheus Bound” establish and define a clear difference between a hero and someone who appears heroic; due to dominating protagonist roles and access to the characters’ motives.
The very first words of the poem “Paradise Lost” indicate that the main theme of the poem is disobedience to God’s will. Milton begins his poem with a question directed to the reader, which serves the poet well; as it attracts the reader’s attention and makes him think about the answer to that question. When reading the beginning of the poem the reader gets the image of a commander addressing a crowd. The poet represents the hero of the poem as the devil. This gives an image of a commander of a huge army that has just lost a battle. In the first couple of lines, the devil as the hero of the poem directly addresses the audiences in the present tense, which gives the reader the feeling of the actual presence among a huge crowd of soldiers and leaders waiting for hope from their king, after the defeat in the battle. The battle in the poem is understood to be between hell and heaven, and heaven won the battle. The speaker says:
...nowing (Satan is just hunk of mass with no free will) and that Satan is our epic hero (Satan is head the rebel angels). Satan also loses because of the fact that due to his trickery he would be a snake forever, and that The Son was going to come down to earth and die to save Adam & Eve, so that Satan’s action would be eliminated. Break down Paradise Lost to it bare essentials, removing all religious overtones, and all that remains is an epic poem. The hero of this poem is a man named Satan who is banished for challenging the leadership of the clan. This man Satan makes a vow to destroy or corrupt anything created by the clan. This Satan was resourceful, making the best of what he had, very little, and accomplishing his goal. Satan may just be the nonconformist who could not abide by what was considered normal. In any case, one must show their admiration for Satan in his unwillingness to serve in Heaven, and then in the way he accepted his resulting role in Hell.
Helen Gardner addresses this notion, claiming how “Satan is, of course, a character in an epic, and he is in no sense the hero of the epic as a whole. But he is a figure of heroic magnitude and heroic energy, and he is developed by Milton with dramatic emphasis and dramatic intensity” (Baker/Helen, 208). Satan is without a doubt the antichrist, or “villain” in the biblical scriptures, however one must take into consideration his alternative and more ambiguous portrayal in Paradise Lost. In this paper, I will analyze Satan’s actions, physical portrayal and speeches in Book I of Paradise Lost, and argue that from the textual evidence, these aspects of Satan are ultimately ambivalent, thus Satan cannot be categorized as either the extreme hero or the extreme villain, but rather as a dramatic figure with both heroic and villainous characteristics. The preliminary depiction of Satan’s actions in Paradise Lost appears after Milton describes God, his kingdom of heaven, and his children Adam and Eve.... ...
Following the standards of classic tragic heroes, Satan is a determined leader with an extreme amount of hubris. He knows that God is the most powerful being and yet he still rises against him, wanting more than just God’s highest approval. As compared to most tragic and epic heroes, Satan begins in a position of supreme status but his tragic flaw leads to his downfall. In Book I, Milton describes Satan’s fatal flaw of hubris:
Satan’s definitions include the advocate of God, a personification of evil, the fallen angel, a spirit created by God, and also the accuser. People see Satan differently, some know of his existence, others think of him as just a myth, and there are those that just ignore him. John Milton's Paradise Lost tells of Satan's banishment from Heaven and his gain of earth. He and his brigade have plotted war against God and are now doomed to billow in the fiery pits of hell. Satan is a complex character with many different qualities. God is a character who we, as Christians, know about but do not completely understand. We also do not completely understand Satan. Some may think they know Satan but when asked “Is Satan divine?” they hesitate. I admit that this is a very tough question to answer but it is just one of the ways that we understand Satan. The tools we have to understand Satan are mainly the just Bible and our questions, but some use John Milton’s Paradise Lost. There are some who think we should not use Paradise Lost as a tool because it is just a fictional book. I personally believe that this book could be a story told to John Milton by the Holy Spirit. Milton's Satan is somewhat different to our thought of Satan largely because he is more complex than the Satan of the Christian tradition. Satan's rebelliousness, his seeking of transcendence and his capacity for action, particularly evil action, change certain people’s viewpoints on him, even if their viewpoint might be considered theologically misleading. The question is: do we actually understand Satan and evil by means of the book Paradise Lost?
In Milton's Paradise Lost, he writes the story of the fall of Satan, his followers, and mankind. Many critics often view Satan as the unlikely or tragic hero of the epic poem. Satan is, obviously, the main character throughout most of the poem, but not necessarily the hero. Satan's main purpose is to fight G-d, and try to be on the same level as Him. The important thing is to realize that Satan is sin, and being humans, who are all born into sin, we can easily relate to a sinful character. G-d is holy and perfect. This is something which we, being fallible humans, cannot begin to comprehend. Satan does, at the beginning, follow many of the attributes which coincide with Aristotle's definition of a tragic hero; however, after the first few Books, Satan looses his status as a tragic hero rather rapidly. Along with this, Satan's thoughts parallel the idea of "Evil, be thou my good," (p76, line 110) which is the opposite of what G-d intends.
Paradise Lost is one of the finest examples of the epic tradition in all of literature. In composing this extraordinary work, John Milton was, for the most part, following in the manner of epic poets of past centuries: Barbara Lewalski notes that Paradise Lost is an "epic whose closest structural affinities are to Virgil's Aeneid . . . "; she continues, however, to state that we now recognize as well the influence of epic traditions and the presence of epic features other than Virgilian. Among the poem's Homeric elements are its Iliadic subject, the death and woe resulting from an act of disobedience; the portrayal of Satan as an Archillean hero motivated by a sense of injured merit and also as an Odyssean hero of wiles and craft; the description of Satan's perilous Odyssey to find a new homeland; and the battle scenes in heaven. . . . The poem also incorporates a Hesiodic gigantomachy; numerous Ovidian metamorphoses; an Ariostan Paradise of Fools; [and] Spenserian allegorical figures (Sin and Death) . . . . (3)