Satan As Hero

Satan can be called as the “Hero” or protagonist of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, has
always been a struggle between moral/religious text as well as true literary interpretation.
Satan is undoubtedly evil, corrupting humankind. And so in this context, he should
always remain anti-hero with demeaning qualities that are unworthy of redemption.

In this sense, even though other characters like Son of God, Adam, Angels, etc. are
suited to get the heroic status, Paradise Lost is not, ultimately, about them. Paradise
Lost is the story of Satan. He is the focus of the writer as well as the reader. Milton’s
Satan is a powerful, compelling character with extreme courage and pride, who fights
and risks everything for a cause he believes in, so much that he gains reader's
sympathy, who tend to associate with his failure and pain.

In a way, he resembles a tragic hero as he has a tragic flaw, hubris. Even though he is
not as powerful as God, he goes beyond his limits, starts a revolt against his tyranny and
oppression, and even hopes to overcome him. He is a leader with a plan. And like an
admirable leader, he consoles and inspires fellow fallen angels, and asks them to not
accept defeat and continue the war. Milton carefully projects God as wrathful, unjust and
punishing, something that might have pleased his English Protestant audience.

Literary geniuses like Shelley and Blake considered Satan as the hero of Milton’s
Paradise Lost. But even if his heroic standards are debatable, at the very least, Satan can
be seen in a very complex, vivid light with not just contemptuous, antagonistic qualities,
but also fascinating heroic elements.

Some readers consider Satan to be the hero, or protagonist, of the story, because he
struggles to overcome his own doubts and weaknesses and accomplishes his goal of
corrupting humankind. This goal, however, is evil, and Adam and Eve are the moral
heroes at the end of the story, as they help to begin humankind’s slow process of
redemption and salvation. Satan is far from being the story’s object of admiration, as
most heroes are. Nor does it make sense for readers to celebrate or emulate him, as
they might with a true hero. Yet there are many compelling qualities to his character that
make him intriguing to readers.
One source of Satan’s fascination for us is that he is an extremely complex and subtle
character. It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, for Milton to make perfect, infallible
characters such as God the Father, God the Son, and the angels as interesting to read
about as the flawed characters, such as Satan, Adam, and Eve. Satan, moreover,
strikes a grand and majestic figure, apparently unafraid of being damned eternally, and
uncowed by such terrifying figures as Chaos or Death. Many readers have argued that
Milton deliberately makes Satan seem heroic and appealing early in the poem to draw
us into sympathizing with him against our will, so that we may see how seductive evil is
and learn to be more vigilant in resisting its appeal.
Milton devotes much of the poem’s early books to developing Satan’s character.
Satan’s greatest fault is his pride. He casts himself as an innocent victim, overlooked for
an important promotion. But his ability to think so selfishly in Heaven, where all angels
are equal and loved and happy, is surprising. His confidence in thinking that he could
ever overthrow God displays tremendous vanity and pride. When Satan shares his pain
and alienation as he reaches Earth in Book IV, we may feel somewhat sympathetic to
him or even identify with him. But Satan continues to devote himself to evil. Every
speech he gives is fraudulent and every story he tells is a lie. He works diligently to trick
his fellow devils in Hell by having Beelzebub present Satan’s own plan of action.
Satan’s character—or our perception of his character—changes significantly from Book
I to his final appearance in Book X. In Book I he is a strong, imposing figure with great
abilities as a leader and public statesmen, whereas by the poem’s end he slinks back to
Hell in serpent form. Satan’s gradual degradation is dramatized by the sequence of
different shapes he assumes. He begins the poem as a just-fallen angel of enormous
stature, looks like a comet or meteor as he leaves Hell, then disguises himself as a
more humble cherub, then as a cormorant, a toad, and finally a snake. His ability to
reason and argue also deteriorates. In Book I, he persuades the devils to agree to his
plan. In Book IV, however, he reasons to himself that the Hell he feels inside of him is
reason to do more evil. When he returns to Earth again, he believes that Earth is more
beautiful than Heaven, and that he may be able to live on Earth after all. Satan,
removed from Heaven long enough to forget its unparalleled grandeur, is completely
demented, coming to believe in his own lies. He is a picture of incessant intellectual
activity without the ability to think morally. Once a powerful angel, he has become
blinded to God’s grace, forever unable to reconcile his past with his eternal punishment.

John Milton is forcing the reader of Paradise Lost to consider the possibility that Satan
may actually be a hero, or at least a character that might be analysed in a more complex
way. The character of Satan uses this tension and provokes the reader. During the 13th
up to the 16th century the devil was discussed very frequently among people of all
classes. Nevertheless Satan or the devil is afflicted with mostly negative thoughts as he
is the antagonist of God.

While the question whether Satan being a hero or not is examined in many literary critics
and scholars for ages, this question remains disputed. On the one hand it provokes
responses that arise from closely held religious or moral values and on the other hand it
is a commitment to strict literary interpretation. Paradise Lost, however, tries to make
Satan an heroic figure that the reader is able to identify with. As consistently portrayed
as something that negates, confuses, misleads and devastates, The character of Satan
needs to be analysed in a more global way. In order to search for his motives and
methods one has to look for positive aspects of his actions. Milton's Satan, as well as
other imaginations of him, were mainly created during this period around the 1660s as a
result of the establishment of the Church of England.

To get an overview of Satan and his actions in Milton's Paradise Lost this research paper
only focuses on the parts of the poem where he is presented, speaking or where he is
appearing. At first an overview is given about John Milton and his time. Furthermore the
story of Paradise Lost, as well as Satan himself are analysed in a second step of this
work. Last but not least I try to answer the initial question whether the Satan of John
Milton's work can be depicted as epic hero and why this is the case. Milton allows the
reader a much fuller access to Satan and especially to the inner working of Satan's mind.

The hero of a piece of literature is usually the protagonist, or main character. If that were the
case with "Paradise Lost," then we'd have to say that Satan is the hero because he is the
protagonist. However, he does not behave in the way a classical hero should. Satan, in this
epic, is what we call an "antihero." That is, he is in the typical hero role, but he has none of the
typical heroic qualities.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Satan is not only a rebel but a tyrant. His words show how
far he is from understanding true liberty. He has heroic qualities, as we
have already seen. He is brave, strong, generous, loyal, prudent,
temperate, and selfsacrificing. But if he has heroic virtues, so has Macbeth;
and Macbeth is a villain. The reason why Milton has endowed Satan with
these qualities is that an adversary to God had to be of massive dramatic
stature and that the power that was to seduce Eve must have an
impressive personality and character. The misinterpretation arises from the
tendency in human nature to romanticize the rebel and the fighter against
odds. Satan’s heroism is false heroism because it is based on false beliefs
and unworthy aims. False heroism has its dramatic side, and a certain
interest. There is no doubt that Milton has used his poetic and dramatic
powers to the full in portraying Satan. But that was natural. Milton felt
inspired by Satan, and it is always much easier to create evil characters

than ideally good ones. Hardly therefore shall we believe that Milton meant
us to see in the fallen and ever falling archangel the hero of Paradise Lost.
That position surely belongs to Adam.