Duke Nukem Forever: The House Review

As both a product of the late eighties and early nineties, as well a witness to the limitless jokes involving the twenty-some-odd release dates for Duke Nukem Forever, I realized that no self-respecting critic should ever give up such an incredible opportunity to review the legendary, nigh mythical, latest installment of the Duke Nukem franchise.

As you are undoubtedly aware by now, Duke Nukem 3D is often hailed as one of the greatest, if not infamous, first person shooters ever made, right up there with the insanely popular Doom and Quake franchises of it's time. It came out in the early nineties, 1993, I believe, and marked significant advancements in the world of computer gaming: the main character not only now had a name and a title role, but also a voice and even (gasp!) character development, something completely unseen in earlier first person shooters.

And just who was this character, you ask?

(The) Duke.

You see, (the) Duke Nukem was the quintessential, hyper-masculine, wise-cracking nineties hero who was basically an amalgamation of every Arnold Swharzenegger, Chuck Norris, Sylvester Stallone, and Jean-Claude Van Damme action hero ever conceived. He had everything a hero of the era required back then: awesome guns, gratuitous violence, chicks, chicks, and chicks, as well as enough one-liners to win him an Oscar in the machismo category. And the thing is, despite being such a massive rip-off and shameless love-child of pop culture, no one even cared. The game was just too much of a success. (An infamous success, but more on that in a minute.)

There was also a previously unrealized interactivity to the world of (the) Duke Nukem, including full-scale bathroom mirrors that could reflect the character from any angle, and reflections that changed depending on what weapon (the) Duke was currently holding. Bathroom sinks, toilets, and urinals were all operational, glass was breakable, and the Jet Pack allowed players to explore the game world in a whole new way, allowing for developers to hide quite an assortment of Easter eggs for more enthusiastic players. I know these kinds of features all sound like child's play to today's audiences, but back in the early nineties having photo-realistic renderings of a character's reflection in a bathroom mirror took up A TON of memory for computers in those days, and writing the code for 3D combat, i.e, combat that took place in the air with (the) Duke's Jet Pack, took a GREAT deal of experimentation and debugging. For it's time, Duke Nukem 3D was definitely a programming achievement. It had just the right amount of realism in it's gameplay mechanics, and never too much to bog it down and make it unplayable.

The thing is though, (the) Duke Nukem was also known for something else: rampant misogyny and a still unmatched sense of tastelessness.

In the old game, the one from the nineties, it had an option under the gameplay settings that could turn off the adult content, set even with a password. This way, kids (namely little boys like the author) could play the same game their dad did, but without the blood splatter, the profanity, or the nudity at the strip club and misogynistic jokes placed throughout the game. So surely, as would make practical sense, there would be such a setting in Duke Nukem Forever.

Right?

Not so much.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'll go ahead and tell you right now that Duke Nukem Forever has to be the most offensive game I've ever played, and truth be told, it takes a great deal of crazy shit to offend me.

Right now I'm sure you're thinking of all the standard misogynistic tropes in video-games these days, you know, the female characters with gigantic, overly bouncy boobs, the hyper-masculine warrior characters you see in fantasy games with completely ripped, overly-vasculated physiques, the invalid damsels-in-distress, the rampant, unnecessary nudity, all the creative ways you can kill prostitutes in the Grand Theft Auto series, etc., etc., but no. Duke Nukem Forever isn't ANYTHING like that.

Duke Nukem Forever is instead so blatantly god-awful I can't believe it even got past the development stage, which, might I add, it almost didn't. (Hardy har har.)

Duke Nukem Forever is instead so egregiously sexist and offensive to women, so vile and obscene, so utterly tasteless and despicable, so relentlessly irredeemable, that I am absolutely astounded that it didn't receive an Adults Only rating, the highest rating available to the ESRB.

The game starts with you, (the) Duke Nukem, pissing at a urinal, the stream flowing freely from what has to be your massive phallus, grunting as you shake, just like any other God-fearing, red-blooded American male. You then travel to a massive stadium and fight a towering alien monstrosity with this double-barreled rocket launcher called "The Devistator," a weapon returning from earlier installments and easily the most powerful weapon in the game.

Oh, it's ammo count?

You wanted to know its ammo count?

69.

(AWWWWW YEAAAHHHHHHHHH.)

Anyway, after killing this gigantic, bidepal, cycloptic and cyborg alien of ultimate ass-kickery, you tear out his eye, shit down his neck, and kick it for a field goal in what you can see during the pan-out is called "The Duke Dome." The scene ends with the camera, like I said before, panning out from the victorious field-goal shot and reveals that you were actually playing a game within a game, shown by pulling away from a TV screen and into an ostentatiously elaborate bathroom where (the) Duke has been receiving a fellatio from two schoolgirl-outfit-clad twins, the Holsom twins.

Yes.

They went there.

The twins then giggle and ask (the) Duke if his game was any good, to which (the) Duke responds sarcastically, "After twelve fucking years, it should be."

And that, my friends, is how Duke Nukem Forever begins.

What follows is one face-palm after another through the minds of the sickest developers ever to be given the budget of a normal Hollywood level production. That's right, feminists, it cost over 150 million dollars to make this game. Probably more, in fact. I just guessed at that number. You know why? That's the industry average. The average video game costs over 150 million dollars to make.

So House, what exactly did we get out of that 150 million dollars?

Well let me sit down and tell you.

(You should probably sit down, too. And order a scotch. What do feminists drink these days, anyway? Scotch, right? You know what, just make it a double whatever you get.)

You see, the whole plot of Duke Nukem Forever (what plot there is, that is) is centered around the events of the last game, Duke Nukem 3D, and its aftermath. In the last game, and in this one, you battle aliens who have come to Earth to essentially steal all of Earth's beautiful women.

Yep. That's it.

Anyway, this development understandably pisses the hell out of (the) Duke, so he goes on a murderous rampage to get them all back. I would go on to note how this is in some ways noble, similar to the chivalric tales of yore, you know, the ones involving knights and damsels-in-distress, and this is in fact just the modern continuation of such a story arc, but I believe it is the motive of the would-be rescuer that differentiates the noble hero from the ignoble one.

Knights, for example, were virtuous, and in many ways worshiped women. They were chaste, after all, and saved women because they felt it was the right thing to do, to save the innocent.

(The) Duke, on the other hand, only wanted to save the human women because he felt they were his property, and not because he believed their deaths, the death of innocents, would be morally reprehensible. Not to mention, the women he was "saving" weren't innocent by today's standards anyway. All of them fit the "whore" and "slut" paradigm perfectly (arguably a paradigm imposed by the patriarchy to suppress female sexual freedom, i.e. "slut-shaming," but that's a different article entirely) and were basically (the) Duke's personal property. He didn't care if they lived or died, but rather whether he had them or not.

I may be paraphrasing him here, but I believe Samuel L. Jackson has a saying for stuff like this:

"That shit's fucking fucked."

Anyway, the game continues on, and you eventually return to the "The Duke Dome," albeit this time for real. This time though, the aliens have infested the stadium and enveloped it in an alien secretion, reminiscent of the hive from James Cameron's Aliens, and have human women strung up into the walls of the alien sludge, all of them completely naked with their massive double-D breasts flopping around for all the world to see.

This part of the game, to me at least, is almost where I threw up my hands and never played again. There's this one scene during the hive where (the) Duke's path is blocked by two human women stuck in the alien goo, both of them screaming about how the aliens have raped them, impregnated them, and about how they'll lose the pregnancy weight so (the) Duke will love them again.

Excuse me while I type that again.

They're screaming about how they'll lose the pregnancy weight so (the) Duke will love them again.

You should have seen my face.

I was flabbergasted.

Dumbfounded.

In shock.

In disbelief.

Outraged.

Ashamed.

I have never been so offended by anything, ever, in my entire life.

Their stomachs then explode in a burst of gore, unleashing a swarm of tiny, octopus like babies that you have to destroy to move on.

And what did (the) Duke say?

"Get back to Japan, you eight-legged freaks."

I was fucking disgusted.

I quit the game right then and there, and didn't pick it up again for two straight weeks. Even then, I was cautious about playing it again, because think about it: that scene occurred not even two hours into the game. Who knew what the rest of the game had in store for its audience? What other outrageously sick shit had the developers come up with? I couldn't even imagine what else I would see, and let me tell you, you couldn't either.

Over the rest of the game, I encountered:

• A giant boss-battle alien with three gigantic, sagging breasts called "She-Bitch." She was also morbidly obese.
• Spider-like aliens called "pregnators" that spat cum on the screen in gooey blobs. (Yet another knock-off from the Alien franchise.)
• "Pig Cops," another returning enemy from DN3D, which are bipedal warthogs in police uniforms wielding shotguns. (The symbolism should be obvious here.)
• A senseless strip club dream sequence at a place called "Duke Nukem's Titty City" that involved a dildo, popcorn, and condom hunting mission.
• Duke could reach into used toilets and pull out feces to throw at enemies.
• You never actually find the Holsom twins again, despite their being stolen literally being the only thing driving the plot. (I just realized that "Holsom" might be a play on the word "wholesome," which they are clearly not.)

I would also like to point out, going back to that Pig Cop entry, how their abduction of only white, attractive women reminded me greatly of the KKK propaganda films of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Pig Cops, after all, were all black skinned, while Duke Nukem represented the Aryan ideal, with his blonde flat-top hair-cut and his blue eyes, and was willing to resort to any means necessary to get back the stolen white women.

Yeah.

Let's see how long it takes for the NAACP to catch on to that one.

Although, despite all of this damning evidence to suggest that Duke Nukem Forever is the most horrendously offensive game of the 20th and 21st centuries, there is hope. Yes, feminists of the world, there is hope.

And that hope is that the game really wasn't very good.

Sure, there is somewhat of a "well if you've played one, you've played them all" mentality to first person shooters, but still, Duke Nukem Forever really didn't live up to the original. The developers implemented more than several mechanical changes to the game's core mechanics, you know, the rules that actually make the game fun, and so most of the action sequences, even the best ones of the game, fell terribly flat.

Unlike the original, (the) Duke can only carry two guns at a time, as well as only four pipe bombs and trip mines at a time, along with one Steroids pack, one Beer, and one Holoduke, a holographic projector that can distract a horde of enemies.

If you've played the first one, you know this to be complete and utter bullshit.

Because back in the day, you could carry one of every weapon in the game, up to the full ammo of all those weapons, and up to ten of each explosive ordinance. I'm not sure about how many of the Holoduke you could carry, but I want to say that it was either just one like in Duke Nukem Forever, or up to three.

I mean, what happened?

I'm sure, no, I'm certain, that that Blu-ray game disk could handle all of that memory. So what was it? Why would the developers take away such an awesome aspect of the original game?

Ah.

That's right.

Today's first person shooters don't permit resource allocation, otherwise known as the COOLEST FUCKING PART OF A FIRST PERSON SHOOTER.

Remember back in the day when you had to wander around the levels of an FPS, armed with nothing more than three bullets in your awesome space-marine rifle and one frag-grenade that would probably end up blowing you up right along with it? Huh? Remember the glory days?

Remember those days where you were walking down that alien-infested corridor with nothing but your fists because you wasted all your ammo on some environmental effect you were convinced was some demon-lord from some unspeakable realm of the Abyss because you were playing on your Dad's piece-of-shit, Windows 95 PC at three in the morning on a school night in the dark because you thought you were a total fucking badass given orders by the fucking PRESIDENT to slay a nigh-invincible, inter-dimensional threat?

Yeah.

You remember them.

You remember them because you are fucking awesome.

But Duke Nukem Forever doesn't have any of that. The developers didn't even include his signature piece of equipment, the Jet Pack.

That's like making a Legend of Zelda title without including the Master Sword.

I mean, what the fuck?

(The) Duke spends the whole game making fun of other shooters. He spends the whole game mocking the use of power armor and calling Master Chief a pussy. He spends the whole game making fun of engineers like Isaac Clarke from Dead Space and calling them limp-dick science majors. And yet, he himself depends on the once revolutionary mechanics set forth in those games for his own gameplay experience.

Turret sequences?

Has 'em.

Regenerating health bar?

Has it.

Carries only two weapons?

Does it.

Ammo replenishment crates?

Uses 'em.

I mean, what happened to the sprawling maps we used to see in Duke Nukem 3D? Now the game is just a linear adventure from one cutscene to the next, except Duke Nukem Forever has no cutscenes. Hell, it barely has supporting characters. All of them are stock. There was so much potential with this title it's retarded. Instead they just filled in all the gaps with dick and fart jokes and making god-awful jabs at women.

You know what they should have done?

I got the idea after beating the game and looking through the extra-content I had unlocked. Some of it was all right, while some of it was, as you guessed it, pretty stupid.

You see, after I got done screwing around the Duke Nukem soundboard and looking through the Unlockable Cheats menu, I skimmed through the concept art, a compilation of concept art throughout the years Duke Nukem Forever had been in development, and on frame thirty-six, I think it was, I found a little nugget that practically blew my hair back.

Her name was Bombshell, and as I looked down the barrel of her gigantic fucking gun, I found (the) Duke's salvation.

She wasn't clothed in a stripper bikini or covered in alien sludge, she was wearing army fatigues. She didn't have long, bleach blonde hair like a pornstar, she was a shoulder length brunette. She had on combat boots, gloves emblazoned with Duke's yellow, radioactive seal, and was barely showing any skin at all.

So why didn't she make it into the game?

I don't have a clue.

But just imagine, dear reader, Duke Nukem having some kind of equal, or better yet, an ideological opposite. Bombshell could have been a badass, wise-cracking, action hero just like Duke, except a feminist, perhaps even overtly so. The writers (if there ever were any) could then have them work together, despite their differences, and join forces to defeat the alien threat. This would allow for some character development, and perhaps even result in (the) Duke seeing the errors of his misogynistic ways. Then, in later installments, you could write in more of (the) Duke's backstory, as well as Bombshell's, resulting in a franchise that everyone could play, including women. Sure, the original character would change, but people live for dynamic characters, not to mention the potential spin-off games marketed toward the female audience.

Because let's face it guys, gaming isn't a boys only club anymore, and the universal rejection of Duke Nukem Forever is proof of that.

So overall, taking into account the rampant misogyny and the rather flat gameplay, I'll have to say that Duke Nukem Forever deserves three natural twenties out of ten. And before you blow up on me for a seemingly high rating, let me assure you that those Nat 20's are all purely from nostalgia. Not to mention, M. Night Shyamalamadingdong's The Last Airbender already got a one out of ten, and I'll tell you right now that even with all of its flaws, Duke Nukem Forever is still a hell of a lot more enjoyable than that piece of trash.

And Duke Nukem practically invented trash.

Project Dollmeat: The House Review

Good news, everyone, as Dr. Farnsworth would say, this piece has been selected for publication.

All House of Dane loyals can find it in print in the July 2011 issue of Still Point Arts Quarterly, a lovely little arts journal in Maine, under the title, "The Art of Noise".

I repurposed the original review into an article about the nature of the Noise scene, so be prepared: I moved things around quite a bit, and sadly, removed all the profanity.

(I know, I know. Boo-hoo.)

Anyway, my friends, take to the internet with your pocket books and buy a copy, I'm sure it won't disappoint.

UPDATE: You can check out a preview of the spread by clicking on this link: http://www.stillpointartgallery.com/uploads/files/issue2July2011.html

-The House of Dane

F. Scott Fitzgerald and His Critique of the American Dream

The following paper is a bit of a milestone of mine, as it is the last academic paper of my undergraduate career. Be that as it may, it is by no means a work of genius, nor is it my best paper (at least by my account). In any case, if you happen to be a hardcore Fitzgerald fan such as myself, or even have an interest in that grand old American myth known as the American Dream, this paper is for you.

F. Scott Fitzgerald and His Critique of the American Dream

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s earlier fiction, the short stories “Dalyrimple Goes Wrong” and “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,” critique, among other things, the abuse of wealth throughout American history, and the effect that this flagrant abuse of wealth has had on the fabled American dream. As this paper will go on to prove, F. Scott Fitzgerald asserts that the abuse of wealth in the United States has, rather ironically, soiled the idea that in America, everyone who comes to its shores, works hard, and makes sacrifices can be successful beyond his or her wildest dreams. He accomplishes this feat through the showcasing of the exploits of the Washington family in the more relevant of the two stories, “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,” and the crushing disillusionment of Bryan Dalyrimple in one of his least critiqued short stories, “Dalyrimple Goes Wrong.” In them, both sets of characters come to see wealth at its absolute worst, with the young veteran Dalyrimple coming to see wealth in a rather Marxist light, in that it is a source of inequality, while the Washington family, particularly its patriarch, Braddock Washington, falls under the spell of its nigh infinite wealth and believes to the utmost ridiculously degree that money can, indeed, solve anything.

The thing is however, the entire argument of this paper hinges upon what the definition of the American dream actually is, and how, over the decades, it has actually been defined. For if indeed the American dream really is just the acquisition of vast sums of material wealth through hard work, then, well, the Washington family has, by definition, achieved the American dream to its highest possible culmination. Of course, in that regard, Bryan Dalyrimple’s story is slightly different. He does not, by the story’s end, achieve vast stockpiles of material wealth, but he does acquire another quality attributed to the realization of the American dream: political power. With this fate as his story’s end result, and after his, albeit short-lived, fame as a battle-hardened war veteran, then surely Bryan Dalyrimple has also achieved the mysterious phenomena known as the American dream. But, did he and the Washington family really do it? Did they really achieve the spirit of that age-old, red-white-and-blue institution, the American dream?

Well, according to Jim Cullen, author of The American Dream, and his quoting of James Truslow Adams, a 1930s historian of American history who allegedly first coined the phrase itself, “‘[the] American dream [is] a better, richer, and happier life for all out citizens of every rank, which is the greatest contribution we have made to the thought and welfare of the world’” (Cullen, 4). Of course, the Washingtons are no doubt ‘rich’ (and arguably ‘better’ if one counts being ‘rich’ as being ‘better’), but are they ‘happy’? What about Bryan Dalyrimple? Is he ‘happy’? He certainly wields great political power by the end of his story, and he will also undoubtedly acquire a nice sum of wealth from his terms in the state senate. However, do these things ultimately make him ‘better’? Will these things ultimately make him ‘happy’? Such questions though only lead to more ambiguities. As Cullen goes on to state, quoting Adams once again and chiming in his own opinion, “‘[the] dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man’ may be fine as far as it goes, but the devil is in the details: just what does ‘better and richer and fuller’ mean?” (Cullen, 7).

This is a quite a relevant notion, to be sure, as concretely defining these terms is what holds the ultimate insight of this paper. For, as Cullen continues onward in his very next paragraph, “The answers vary. Sometimes ‘better and richer and fuller’ is defined in terms of money -- in the contemporary United States, one could almost believe this is the only definition -- but there are others. Religious transformation, political reform, educational attainment, sexual expression: the list is endless” (Cullen, 7; first emphasis mine). Such a conclusion only goes on to show that, overall, Bryan Dalyrimple and Braddock Washington only achieve one small part of the picture, and that their wealth and power only count for success in a portion of the American dream, and not all of it, as they may have thought. (Although in all honesty, I do not believe, at any point in either text, the characters explicitly mention the American dream). In this particular case however, as mentioned before, the question becomes: have Bryan and Braddock fulfilled the American dream, and if so, has this made them ‘happy’? Or rather, is the culmination of vast wealth and power truly the American dream, and will this culmination, once reached, make you ‘happy’ as the American dream, at its root, so dearly promises?

For the first possible answer to that burning question, one must look to one of Fitzgerald’s most neglected short stories, “Dalyrimple Goes Wrong.” In it, the audience finds a soon-to-be disillusioned war veteran, Bryan Dalyrimple, and the immense psychological upheaval he experiences at the moment of his disillusion, as well as its eventual consequences. Differentiating greatly from the tale of infinite excess in “Diamond,” “Dalyrimple” is essentially a tale of too little, with its main character, Bryan, working a long and boring dead-end grocery job for much, much longer than he intended, and then finding out, through sheer happenstance, that one of his fellow employees, a newer worker and the grocery owner’s relative, is already earning a higher wage than he is, even though Bryan is the senior worker (“Dalyrimple,” 9).

This, of course, sends Dalyrimple into a passionate rage, as he is angered over the inequality of his workplace and the idea that he has been pushed around and bullied by the establishment long enough. In essence, he is angry that he never quite got his fair share, or rather, that his fame in coming home from the war simply did not last. As Robert Merill offers in his article, “‘Dalyrimple Goes Wrong’: The Best of the Neglected Early Stories,” “Fitzgerald makes it clear that celebrating war heroes is a ritualistic gesture with virtually no real meaning to an American public that has no conception of what war is like” (Merill, 28; emphasis mine).

In other words, as Dalyrimple begins to realize that he really is just another person, no one out of the ordinary, he begins to feel as though not only is he under appreciated, but that the American dream, the idea responsible for his fame as a war hero, has failed him in some way, and failed him horribly. And so, like any other do-it-yourself American, he decides to make up his own dream. As Fitzgerald himself states:

He was more than Byronic now: not the spiritual rebel, Don Juan; not the philosophical rebel, Faust; but a new psychological rebel of his own century -- defying the sentimental a priori forms of his own mind -- (“Dalyrimple,” 13)

While paying special attention to the very next sentence in the paragraph:

Happiness was what he wanted -- a slowly rising scale of gratifications of the normal appetites -- and he had a strong conviction that the materials, if not the inspiration of happiness, could be bought with money. (“Dalyrimple,” 14)

This proves, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that not only is Fitzgerald critiquing the American dream within the context of the war hero and how, upon return, they find only fleeting fame, but also that to Dalyrimple, and by proxy, according to Fitzgerald, the American public, believe that happiness, and by extension the American dream, can only be measured in material wealth. That is to say, the richer one is, the happier they must therefore be.

Understandably, this would correctly coincide with Bryan Dalyrimple’s story. He begins the narrative as a popular war veteran who is hailed in his city as a hero, only to find out that his wealth faded with time. Left poor and working a pointless job, as well as feeling entitled to the same level of public spotlight that he had felt when he came home, Dalyrimple asks for a raise, only come to find out that, in fact, he was nowhere near as important as he once thought he was. And so, seeking to fill the void left by his disillusionment, he goes on a crime spree to accumulate wealth, and, in essence, fulfill the American dream he thought had left him. As Robert Merill most succinctly states, “Reasoning thus, Dalyrimple embarks on a series of robberies intended to provide the funds hard work promises never to offer” (Merill, 31).

The thing is though, despite all of what Merrill calls Dalyrimple’s “Zarathustrian rationalizations” (Merrill, 33), he fails to notice what actually happens to his future at the end of the story. Having sought fame, power, and fortune for so long at the expense of his own morality (“Dalyrimple,” 13), Bryan completely fails to realize that in order to finally gain the power that he so desires, he must ultimately turn his back on everything he has worked for in his nightly tirades by becoming a state senator. As Merrill asserts, “Now [that] he is offered what he wants -- money, security, a touch of power -- he will [have to] agree to do the older men’s bidding…In the end all Dalyrimple must do to achieve his goals is give up any pretense to independence” (Merrill, 33). And looking back to our working definitions of the American dream, is a man who cannot control his own fate living out its ideals, regardless of what American dream he holds dear? Is a man who thinks he is happy for living the lifestyle that others wish him to live truly happy? I think not.

Moving on to the second possible answer as to whether or not F. Scott Fitzgerald’s other short story, “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,” can be said to critique the American dream, well, the answer is an astounding yes. Fitzgerald’s “Diamond” has by far the largest and most condemning critique of the legendary American dream out of all of Fitzgerald’s short fiction, with even some critics, as Lawrence Buell states in his essay, “The Significance of Fantasy in Fitzgerald’s Short Fiction,” “treat[ing] it as a prelude to Gatsby” (Buell, 34). In the story itself, we find the story of a young man named John T. Unger and his precarious adventures involving the Washington family, a family that been subsisting in vast, nearly god-like wealth for the last several generations due to its owning of a diamond that is, quite literally, as big as the Ritz Carlton hotel. Of course, the only way for the Washingtons to hold on to their immense fortune is to keep it a secret and hidden away in a part of Montana “that’s never been surveyed” (“Diamond,” 4) via a series of state-department manipulations on Braddock’s part, and ultimately killing anyone who comes to find out about the diamond itself.

The critiques of the American dream present within “Diamond” should be obvious at this point in the text, considering the blatant display of the themes involved. For one, the idea of being so insanely wealthy that one has to keep it secret flies directly in the face of how wealth is ordinarily perceived in America. As mentioned before, Cullen argues that money is the only definition of success in the United States, and so if your neighbor does not understand how truly wealthy you are, well, then what is the whole point of struggling for wealth anyway? Secondly, the working definition of the American dream, as Truslow Adams first proctored, implied that if one were richer, one would be freer, one would be more fulfilled than if left poor. After reviewing the Washingtons secluded, very secluded, lifestyle, how could one even bare to conclude that the Washingtons are freer than other men? They are not free at all, Braddock Washington being the least free of the whole family. Their wealth has trapped them in the very mountains of their own wealth forever.

The critique of the age-old American institution also manages to manifest itself in other parts of the text as well, as, after all, Buell states once again that, “[Diamond] is his most succinct critique of the American dream” (Buell, 30). Specifically, the narrative style of the story itself is written like a dream, as, to borrow from Buell once again, “the story is narrated in such a way as continually to flaunt its own illusoriness” (Buell, 31). That is to say, what would be a better way for Fitzgerald to narrate a story critiquing the American dream, other than to write the actual story like a dream itself? To use vivid imagery, fantastic details, and surrealist settings is the perfect way to portray a dream, while adding in the Washington family, descended from the first president of America himself, to further secure the image of critiquing one of the most sacred of American cultural institutions in all its history.

There is also the question of arrogance present within the context of vast material wealth to be found in Fitzgerald’s critiques of not only the American dream, but also of vulgar displays of power as well. In the last few pages of “Diamond” for example, the audience is left with a most surreal and terrifying image, the image of a lone and desperate Braddock Washington attempting to bribe God with his riches (“Diamond,” 22-26). This is ultimately what I think Fitzgerald was trying to get at, especially in his later work. He was trying to show that with enough money and enough power, with the American dream, forgive my lack of a better phrase, gone horribly awry, people could develop the kind of arrogance necessary to believe that they, based purely on wealth alone, were equal to that of God himself. It almost sounds out of place, the theme of hubris, in a modern text like this, but like all texts concerning blasphemy, they always manage to somehow find their place.

Being sure to keep this in mind, any observer of Braddock and Bryan can see that neither of the two men are happy, even though they have theoretically acquired all of the essential elements necessary to qualify for the achievement of the American dream. Dalyrimple, for one, is a war hero wielding fame who eventually becomes a state senator with previously no experience in the field whatsoever, while Washington, on the other hand, is immensely rich and related directly to the first president of the United States, not to mention owning a small army of slaves who have no idea that the North won the Civil War. Sure, these men should be happy, the ‘happy’ as defined by Adams and Cullen mentioned earlier, but they are not. They are two of the truest examples of grotesque, broken men.

Although, in light of their existence, what does their critique ultimately say about the state of the American dream? Is it gone now, because of the billionaire capitalists and the corrupt politicians that Bryan and Dalyrimple were so obviously modeled off of, or is it still an actual phenomenon that is attainable by anyone who comes to America, works hard, and makes sacrifices to become successful? Did it, quite terrifyingly, even exist at all? Going back to Cullen’s work, he asserts that, “The problem with the American dream…is not exactly that its corrupt or vain. Indeed the great paradox of The Great Gatsby is that even as Gatsby pursues his dream…through fraud…there is a deeply compelling purity about his ambition” (Cullen, 182). That is to say, the idea itself is not flawed, but rather, the paths in which Bryan and Braddock took to reach their dreams were flawed. Flawed men, arguably, have flawed dreams. But, as Cullen goes on to say later in the paragraph:

What makes the American Dream American is not that our dreams are any better, worse, or more interesting than anyone else’s, but that we live in a country constituted of dreams, whose very justification continues to rest on it being a place where one can, for better and worse, pursue distant goals. (182)

Of course, this kind of message reveals great promise for who still believe, like I do, in the American dream, and worry about those, like Dalyrimple and Washington, who wish to apparently use its promises for less-than-noble causes.

In any case, we ultimately have to conclude that upon examining the short stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,” and “Dalyrimple Goes Wrong,” the characters Bryan Dalyrimple and Braddock Washington exemplify the kind of wickedness, whether intentional or unintentional, of those who have soiled the promise of the American dream both within the time period in which they were written, the early twentieth century, and the contemporary era of the twenty-first. They, despite having accumulated vast wealth and power, lacked seemingly the most important tenet of the American dream, happiness, and instead, through their riches, spread only pain and suffering or the corruption of statewide politics. Thus it can be said, that while they did in fact achieve some aspects of the traditional American dream, they really made manifest more of an anti-American dream, which, in retrospect, I suppose was Fitzgerald’s point all along. He wanted to show the audience past the myths in the American media and the up-and-coming print culture and present to them the downsides of the American dream, if there really was such a thing at all, and he wanted to show, I think, most importantly, what the American dream was, by showing us what it is not.

Works Cited

Buell, Lawrence. “The Significance of Fantasy in Fitzgerald’s Short Fiction.” The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald: New Approaches in Criticism. Ed. Jackson R. Bryer. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1982. 23-38.

Cullen, Jim. The American Dream. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. Dalyrimple Goes Wrong. 1920. Feedbooks.com. http://gutenberg.org.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. A Diamond as Big as the Ritz. 21 January 1998. http://www.sc.ed./fitzgerald/diamond/diamond.html.

Merill, Robert. “‘Dalyrimple Goes Wrong’: The Best of the Neglected Early Stories.” New Essays on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Neglected Stories. Ed. Jackson R. Bryer. Columbia, Missouri: The University of Missouri Press, 1996. 24-34.

Subject 234

Hey, here's another one that's missing. What's going on?

Don't worry, dear reader, this is just another one of those stories I have floating around in some unlucky editor's hands, and so I can't have it readable anywhere in cyberspace.

Rest assured, if the editor passes, I'll have it back up in no time for your reading pleasure.

Thanks so much for your readership,

The House of Dane

Can I Help You, Mr. Rider?

Woah. Where did that great story of yours happen to go, Mr. Dane?

Well kiddos, I've currently got this out and about in an editor's hands, and unfortunately can't have it hanging around on the internet.

If the editor passes, rest assured, I'll have it back up in no time.

Thanks for all the great readership,

The House of Dane

Let Me In: The House Review

Let Me In, Matt Reeves' adaptation of both the Swedish novel Lat Den Ratte Komma In and its film version of the same name, was not really expected to bring forth the same kind of emotional intensity and character-driven horror as its Swedish counterparts. Fans all over the world simply hated the idea, actually, myself very much included. Having seen and read (sadly) the Twilight novels, I knew that us Americans would surely find a way to fuck it up in a way inconceivable to the rest of the art world. We would fuck up John Ajvide Lindqvist's masterpiece of vampire horror, and we would do it without even the slightest care in the world, because, quite frankly, us Americans totally suck at horror films.

(I mean honestly, I can see you nodding right now. They're that bad. If Wes Craven doesn't go into retirement soon, we should call it quits. The fact they're making a Scream 4 says it all.)

But let me tell you something, that Matt Reeves? The Cloverfield director of JJ Abrams viral marketing fame? Yeah, HE TOTALLY FUCKING NAILED IT. A movie hasn't freaked me out this badly since the American adaptation of Japan's The Ring. The directing here was superb, and never once relied on the typical scare-tactics. The angst-ridden and lonely tone was set perfectly, and mirrored the book exactly. The final product was precisely what I wanted when I went into that theater, and I got just the reaction I wanted from my girlfriend when it was over: "I'm never letting you take me to a movie ever again. That was fucking sick."

I'm glad you thought so, babe.

It was about time someone like Matt Reeves reminded us what vampires are supposed to be like. They don't glitter when caught in sunlight, they burst into flames. They don't have brooding existential crises. They don't "pounce," "leer," "have venom," or give a fuck if they have a soul. They, like Abby (or Eli), lure men into worlds of resentment and self-loathing and betrayals of the human condition with their Lolita-like charms, and then discard them without even the slightest bit of a conscience.

They devour.

They maim.

They kill.

We are the children of love, spurned on by God's mercy.

They have no mercy, and are the children of death.

(I mean what the fuck, Stephanie Meyer? Why glitter?)

But all that aside, the aspects of the film that really sealed the deal for me, so to speak, was the cinematography. An important aspect of any film, effective cinematography is especially important in the horror genre, and here Reeves executed it beautifully.

Owen's mother, for example, (or Oskar's mother in the novel) was never completely shown to the audience, only in fuzzy focus, and distance or obscured shots. Taking into account her apparent absence and indifference to Owen's development, she, essentially, becomes the Mother Who Was Never There, the mother who was either too far away, or so close, but so far. Upon even further examining Owen's mother, we find that she is often associated with religious overtones, such as saying Grace at dinner, watching televangelists, and displaying Christian iconography throughout their home. This is significant because not only does it tap into the movie's delving into the dichotomy of good and evil, it also expresses it was not just Owen's mother who was never there, but that his God was never there as well.

The way Abby's physicality was portrayed was also exceedingly well done, blending actual effects with CG modeling for a totally believable creature. There was a special attention payed to the way she climbed, I noticed, and how animalistic she could be when hunting, attacking, and spying on potential victims, especially when in the presence of blood. Never once did I consider her a Meyer vampire, and the entire time the audience was constantly aware that, in fact, Abby was an Evil entity, with a capital E, and not some love-sick, overly (emo)tional man-child. That having been said, however, I feel that Abby did possess some remnant of humanity, as fading and fleeting as it may have been. After all, she did seek and find some kind of odd, if not parasitic, companionship in both Owen and his ill-fated predecessor, Abby's "father."

There was also that sweet swimming pool scene at the end.

Oh yeah.

That swimming pool scene.

Probably one of the most metal things I've seen in a while, the swimming pool scene was so well done I can't bring myself to spoil it for you. But, for those of you who have already seen it, you know what I'm talking about. It was easily one of the greatest examples of showing something without showing it at all that I have ever witnessed, and easily the best reason for paying the ten bucks or however much to go see this movie. It's that good.

Moving on to critical analysis, I have to say that there's something to be said in this film about cycles. In many ways, we know the story of Abby's "father" in that we are experiencing the story of Owen. By the end of the film, we feel as though Owen will end up doing what her "father" has always done for her, especially after seeing the old photo-booth reel in her apartment. As the audience, we have no idea how long exactly this cycle, her practice, has been going on, but theoretically it could have been going on for ages. In fact, I think the frequent mentioning of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet serves to date her as someone from that particular period, the 1560s - 1610s, as opposed to just paralleling that tragic love story to that of Abby and Owen, but that's just me.

In any case, regardless of her age, does this ultimately make Abby Evil with a capital E, as I have expressed before?

Yes and no.

(And I'm fucking giddy with excitement that it's ambiguous, because ambiguity is what we Humanities majors specialize in.)

You see, I'm glad that Abby is complicated (to say the least), and I'm glad that we, the audience, is forced to think about her. Is she evil, or is she not? Well, she's evil in that she continues the cycle of drawing in young, disillusioned and alienated males to do her killing for her, but honestly, why can't she just do this killing herself? We know that she is perfectly capable, and yet, she asks less-capable people to do it.

Ultimately, I think its because she both uses and needs their humanity.

She then in essence becomes human by proxy, and rather interestingly, she becomes a vampire in a different way: not only does she drain prey victims of their blood, she also drains cycle victims of their humanity. Once that humanity has been depleted, she discards them, or they, as in the case of her father, discard themselves.

Genius.

Mr. Lindqvist, I may not know how to pronounce your name or congratulate you in your native language, but you sir, are seriously fucking awesome.

All international praises of awesomeness aside however, we must still ask ourselves if we believe that Abby's feelings for Owen are sincere, if indeed there are any feelings at all. On one hand, I would love to believe that she does indeed have feelings for Owen, if not only because as a member of the audience I have invested so much time into caring about Owen's story. The thing is though, in the end, Owen still feels like a means to an end, a puppet of Abby, if you will, almost begging the question of who the films and the novels are really about.

I mean you have to wonder, is this Owen's story, or is it Abby's?

Is Owen the Protagonist, and is Abby the Antagonist like traditionally thought?

Or are they both the Protagonists? Or both the Antagonists?

Could Abby be the Protagonist, perhaps? And Owen be the Anti-Hero?

One could easily write pages and pages on any of these ideas, maybe even novels, so I'll leave it up to you, along with the film's litany of other interpretations. Regardless, I hope you actually go see this film and enjoy it as much as I did, especially in light (in spite?) of the hugely popular Twilight series and it's legion of tweenager fans.

Because honestly, if Twilight is the vampire romance story of the Victorian era strung out on ecstasy, then Let Me In is the vampire romance story of the Post Modern age hyped up on PCP and a string of reckless one-night stands.

Overall, I would give Matt Reeves' adaptation of Lindqvist's Lat Den Ratte Komma In 10 out of 10 Natural 20s, the highest recommendation I can give. The direction was superb, the cinematography flawless, and the casting beyond the standard definitions of excellent. Chloe Moretz of Hit-Girl and Kick-Ass fame once again delivers a well-acted and well-defined character portrait, this time as the immortal Abby, and her co-star, Kodi Smit-McPhee, totally sells the twisted yet innocent Owen. You would have to be totally fucking retarded not to go see this movie. Absolutely fucking retarded.

Oh, and don't forget to read the book. :)

The Satan of Paradise Lost: A Political and Cautionary Tale

The following paper is a paper I wrote over the summer for a course exploring the depths of John Milton's world-famous Christian epic, Paradise Lost. Overall, I believe this paper turned out exceptionally well, and I was more than happy with the grade I received. Grades, however, are merely a side-note, for the topic of this paper, Satan and his ultimate identity in Milton's work, is far more interesting to me, and hopefully for you, than an A or a B. I sincerely hope you enjoy reading it.

The Satan of Paradise Lost: A Political and Cautionary Tale

In John Milton’s Christian epic Paradise Lost, Satan has been given many, if not too many, descriptive epithets by the poem’s epic narrator, labeling him everything from the “Infernal Serpent” (Milton, 1.34), to the “Arch-Fiend” (1.156), to even, quite simply, the “Foe” (6.149). He is, after all, the supposed archenemy of all mankind, the great antagonist of God, that one larger than life personification of evil that has dominated an entire culture for over two-thousand years. It would only be fitting, then, for Milton to address him in such a malign way. The crux of the poem lies however, in the question of why, if Satan really is the “Arch Enemy” (Milton, 1.81), the “Author of Evil” (6.262), Milton apparently chooses to write his Satan as a hero, a revolutionary not unlike politically-minded Milton himself, a radical fighting a noble cause against an ignoble and tyrannical God? Why does Milton choose to bestow upon his Satan excellent rhetorical qualities, a shield “hung on his shoulders like the moon” (Milton, 1.287), and a spear “to equal which the tallest pine / Hewn on Norwegian hills…/ were but a wand” (1.292)? Why does Milton essentially characterize his Satan to the great epic heroes of antiquity, like that of Homer’s Odysseus and Virgil’s Achilles? Perplexing questions, surely, to any reader of any era since the poem was written. However, despite their apparent complexity or convoluted-ness, their answers reside simply within the religious beliefs of Milton himself, and, more importantly, within his political beliefs regarding the tumultuous years of the English Civil War, the tyranny of Charles I, and the clamoring Protestant rhetoric in the middle of it all. For Milton’s reasons behind writing his account of the great Satan as an impassioned revolutionary, was to take his apparent selfless heroism, build it up with his own signature love of the dramatic, only to have it destroyed by showing Satan as a coward, a hypocrite, and ultimately, the greatest anti-hero the world had ever seen. For when taking it upon yourself to bring down a tyrant, whether a mortal king or God himself, one must be careful not to become a tyrant as well.

In order to begin, one must correctly identify whether or not the idea that Milton’s Satan was actually written in the spirit of classical heroes, the archetypes, of said classical heroes must be thoroughly examined. After all, what does it mean to be a hero in the most basic sense? Then again, what does it mean to be an epic hero? According to the OED, a “hero” can be defined as “a name given (as in Homer) to men of superhuman strength, courage, or ability, favored by the gods,” “a man distinguished by extraordinary valor and martial achievements; one who does brave or noble deeds; an illustrious warrior,” or also “a man who exhibits extraordinary bravery, firmness, fortitude, or greatness of soul, in any course of action, or in connection with any pursuit, work, or enterprise.” Satan, understandably, fits none of these definitions. He is most certainly not “favored by the gods,” and he is definitely not known for his “noble deeds.” And yet, curiously, the various definitions of “hero” in the OED do somehow manage to meet the fourth definition quite well, for he arguably is “the man who forms the subject of an epic; the chief male personage in a poem, play, or story; he in whom the interest of the story or plot in centered.” Indeed, Satan does centrally concern the focus of the first six books of the poem, and, even when the “Prince of Hell” (Milton, 4.871) is not present, the action does revolve around his rebellion, and his intent to corrupt man. Even if he is not the intended hero of Paradise Lost, he is, at the very least, its main character.

Although, a definition of classical heroism cannot be defined by the OED alone, as impressive a resource as it may be. There needs to be a broader overview of the term, especially in regards to its connection with the epic form. According to Dean A. Miller and his book, The Epic Hero, “an individual is named the ‘hero’ of a particular incident, which means that he or she had intervened in some critical situation in an extraordinary fashion” (Miller, 1). Note that Miller’s definition relies not on whether the actions of a hero are good or evil, only that they involve a “critical situation” intervened via “extraordinary fashion.” Satan meets these qualifications, does he not? He has the ability to change shape, which is no doubt extraordinary, and in fact he uses this extraordinary ability to “intervene” in the path and ultimate fall of man. For Miller, it seems that morality is never something all that relevant to the hero and his actions. He goes on to establish many other classic qualities of the epic hero, which, unbelievably, also match up all too well with Milton’s Satan. For one, he establishes that heroic tales may revolve around the act of winning a woman in so-called “romantic epics,” (Miller, 45) a feat that Milton’s Satan no doubt accomplishes in convincing Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. No, he does not “woo” her as the term romantic epic suggests, with manly skills or feats, but she is a goal for him, and he does succeed, regardless of how he may have actually felt emotionally about her. Miller also asserts that heroic epics rely on the “adventure,” of going to an unknown place “out there,” “indeterminately far from his heroic base” (Miller, 47). Satan does this extensively throughout the poem, traveling through “the void” (Milton, 2.438), going to Hell, and landing in Eden. Not even taking into account that Miller also asserts that epic heroes usually have “divine parentage” as part of their “heroic biography,” (Miller, 70) or in Milton’s Satan’s case, divine origin, it is nigh impossible to label Milton’s Satan anything but an epic hero.

However, despite Satan’s strongly heroic appearances, one must be sure to remember that he still is, and shall forever be, “The Deceiver.” For ultimately, Milton’s Satan is no closer to the paradigms of epic heroism than the average person is, say, to becoming a superhero. And how, exactly, is the reader made aware of such distinctions, of Satan’s proverbial dirty little secrets? Well, luckily, the literary Satan’s creator, John Milton, left some very condemning clues.

Harkening back to the aforementioned shield and spear of Satan, they, upon first glance, appear to be the larger-than-life weapons of a larger-than-life classical hero. Both are described in epic detail, alluding to their vast size and power, and both are given the same kind of significance and attention a hero’s weapons are normally given in typical epic form. His shield is described as “His ponderous shield, / Ethereal temper, massy, large and round, / behind him cast. The broad circumference / Hung on his shoulders like the moon,” (Milton, 1.284) while his spear is detailed as “His spear (to equal which the tallest pine / Hewn on Norwegian hills to be the mast / Of some great admiral were but a wand),” (1.293). But upon closer inspection, something is apparently amiss, and just like most of Milton’s literary creations, this “something” relies on cleverly sculpted poetic syntax. With Satan’s spear for example, it is supposed that its length equals that of the tallest tree in Norway, until, of course, the reader reaches the end of the passage and realizes that it has suddenly shrunk to the size of “but a wand.” This humiliation continues further in the very same passage, for in order for Satan to rise up from the lake of fire, he uses his once-thought mighty spear as a crutch, as if the Fall somehow enfeebled him, “He walked with [it] to support [his] uneasy steps / over the burning marl” (Milton, 1.295). This is not the only mention of Satan using his spear in this way either, for in Book Six he uses it again as a crutch to steady himself after his blow from Abdiel: “Ten paces huge / He back recoiled, the tenth on bended knee / His massy spear upstayed, as if… / Winds under ground… / Had pushed a mountain from his seat” (Milton, 6.193). Suddenly, the audience now has a completely different view of Milton’s Satan, one as the great Adversary, the Arch Fiend, the Arch Enemy of all Mankind that the epic narrator proclaims him to be, and yet, one that is also pathetic, and small, so small, as though Milton is taking all of Satan’s power and squishing it into nothing more than a little fly buzzing around humanity’s head.

Of course, such a caustic interpretation of Satan’s spear can only translate into more of the same regarding Satan’s shield, and just like his spear, he cannot seem to use this weapon correctly either. In Stephen B. Dobranski’s article Pondering Satan’s Shield in Milton’s Paradise Lost, he argues that “when examined…Satan’s shield symbolizes, updates, and subverts his heroic aspirations, and simultaneously…exposes his…transgressing from Heaven to Hell” (Dobranski, 491). Dobranski goes on to support this claim by focusing on the word “ponderous” in the shield’s original description. For according to the article, the word “ponderous” “during the Renaissance meant not just ‘weighty’ but also ‘clumsy’ and ‘unwieldy’” (Dobranski, 495). Taking this newly discovered nuance into context with the other words of the shield’s description, “massy,” and “large,” the shield is now not only an inconvenience, but also too large for Satan, just as his spear was too small. Once again, the great military leader seen later in the first two books of the poem is called into serious question, begging the question if Milton’s Satan, even while written in the same spirit as Odysseus and Achilles, is really worthy of the post of military commander, or hero, at all. This question is even more solidified when examining the rest of his shield’s description, which states that it “Hung on his shoulders like the moon.” For as Dobranski was so clever in pointing out, this is considerably odd; shields were never worn this way. As the article states, “little in ancient epics recommends this particular placement of Satan’s weapon” (Dobranski, 497), for if Satan were to try and use it for protection, it would not be readily available as his side. Instead, it hangs behind him, on his back, useless and unreachable, alluding to yet another humiliating and cowardly image of Satan as wearing a “tortoise’s ‘shield’” (Dobranski, 500), and failing utterly as a leader.

Although the question still remains, if words such as “hero” and “epic hero” do not, or cannot, accurately define Satan as he really is, then what words do? Starting with one of his most famous epithets, “The Adversary” (Milton, 2.629) (3.81) (3.156) (6.282), what, exactly, does the OED qualify as an “adversary”? “One who, or that which, takes up a position of antagonism, or acts in a hostile manner; an opponent, antagonist; an enemy, foe.” Quite humorously, the definition ends with, “spec. The enemy of mankind, the Devil.” Although considering how utterly complicated and chaotic the mind of Milton’s Satan really is, it is doubtful that the Arch Fiend can be so easily pigeonholed. He did, after all, convince one third of God’s angels to fight with him and follow him on his quest to rid Heaven of a tyrannical God, a quest that while totally insane, did appeal to someone. He therefore cannot be as perfectly dark as a universally hated being of ruin, as the term “adversary” would suggest, nor can he be an epic hero worthy of “noble deeds,” and endless bardic praise. No, Milton’s Satan is something else, the embodiment of a concept called the anti-hero, the aforementioned term first discussed paragraphs ago. But just what is such a thing? And, more specifically, why would Milton go through the trouble, the extensive trouble, no less, as he was blind when he wrote the poem, to even cast his Satan in such a strange, contradictory, and even paradoxical light? The OED unfortunately is not too helpful in defining an “anti-hero,” only supplying a definition that details what an anti-hero is not, offering, “one who is the opposite or reverse of a hero; esp. a chief character in a poem, play, or story who is totally unlike a conventional hero,” but it does however seem to get one thing right: Satan is very much totally unlike a conventional hero. And, as it would turn out, Milton would ultimately end up using this anti-heroic Satan to prove a point, a point regarding the battle of Milton’s very own real-life tyrant, James I, and the rebel forces acting against him.

In order to correctly understand Milton’s war in Heaven and its potential literary, social, and political ramifications, a distinction must be made about what kind of war it actually is. For according to Michael Bryson’s book, The Tyranny of Heaven, “[To] Satan, the war against God is not an allegory of good and evil, but a real and present struggle against a tyrant” (Bryson, 81). Milton’s Satan apparently never saw it as the cosmic struggle between good and evil that average readers would view it as; instead, he viewed it simply as a tyrannical king’s subjects rebelling against (surprise here) tyranny. Although, such a cut and dry assessment of him is unfair. It could be said that that sort of interpretation would be accurate for the other devils that rebelled with Satan, but for Satan himself there was definitely a matter of personal pride involved regarding the rebellion itself. As Bryson most succinctly puts it, “Satan is filled with the rage of a brilliant son who cannot, for whatever reason or combination of reasons, ever be quite brilliant enough to hear his parents say, ‘Thou art my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased’ (Mark 1:11)” (Bryson, 78). Anyone, of course, can relate to such a human take on the Arch Fiend, but once again, if Satan really is Milton’s attempt to “encapsulate evil,” as Bryson put it (78), then why does Milton make him so relatable, and, in many ways, his actions justifiable? Drawing upon Bryson’s book once more, “Milton’s poetic and political use of Satan requires understanding…[of] what is honorable about the rebel angel in order to set the stage for an analysis of where…he goes wrong” (81). Of course, by the poem’s end, there does not seem to be anything at all honorable about Milton’s Satan, although his rebellion against tyranny is, considerably, the most heroic thing the literary Satan ever accomplished. His decision to rebel, even in the face of “the greatest and most terrifying tyranny of all ¾ the tyranny of God himself” (Bryson, 83), “places him in the ranks of the great mythological heroes of world literature” (Bryson, 82). And yet, somewhere along the way, he goes wrong, and where he goes wrong ends up consuming him, destroying his noble war against an ignoble God, for in the process of warring against tyranny, he becomes a tyrant himself. Where God is the King of Heaven, so too Satan is now the king of Hell. It is this great moral tragedy that is not only “the crux of Satan’s character” (Bryson, 83), but also the securing of himself a place in literary history as the ultimate anti-hero, serving as both a model and warning to his once republican England that traded one tyrant for another.

Ultimately, despite Milton aligning his Satan with great classical heroes such as Homer’s Odysseus and Virgil’s Achilles, giving him great and mighty weapons worthy of such a heroic status, and even befitting him with a war against a tyrannical God, he ultimately lives up to none of these virtues associated with the ancient world. Although, for Milton’s own socio-political purposes, his Satan had to fall from grace, he had to begin his journey as a great hero, only to ruin it with his own ontological downfall, otherwise Milton’s point regarding the tyranny of both his Satan and God would simply not have functioned. Milton’s Satan had to become the ultimate anti-hero, and he had to show his audience the consequences of dealing with tyranny only to become even more tyrannical in the process. Herein lies the true message of Satan’s character, more relevant now than it has ever been. His ultimate threat to humanity is his hypocrisy; he is a hero, but he is not; he is a freedom fighter, but he is not. It is this paradoxical nature that slowly alerts the reader to his true qualities, the qualities of a skilled orator, a skilled theoretician, the qualities of yet another of his most famous namesakes, “The Deceiver.” For if Milton truly “believed that the basis of a free state was free speech and freedom of conscience” (320) as Anna Beer states in her Milton biography, Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer, and Patriot, then this would also mean that each person in that society would then have the overwhelming responsibility to discern the truth from the rhetoric themselves, or else, quite possibly, as Beer continues, “The people would fall for Satan” (320).

Works Cited

Beer, Anna. Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer, and Patriot. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2008.

Bryson, Michael. The Tyranny of Heaven: Milton’s Rejection of God as King. Delaware: Rosemont Publishing & Printing Corp., 2004.

Dobranski, Stephen B. “Pondering Satan’s Shield in Milton’s Paradise Lost.” English Literary Renaissance Inc. Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2005. 490-506.

Miller, Dean A. The Epic Hero. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2000.

Milton, John. Paradise Lost: A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Gordon Teskey. United States: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 2005