Part II

English Honours

Paper -3

Topic – Paradise Lost

Character of Satan -
According to Coleridge, “the character of Satan is pride and sensual indulgence, finding in self
the sole motive of action. It is the character so often seen in little on the political stage. It exhibits
all the restlessness, temerity and cunning which have marked the mighty hunters of mankind
from Nimrod to Napolean. Milton has carefully marked in his Satan the intense selfishness, the
alcohol of egotism, which would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven”. Milton’s intention
was to write an epic of cosmic proportions and this scheme required its characters to be
impressive.

The most impressive and dramatic character in the first book of Paradise Lost is Satan, the great
enemy of God and Man. Enmity is his role in the story and he must be made equal to his task as
the fittest adversary of the omnipotent. Hence, there is an ‘epic necessity’ that he should be made
sublime, exalter over the average and should be endowed with noble and heroic qualities. In
Book I he is not presented as an embodiment of the principle of evil, like Shakespeare’s Iago of
Othello. Had it been so, Satan would never have impressed us as a tragic character. In fact it was
Milton’s plan to make Satan appeal to the readers as a tragic hero at the beginning. So, he is
invested with an extra- ordinary, almost heroic grandeur and is projected as a mixture of good
and evil, like Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Following the Aristotelian concept of tragic hero, Satan is
represented by Milton as an intermediate personage. He is endowed with so many heroic
qualities that Dryden and many other subsequent critics had thought that Milton actually
intended to make Satan the hero of the epic. The large sympathy with which Milton treated him
has also tempted many a critic to observe that Satan was actually Milton’s self projection and
that through him the great poet revealed to the world: “his own proud spirit of independence and
superiority to the blows of fortune”.

Satan possesses all the essential characteristics of a real hero. He is stately in appearance and his
deportment is majestic. Even after his fall from heaven he stood like a tower, in shape and
gesture proudly eminent and his form had still retained much of its original brightness. He is a
character of indomitable, promethean spirit. Even after his defeat and downfall, his spirit is
undaunted and he is determined to wage eternal war against God. His brave soul is loath to
acknowledge defeat. Defeat could not curb the independence of his spirit. How brave are the
words with which he infuses hope in the frustrated Beelzebub: “What though the field be lost?
/All is not lost; the unconquerable will, / And Study of revenge, immortal hate/ And courage
never to submit or yield; / And what is else not to be overcome?”

Satan is a revolutionary anarchist of superhuman dimensions. He is the leader of the Angels who,
at his investigation, had revolted against God. When God ordained that His son would head the
host of Heavenly angels, Satan rebelled and one-third of the angelic population came over to his
side. The rebels had clung to him even after they had been vanquished by God and thrown into
Hell because of his strong will, firmness of purpose and above all, his indomitable courage.
When Beelzebub despairs over the irredeemably hopeless situation, Satan says, “to be weak is
miserable”. He has self – confidence enough to believe that with strength of mind one ‘can make
a Heaven of Hell, and a Hell of Heaven’. Milton has supposedly projected his own spirit of
independence through Satan. Satan would not sue for peace so that God might allow him and his
followers to go back to Heaven. Coupled with his inordinate ambition there dwells in his heart an
ardent desire for freedom and abhorrence of slavery. In his estimation it will be ‘better to reign’
in Hell than serve in Heaven’.

Satan is a remarkably efficient leader. His capacity for leadership is evident from the moment he
breaks the ‘horrid silence’ with his bold words to Beelzebub. His speech beginning with ‘awake,
arise, or be forever fallen’, addressed to his followers is considered as the most heartening call
given by a commander to his defeated army. His speeches show him to be an effective
demagogue and a facetious leader who appears to the emotions and prejudices of the masses in
order to win them over and thereby again power. His powerful speeches electrify the fallen
angels with fresh courage so much so that they are roused from the stupefaction. His strong
personality has the charisma of an attractive leader. He is moved to tears at their pitiable
condition and their ruin for which none but he himself is responsible. Indeed, there is one of the
humanizing touches in the character of Satan and Shows that he has still distinctive traces of a
better nature.

Satan is full of devices and his resourcefulness is worthy of a better cause. When he finds that
force is not right technique to avenge on God then he tried to tease God by ‘fraud and guile’, and
so he conceives the idea of seeking revenge upon God indirectly through man. Despite all his
heroic qualities, however, Satan degenerates and he degenerates from a brave hero to a cunning,
consummate villain. And it is pride which is the cause of his degeneration. He is an embodiment
of obdurate pride. Self-exaltation is the motif of all his conduct. Satan says, ‘We are ordained to
govern, not to serve’. Out of this pride arises his ‘study of revenge, immortal hate’, the scorn of
repentance and finally its impossibility. Even in defeat he never dreams of submission.

Commenting on the presentation of Satan’s character, Hazlitt has justly observed that the
fierceness of his pride. Satan’s loss of infinite happiness to himself is compensated in thought by
his power of inflicting misery on others. His love of power and contempt for suffering is never
relaxed from the highest pitch of intensity. He expresses the sum and substance of all ambition in
one life, “Fallen Cherub, to be weak is miserable, doing or suffering”. He is not only proud; he is
also envious, malicious, revengeful, and crafty and has an inordinate love of evil. In fact Satan is
a Machiavellian character of the Renaissance with a lust for unlimited power and not bereft of
admirable qualities. But his megalomania, his intensity of self-exaltation, destroys all that is
good in him. As Coleridge puts it, Milton has carefully marked in his Satan the intense
selfishness, the alcohol of egotism, which would rather reign in Hell than serve in Heaven. But
around the character he has thrown in singularity of daring, grandeur of sufferance and a revived
splendor which constitute the very height of sublimity.

Thus, in the first book of Paradise Lost Satan is presented as a mixed character made up of evil
passions and heroic qualities. The agony which he feels at the thought of the ruin in which he has
involved his followers proves that the remnants of good have not yet died down in him. Milton is
quite conscious of what he intends to do with Satan and neither consciously he is ‘of the Devil’s
party’. “Satan’s magnificent vitality”, Doughlas Bush rightly observes, “inspires and artistically
necessary degree of imaginative response while as a being dedicated to evil, he inspires profound
aversion because he has a conscience and he contains tragic potentialities, but these, in conflict
with absolute good, are not allowed fulfillment.”

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