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