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Character of Satan in the paradise lost
Character of Satan in the paradise lost
Character of Satan in the paradise lost
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Humanizing Satan: An Examination of Satan as a Victim
In John Milton’s, The Paradise Lost, Milton’s representation of Satan makes us uncomfortable due to the recognition of his humanizing and relatable reaction to what happened to him. The reader expects Satan to be an evil, and malevolent figure who does evil acts because he loves it and there is no defense for it. While these aspects are prevalent in his character in the poem, Satan does not come across as a completely wicked person but instead, a victim. The representation of Satan has a personifying quality that any of us may have and do not want to admit. In book one, Milton’s portrayal of Satan makes us uneasy because we relate to his actions, which are ordinary human responses to similar situations. It is troubling to say that in this particular poem, Satan resembles humans. However, our human nature is to have an instant reflex to justify our actions without taking any responsibility, which resembles the way Satan justifies his mischievous acts in this poem. Most of the time, we would never think of Satan as a victim; yet, we find ourselves discovering our human nature in Satan’s rationalizations. So, what humanizes this monstrous figure? After thoroughly reading book one, there are many instances when Satan justifies what he has done to make sense of it. Satan believes that God deceived him because he did not know how much power he possessed. According to Satan, God did unjust things that justified his actions. Satan has a whole rationale that God had arbitrary power that caused Satan to become the way he is in the poem. This perception serves as Satan’s foundation on behalf of his justification, which we all can relate to because he does not take responsibility but pr...
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..., this self-justification and rationalization is a way of him saying, I am justified, which is an innate human quality. This representation is very different from what most people are used to seeing, which results in the reader relating to him and viewing him as victim because we identify with him. The humanizing aspect of Satan in the poem to have an initial reaction and say I am wronged in this situation is identical with our innate reaction to similar incidents. Even though we are different than Satan in many ways, we usually do not take accountability when we are expected to. Thus, we sympathize with Satan in this poem because we also rely on self-justification to avoid taking blame for our wrong doings and accept that we are sometimes wrong. Hence, since we understand his situation due to the way it mirrors our human nature, we consider Satan to be a victim.
In Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, the antihero Satan, is examined after his banishment into Hell. He is forced out of his home of Heaven due to his unruly behavior. He faces the dismal future of misery and torment with an absence of hope and happiness. He did value these things and clearly mourns their loss, yet he does eventually accept his fate. Attempting to rationalize his situation, Satan realizes he has lost all hope and happiness but he has gained the rule of a kingdom of his own and the door to an eternal war with his arch enemy, God.
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
When a person hears Satan, a streak of fear, and the thought of evil arises. People fear Satan, and think of him as evil, but in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, he displays a thought of the Father being the evil being, and Satan a tragic hero. In Paradise Lost, Book 1 and 2, the minor areas where God is shown, He is displayed as hypocritical. He contradicts himself by creating the humans to be of free will, but when Satan displays free will, he is shunned. Satan could be described in many terms, and by many people, but all can be disputed. According to my sources, Satan is displayed as the hero, while God is the evil deity, and Milton was wrong for 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.
John Milton’s Paradise Lost is an epic poem that describes the fall of Satan and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. Satan is the protagonist of Paradise Lost and has several characteristics in which readers may identify with him. Throughout the poem, Satan is not only a tragic hero but also the key character that drives the plot and portrays many flawed human qualities. As an angel fallen from the high esteem of God and a possessor of hubris that leads to his downfall, he represents a tragic hero but also a character in which readers may identify with. Following the standards of classic tragic heroes, Satan is a determined leader with an extreme amount of hubris.
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 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.
Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost is a complex character meant to be the evil figure in the epic poem. Whenever possible Satan attempts to undermine God and the Son of God who is the true hero of the story. Throughout the story Milton tells the readers that Satan is an evil character, he is meant not to have any redeeming qualities, and to be shown completely as an unsympathetic figure. Satan’s greatest sins are pride and vanity in thinking he can overthrow God, and in the early part of the poem he is portrayed as selfish while in Heaven where all of God’s angels are loved and happy. Satan’s journey starts out as a fallen angel with great stature, has the ability to reason and argue, but by Book X the anguish and pain he goes through is more reason for him to follow an evil path instead. Even so, Milton uses literal and figurative imagery in the description of Satan’s character to manipulate the reader’s response to the possibility that Satan may actually be a heroic figure. As the plot of the story unfolds there are moments where the reader can identify with Satan’s desires and relate to his disappointments.
Discuss Milton’s presentation of Satan in Paradise Lost. There has been considerable critical interest in the figure of Satan in Paradise Lost. and in the possibility that he may be the true hero of the epic poem. The opening of The poem finds Milton in a tough spot: writing an epic poem without an epic hero in sight. The sand is a sand.
Although the epic poem centers around the story of the fall of man, it is interesting that Milton intertwines in this story the fall of Satan from heaven and the consequences it has not only for Satan himself, but for Adam, Eve, and the world as a whole. Milton allows the reader to see the fall from the point of view of Satan, God, as well as Adam and Eve. Because Milton gives insight into these characters feelings regarding the fall, it is no surprise that he uses “eternal providence” in conjunction with the stories of Satan, Adam, and Eve. The providence being described here is the knowledge of good and evil. However, ev...
The question of whether Satan is the hero or the villain of John Milton’s Paradise Lost has been largely debated by scholars over the centuries. The ones who believe Satan is the villain of the epic, more commonly known as the Anti-Satanists, tend to argue that Satan is too foolish to be considered a hero, as his “hostility to Almighty power” is ultimately a futile endeavour (as God’s power is omnipotent) (Carey, 135). C. W. Lewis, also an anti-Satanist, goes as far as to claim that to “admire Satan, then, is to give one’s vote not only for a world of misery, but also for a world of lies and propaganda, of wishful thinking” (Lewis, 203). The ones who claim Satan is the hero of the epic, the Satanists, perceive him as the rebellious angel who rises up and defies God’s monarchy and “the tyranny of Heav’n” (174).They choose to focus on Satan’s “nobler qualities, his loyalty in leadership, fortitude in adversity, unflinching courage and splendid recklessness” (Satan/Promo, 3). While these two positions are both valid, this paper will be focusing on a third position: the individuals who believe that Satan is neither the hero nor the villain of the epic.
Lucifer is the epitome and personification of all that is evil according to the traditional American perspective. His name has been linked with the name Satan so that either name refers to "the Devil" in most of the western Christian tradition. American culture, with its Puritan roots and Fundamentalist influences, has cast Lucifer in the role of the eternal enemy of all that we hold to be good and worthwhile. Preachers and others who teach Christian morality have described his power as being great enough to tempt all of us, at the same time, into sin. He seeks to lead us away from God and into his own realm of fear, torment, and undying agony. He is to be shunned and feared, lest he bring us to perdition. He is not human and he possesses none of the traits of a good person, only the bad ones.
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.
John Milton's Paradise Lost is a work of enduring charm and value because of its theological conceptions, its beautiful language, and its "updating" of the epic to the modern world's values. Book II of this epic poem opens with Satan's speech to his minions in hell, proposing war on Heaven itself. In these first 44 lines, Satan is clearly established as epic hero, but at the same time is theologically/morally denounced by the speaker.
Milton describes the relationship between Satan and God and Satan’s pride got in the way therefore casting Satan out of his original home. In Paradise Lost Satan we see how Milton will describe Satan as the relatable under dog in the poem and the democracy he creates will set up the possibilities of how the demons would come up to plan the fall of man to displace Adam and Eve from there home.
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)