Paradise Lost by John Milton

[Albus Dumbledore]

.....

[AuntShecky]

It's the old adage -- to bring it down to earth, so to speak --would you rather be a small fish in a big pond or a big fish in a small pond? "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav'n" He chooses -- and that is the word -- CHOOSES-- to become a ruler of iniquity rather than God's servant.There is a childish selfishness about Milton's Satan isn't there? a spitefulness, they way a child might say, "Well, I'll show YOU!" Though few of any of us have ever met the guy face-to-face (thank heavens!) Milton's portrait of Satan is quite accurate. I truly believe we are
MEANT to notice the all-too-human qualities in Satan's character. On the other hand, critics have cited Satan as " Milton's Byron's curly-haired hero" -- because Satan's dynamism makes him heroic, or more precisely, an anti-hero.

[Lote-Tree]

It's the old adage -- to bring it down to earth, so to speak --would you rather be a small fish in a big pond or a big fish in a small pond? "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav'n" He chooses -- and that is the word -- CHOOSES-- to become a ruler of iniquity rather than God's servant.There is a childish selfishness about Milton's Satan isn't there? a spitefulness, they way a child might say, "Well, I'll show YOU!" Though few of any of us have ever met the guy face-to-face (thank heavens!) Milton's portrait of Satan is quite accurate. I truly believe we are
MEANT to notice the all-too-human qualities in Satan's character. On the other hand, critics have cited Satan as " Milton's Byron's curly-haired hero" -- because Satan's dynamism makes him heroic, or more precisely, an anti-hero.

But hero of Paradise Lost turns out to be Satan after all

[Brandyblue]

That rather depends on how you define hero. Certainly Satan is the key figure, at least in the early chapters, and tends to draw the readers' sympathies much more than Milton's depiction of God. In those ways he is the hero of the story.

However, Milton makes it quite clear that Satan is not a hero in the sense of good guy. Satan knows he is in the wrong, but lacks the courage to admit it (except to himself), so he lies to his allies (one can hardly call them friends), even though he knows that he is leading them into further misery. Not content with the sorrow he has caused himself and his followers, he decides to make life a misery for humanity as well, just to get back at God for being so annoyingly right. In any moral sense he is clearly not a hero. Not only is he not good enough, he is also quite immature.

So why did Milton cast a villian as the main character? My guess is that Milton had run into a problem he could not entirely resolve. In an epic, the main character meets challenges and difficulties. Part of what makes epics work is the drama that results. This means that God cannot be the main character, because God is omnipotent. There is no drama in God overcoming challenges, because there is nothing that can effectively challenge God. Satan, on the other hand, can face and overcome challenges. So the nature of Milton's genre forced him to cast Satan as the main character, rather than God. So Milton found himself in a tricky situation. He had to make Satan appealing enough to be cast as main character. But for theological reasons he also had to make it clear that Satan is really the bad guy and that his apparent greatness is just glitter.

I figure Milton did a pretty good job of doing these things. When you listen to Satan's glib rhetoric (father of lies), he appears heroic. When you watch his struggles through the abyss, he appears brave. Later on, you find out that his rhetoric is empty (he admits to himself that he is misleading his followers), and his supposed bravery is actually cowardice and malice. (Too proud to admit he is wrong, too vengeful to accept his punishment without struggling to get back at God.)

Herein lies one of the weaknesses of Paradise Lost. Milton relied on the reader to draw this distinction between hero as main character and hero as good guy, and to see that Satan is one kind of hero, but not the other. Milton expected the reader to see past appearances (what Satan seems to be) to the real Satan underneath (who is actually quite shoddy). Apparently many readers miss this crucial distinction. However, the seeming goodness of Satan is an important metaphor in this poem. Why did Eve listen to a snake instead of God? Because she could not penetrate the disguise of evil. Her children continue to make the same mistake to this day.