William Blake gives powerful
statement: “The reason, Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God
and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet and of the
Devil’s party without knowing it.”
In fact, all the poetic powers of Milton are
shown in delineation the men's fatal enemy. Milton has endowed him the tragic
grandeur of classical heroes. Some of the classical heroic qualities of Milton’s
Satan are his physical might, his injured pride; his indomitable will, his
leadership, and his appeal to human nature. Hazlitt remarks: “Whatever the
figure of Satan is introduced, whatever he walks or flies rising aloft incumbent
on the dusky air, it is illustrated with the most appropriate image,”
Milton’s
first description of Satan is intended to impress us with his super-human
dimensions. He is of gigantic appearance as in the words of Milton, “In bulk as
huge/As whom the fables name of monstrous size.” He is compared to the monstrous
size of mythical Titans, or Briareos or Typhoon or that sea-beast Leviathan,
“…which God of all his works/Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream.” Then,
Satan’s shield is compared to the moon as seen by Galileo through his telescope
and his spear is compared to the tallest tree on the hills of Norway.
One the
key aspect of Satan’s character is his “obdurate pride” and “study of revenge”.
Self exaltation is the motive of his conduct. He suffers from a sense of
“injured merit”. He vaunts aloud his tragic hubris; overweening self-confidence
and his superior foresight. Even when he sees destructive gloom all around him,
his contemptuous pride accompanies him:
“Round he throws his baleful eyes
That
witnessed huge affliction and dismay
Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast
hate.”
He reveals his intellectual pride in his address to Hell: “And thou
profoundest Hell, Receive thy new possessor, one who brings A mind not be
changed by place or time.” S.T. Coleridge remarks: “....around this character
(Milton) has thrown a singularity of daring, a grandeur of sufferance and a
ruined splendor.”
Another key aspect of Satan’s personality is his outstanding
courage and indomitable will. He, though, is wrong-headed but has
extraordinary courageous personality. Heaven is lost to him and his legions
forever but he does not lose heart and inspires his comrades with new zeal:
“What though the field be lost?
All is not lost—the unconquerable will
And study
of revenge and immortal hate.”
Milton’s Satan is endowed with the unique
qualities of a great leader. He has courage, resourcefulness and unyielding
spirit. He knows how to command and inspire his followers in the times of
distress. As a leader Satan has great anxiety for his followers, feels sorry for
their miserable condition, appreciates their loyalty and sheds tears of sympathy
for them. He stirs his followers by bombastic and rhetorical language:
“Peace is
despaired/For who can think submission.”
“Princes, Potentates/Warriors, the
flower of Heaven, once yours now lost.”
“Awake, Arise or be forever fallen.”
His
dictum is, “Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven.” As a result of his
fiery speeches, millions of rebel angels drew their swords and “Highly they
raged/Against the Highest.”
Regardless of the fact that millions of rebel angels
Satan has at his command, however, such faithfulness does not diminish his
resentment over his defeat in Heaven, “For the thought/Both of lost happiness
and lasting pain/Torments him.” He makes conscious attempts to preserve his calm
demeanour for the sake of his followers. While he plots his revenge against God,
Satan struggles from an inner turmoil that he hides from his legions. He cannot
allow his feelings of regret to show to his followers because this kind of
uncertainty would be interpreted as weakness. To him weakness is a crime:
“Fallen Cherub, to be weak is miserable/Doing or suffering.”
Finally, both Satan and angels exhibit very human traits and succumb to the common
temptations and sins. That is why audience often catch a glimpse of themselves
in portrayal of these ethereal figures. From the above discussion, it becomes
evident that the character of Satan is a blend of noble and ignoble, the exalted
and the mean, the high or the low; and therefore it becomes extremely difficult
to declare him a hero or a villain.
The 19th century Romantics considered Satan
as the chief figure of Paradise Lost as Romanticism envisages that a hero should
have a towering personality and eloquent speaker along with being a keen advocate of freedom. Shelley, for example,
considered, “Milton’s Devil as a moral being”. Classicists, on the other hand, deem him a personification of evil. Hence, buying their argument, one cannot treat
Satan as hero of Paradise Lost as he is essentially a wicked character and an embodiment of evil. He may have some heroic qualities but he cannot be a
hero. As the
poem proceeds, the towering figure of Satan degenerates; he loses his foothold
and reclaims his common reputation—of deceitfulness. We can Sum up above
discussion in the words of C.S. Lewis: “From hero to general, from general to
politician, from politician to secret-service agent and thence to a…toad, and
finally to a snake—such is the progress of Satan.”