Milton's Take on Satan in Paradise Lost

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Milton makes Satan out to be a loveable likeable character that we can relate to, for a man of principle and a godly man why does he do this “I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last.”Revelation 1: 8 in the King James Version John Milton’s Paradise lost is a poetic amalgam of vice and virtue it is an epic navigates the perils of right, wrong and the grey area that humans themselvesstraddle. An epic inherently conflicted at its very core stemming from the writer and the environment around him. He delves into the evil that is orchestrated by Satan and the divine directly by god himself. Milton delves deeply into Adam and Eve and the exodus from Eden, he creates a character within Satan that is so narcissistic so irreverent and so immoral all the while without malism andnot sadistic in its truest form. A character whose sole transgression Is a belief system that goes against his creator a belief that he is not good or evil but pursuing his own capital vices in reality transferring his unto the moderately innocent Eve and by extension Adam. “Th’ infernal Serpent. He it was whose guile stirred up with envy and revenge deceived the mother of mankind, what time his pride had cast him out from heav’n with all his host of rebel angels, by whose aid aspiring to set himself in glory ‘bove his peers he trusted to have equaled the most high if he opposed and with amnitious aim against the throne and monarchy of god” PG4 34 Although Satan is the archetype of evil he is convoluted if not at the very least vocally conflicted about his place within the kingdom of heaven and the role that god has upon Satan. Satan is internally conflicted, he finds himself not subservient to god, he revels in his own narcissism he finds pleasure in carnal de...

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...t that we place in high regards, and a concept that we have invariably fought and diedfor on several different levels. Satan journeys through loss and inner conflict. He opposes the status quo and his establishment;he allegorically crosses a threshold to creating his final purpose. Even when he is struck down he is relentless and does not give up. He eventually circumvents his oppressor (god) and creates his own existence and his own realism, he tempts Eve and by extension Adam. Satan is the first and truest form of being throughout Milton’s epic that we relate to because he is vain, we have all been angry, jealous, greedy, vain and in Adams case in “love” Satan is the first and most important character to accept these feelings. These feelings his aspirations and his actions are the closest and why we can all relate to Satan being an anti-hero, the brooding vigilante.

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