Drama especially that of Marlowe and of his contemporary Shakespeare,
operates through an interchange of dialogue and soliloquy, public scenes and private
scenes. In Books I and II of Paradise Lost, all the scenes are public, and we find no
instance of a soliloquy, which is often more revealing of the true feelings of a
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character than the dialogue. However, Satan does have later soliloquies, which do
much to undercut whatever initial impression we may have formed of his valour. It
would be wrong to place too much emphasis on the dramatic qualities of Paradise
Lost, because it is a poem, despite its dramatic origins. However, there is one aspect
of the difference between drama and epic poetry, which we must be aware of, and
that is the difference between reading a poem and watching a play.
The critic A.J.A. Waldock (1947: P.67) systematised the feeling which had
become popular through gothic interpretations of Milton – that Satan was an attractive
figure, ill-deserving of his fate. Waldock argues that Milton has been so successful in
his description of a powerful and attractive Satan in Books I and II of Paradise Lost
that he has been forced to jettison this character altogether and to replace him with the
degraded Satan who appears in the later books. However, Burden (1967: P.140)
suggests that the poem contains within it a ‘satanic epic’, of which Satan is the hero,
and argues convincingly that Satan constantly thinks of himself in terms of the
attributes of the hero of a conventional epic: ambitious, courageous and representing
his people against the might of a fierce oppressor. This self-portrait extends beyond
the early Books in hell, and is part of his method for attempting Eve, in the guise of a
serpent (Book IX lines 687-90):
Look on me, Me who touched and tasted, yet both live, And life more perfect have attained than fate Meant me, by venturing higher than my lot.
Burden says of these lines: ‘Satan is claiming to have acted as the typical hero
of his sort of poetry, a satanic epic about “their own heroic deeds” (P.143). Yet this
satanic epic proves to have a disappointing climax for its hero when, as he later
reports to hell, he seems to have effected the downfall of humankind not through a
great military triumph, but with an apple.
Hence the opening Books of the poem bring out the rich complexity of
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Milton’s Satan-both his attractiveness and his perversity. As Milton portrays this
cosmic adversary, the enemy of God and man, the poet reveals the ambiguities of
Satan’s self-assertion, as well as the aggression manifested by his martial values and
his unyielding defiance. A figure of immense passion and energy, Satan appears as a
courageous and charismatic military leader capable of arousing his fallen legions. He
is, moreover, a remarkably skilful rhetorician, like other epic heroes for example,
Achilles in the Iliad. He is also characterised by his great wrath. Yet Satan manages
to discipline this epic furore, marshalling it in order to pursue what the Romantic
critic William Hazlitt (1970: P.67), so aptly called his ‘daring ambition’.
Furthermore, the poem shows us that Satan is perverse: he has defiantly turned away
from his creator, forcefully asserting that he is ‘self-begot, self-rais’d/by his own
quick’ning power’ (Book 5 lines 860-1). Thus while Milton’s Satan is indeed
theologically perverse, the early Books of the poem brilliantly enable us to
feel his power and appeal.
Paradise Lost is quite explicitly a poem intended to educate, as Milton
declares at the beginning of the opening Book, where he asks for inspiration to ‘assert
eternal providence,/ And justify the ways of God to men’ (lines 25-6). Part of the
process of education is the rejection of the attractions of the satanic epic, and the
exercising of judgement in recognising satanic heroism from its true counterpart.
Never one to miss a chance for order and symmetry, Milton set bounds on Satan’s
tenure as hero that are as clear as the boundary set around his Eden. The two dramatic
monologues that frame his long journey also delimit the part of the poem where the
reader is encouraged to sympathize with him from the rest of it. The question that
remains is, what specific devices does the poet use to elevate Satan as a character and
then cast him down into ‘a lower deep…to which Hell seems a Heaven,’ i.e. despair?
The monologue that inaugurates the reader’s sympathy with Satan occurs just
after he has mustered all his fallen troops. Though earlier speeches have paved the
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way for this one, it is here that Satan’s feeling for his ‘associates and co-partners’
seems most genuine. Before, he was merely a commanding general, harshly
upbraiding his followers to ‘awake, arise, or be forever fallen’ and then counting them
up so that his ‘heart / distends with pride, and hardening in his strength / glories’ (
Book I line 484-5). His heart seems much softer in the later passage, when it takes
him three tries to choke words out through ‘tears such as angels weep’. Harnessing
the remnants of Satan’s ‘original brightness,’ Milton emphasizes the fallen angel’s
‘care’ and ‘remorse’ for his fallen comrades. These positive elements, along with his
inferior position to God, conspire to arouse the reader’s sympathies and set him up as
the closest thing to a protagonist in the early portions of the poem.
Before the readers have quite regained their balance, Milton presents the
distracting depiction of the devils building project, whose action and concrete imagery
stand out after so much speechmaking. By the end of the infernal council, Satan’s
noble concern for his followers is the main idea left over from the initial scenes.
Before the reader can quite remember that Satan ought to be the bad guy here, he is
shown putting his own safety on the line, ‘accepting as great a share / of hazard as of
honor’ (Book III Line 505).
After spinning up the poem’s flywheel with active, concrete descriptions of
the devils’ exploration of Hell, Milton rejoins Satan as he embarks on his upward
flight. Undertaking a journey with specific tests along the way clinches the fiend’s
place as an epic hero, and the way Satan talks, rather than fights, his way through
them is reminiscent of Beowulf’s brazen use of his ‘word-hoard.’
With Satan’s popularity with the reader nearing its apex, it’s time to start
thinking about putting on the brakes, and that is just what Milton does. In Satan’s
first test, the encounter with Sin and Death, Milton works in both a flashback to
Satan’s rebellion against God and a foreshadowing of his temptation of Eve in the
Garden. It is a neat trick to place such a great affirmation of Satan’s heroism as his
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brave, hyperbole-filled stance against Death immediately before an incestuous
reminder of his fallen state. Satan ends up being the original tired dad.
Immediately following this revelation, Satan overcomes this first obstacle by
appealing to the monsters’ greed, offering to bring them to earth, where they ‘shall be
fed and filled…all things shall be [their] prey’ (1514). Sin, one of three female
characters to appear in the poem (other than the devils that appear in both male and
female forms), readily capitulates and uses the key entrusted to her, breaking the one
command given to her by ‘Heaven’s all-powerful King’ (1514). This parallels
Satan’s later appeal to Eve to break the only command given to her, and both parallel
the myth of Pandora an allusion Milton will make explicit later on.
The court of Chaos and Night, bristling with fearsome names like ‘Orcus’ and
‘Demogorgon,’ is the next obstacle Satan must cross (1516). Back in heroic-mode, he
speaks boldly, once more appealing to greed. This time his audience is ‘ancient
Night,’ who happens to be the second of the three female characters he will meet
(1517). Though Chaos answers for the pair of rulers, both he and Satan indirectly
suggest that Night is the supreme power in this land, Satan mentioning her ‘standard’
and Chaos her ‘scepter’ (1517). So for the second time on his voyage Satan’s heroic
moment becomes bound up with his temptation of a female character, prefiguring the
central Garden scene.
Yet another heroic struggle ensues, as Satan must still pass through the final
leg of Chaos and then find his way inside the ‘firm opacous globe’ surrounding and
shielding the new creation (1518, 1528). However, this section is also tainted to help
tear down some of the impressive scaffolding propping up Satan as a protagonist.
The metaphors describing him change dramatically as he nears his goal; originally
compared to the noble ship Argo, Satan is reduced to a stalking vulture in the later
scene (1518, 1528). What’s more, if the sphere of creation is a symbol of the apple
Eve eats as discussed above, Satan enters like a worm, first crawling over the surface
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and then diving into the weakest part of the rind.
From this point on, Satan begins to rely on deception and craftiness rather than
strength and bold words; take his encounter with Uriel, for example. The fallen angel
asking directions while in disguise is a far cry from the champion presented earlier,
who burned ‘like a comet’ and was ready to battle Death himself (1532, 1511). It is at
this point, just as Satan is in sight of the final obstacle keeping him from his goal the
leafy wall surrounding Paradise that Milton strips away the rest of his heroism.
To re-establish the fiend as the villain of the narrative, the reader is thrown off
balance by unexpected emotions, just as when Satan weeps in the earlier monologue:
‘horror and doubt distract / his troubled thoughts…now conscience wakes despair’
(1533). In his speech, Satan fully and repeatedly admits that he was wrong to rebel
against God; ‘Heaven’s matchless King…deserved no such return / from me, whom
he created’ (1534). Most importantly, and in a lovely bit of irony, he recognizes this
moment as the completion of his earlier fall: ‘which way shall I fly / infinite wrath
and infinite despair?…in the lowest deep a lower deep…to devour me opens wide, /
to which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven’ (1534). ‘All hope excluded thus,’ Satan
pronounces his own final doom by committing the only truly unforgivable sin, despair
Thereafter, Satan becomes a thief, liar, and fraud in the metaphors of the
poem, little more than a sheep rustler or wolf hopping a fence when he enters Eden
(1536). He even lies to himself about his love for humankind and his motives in
ruining them: ‘public reason just / honor and empire with revenge enlarged…compels
me now to do what else, though damned, I should abhor’ (1541).
Milton has made it through the most forbidding and lonesome scenes of the
poem, and now has a wealth of characters available to take up the mantle of
protagonist: Adam, Uriel, Gabriel, even the Son of God. Now that Satan has given up
the last echoes of his angelic dignity and beauty and disappointed the reader by
seeming to come so close to repenting of his folly and then giving up, Milton is free to
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demote Satan to the role of trickster-villain despite his recent feats.
This personal upset to the reader’s trust and hope for the protagonist is vital
to Milton’s purpose; it engages the reader in an old story as well as serving in a
technical way to get all the characters Milton needs to the proper places at the proper
time in the narrative. The delicate way in which he holds the character of Satan
poised between heroic and villainous acts during his physical ascent and spiritual fall
makes use of the full gamut of poetic devices, including allusion, metaphor,
hyperbole, diction, and more a tricky juggling act of character development, until he
is ready to let the ball drop.
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Bibliography
Bradley, S.A.J. (1992). Anglo-Saxon Poetry. Everyman.
Burden, Dennis. (1967). The Logical Epic. Routledge.
Jones, R.C. (1988). Engagement with Knavery. Duke University Press. Durham. England.
Milton, John. (1998). Paradise Lost. Penguin. England.
Waldock, A.J.A. (1947). Paradise Lost and its Critics. Cambridge University Press.
Wittreich, Joseph, ed. (1970). The Romantics on Milton. Cleveland Press. USA.
