Satan as a Hero
Satan is often depicted as the ultimate antagonist, the undisputed enemy of mankind, however John Milton tells a different story in Paradise Lost where Satan is not exactly the hero but not the villain either. While the story is ostensibly about the original sin and the fall of man, Milton focuses mostly on Satan and his role in the story, making him the protagonist. Reversing the traditional perspective of good and evil, Milton’s Satan possesses many of the characteristics of a hero; superhuman skill, guile, and a divine origin, but is motivated by selfish intentions, lacks any moral compass, and is prone to hubris. Satan can thus be classified as the tragic antihero of Paradise Lost.
In the opening lines of Paradise Lost
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Satan admits, “pride and worse ambition threw me down”; he is prone to hubris (4.40). God describes Satan to his Son, “so bent he [Satan] seems / On desperate revenge, that shall redound / Upon his own rebellious head” (3.84-86). Satan’s prideful disposition leads him to making brash decisions that worsen his position instead of advancing it. When he is calling the fallen to retake heaven, Satan declares, “More destroyed than thus / … What fear we then? What doubt we to incense / His utmost ire?” (2.92-95). He is so blinded by his feeling of betrayal at the situation, “his look denounced / Desperate revenge”, that he fails to recognize the grace God has had for him (2.106-107). Belial answers Satan, “What can we suffer worse? / … when we lay / Chained on the burning lake? That sure was worse”, but Satan cannot hear the voice of reason (2.163-169). As Moore later describes, “For never can true reconcilement grow / Where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep” (4.98-99). Satan, like many tragic heroes never grows past his flawed ways and ultimately succumbs to …show more content…
When Satan returns eight days later, he faces the penultimate challenge, corrupting man, but more significantly, he faces himself, “the Evil One abstracted stood / From his own evil, and for the time remained / Stupidly good, of enmity disarmed, / Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge” (9.463-466). For a moment, Satan is faced with a spark of goodness, but true to himself and his mission, evil prevails. Satan goes on to complete his quest, corrupting humanity, exacting his revenge on God, and returns to hell a hero. Upon his return, Sin greets Satan, “thy virtue hath one / What thy hands builded not, thy wisdom gained / With odds what war hath lost, and fully avenged / Our foil in Heav’n” (10.372-375). Satan fulfilled his destiny, but, alas, as any tragic hero, Satan was doomed to fail, “he stood, expecting / Their universal shout and high applause / To fill his ear, when contrary he hears / … A dismal universal hiss, the sound / Of public scorn” (10.504-509). His hubris blinded him to the consequences of his actions. It is difficult to conceive Satan as a hero in any context, but Milton achieves this. Paradise Lost demonstrates how significant our frame of reference is to our perception of who a hero and who is a villain. While the personification of evil may never be recognized as a hero in everyday life, many other individuals might be considered a hero, or at least not a monstrous villain, if we consider their side of the
He had abandoned me, and in the bitterness of my heart I cursed him” (119). The Creature is immensely influenced by “Paradise Lost” using many references to relate itself to its scenario. It finds itself more similar to Satan since both have diffilcuties coping with rejection from their Creators. However, the Creature shares more similarities to Adam since
The one on front, and that vermilion was…” (Dante's Inferno: Canto XXXIV) In other words, the theme of satan's description is an eternal punishment that will be powerful enough for the divine right. Using contrapasso, sinners must pay for the punishments in which they have committed in their lifetime. The sin will always fit the punishment.
Khang Nguyen Jasmine Le Ms. Brooks English 4 P4 February 6, 2018 Socratic Seminar Critical Questions 1.Why did Frankenstein run from his creation? Victor is the type of person that cannot handle responsibility well. We first see this in Chapter 3, after his mother’s death, “My mother was dead, but we had still duties which we ought to perform; we must continue our course with the rest and learn to think ourselves fortunate whilst one remains whom the spoiler has not seized.”
Shakespeare brings into this soliloquy a brief allusion from the bible to show the deepened emotion of Wolsey. Initially, Wolsey states “and when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,” comparing his fall to Lucifer’s. Their fall is devastating that they both will “never… hope again.” Before Lucifer's downfall, he was a magnificent being whom helped out God.
My knowledge of the Bible is limited to what was reiterated to me in church. Growing up, I was taught that Satan was once a good angel who rebelled against and disobeyed God because he was jealous and wanted to be more powerful than God. I never questioned this because I thought seeking answers and clarification would be going against God. For some Christians, Satan is the
The novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley says a person is responsible for their actions if they do not weigh the possible consequences of their actions before making their final decision. Throughout the novel, Mary Shelley shows the consequences of actions that are done without proper thought beforehand. Victor Frankenstein wants to create life, he wants to be god, and his lust for this goal overtakes his common sense. Victor rushes into making his creature and then makes rash decisions which also contributes to his demise and the death of several of his close friends and family. The monster should be held responsible for his actions to a certain extent, however, his actions are influenced by Victor’s initial impetuous decisions.
Dante’s portrayal of Satan shows him to be monstrous and empty as he does not fulfill any satisfaction that is felt if something is missing in one’s life. The thing that is missing in the readers’ lives is God as only God can satisfy our desire. This paradox of Satan by Dante speaks truth as to the fact he is both monstrous and empty. This is an astounding idea to think but it makes sense as he is seen with three heads gnawing on the sinners in the final realm of Hell, Judecca, but is also empty as he is the epitome of sin and, as said earlier, sin is empty and never truly
In Dante’s Inferno, Dante Alighieri's depiction of Satan at the bottom of hell reveals the theme that in Hell the punishment is always befitting of the due to the fact that the lower you go, the farther that person is from god. The picture of Satan satisfies the reader because he shows that he is the opposite of god and that he is full of evil. Lucifer is the demon in the circles of hell which he has three faces, and bat like wings in which he creates the cold wind where the sinners suffer. “The face in the middle was red, the color of anger. The face on the right was white blended with yellow, the color of impotence.
The devil is the supreme being of all evil. The villain, once called Lucifer and was the greatest of all angels l, rebelled against God over his jealousy of man. Turning evil and fighting the Almighty, he was destined to lose and thrown out of heaven, along with his army. In Dante’s Inferno, he resides in the deepest bowels of hell, where he tortures the three worst traitors in human history: Judas Iscariot, betrayer of Jesus of Nazareth, Cassius and Brutus, slayers Julius Caesar. In hell, contrapasso rules, and the appearances of the fallen angel Lucifer agrees with it.
The Creature begins with killing the people that are most dear to Victor. Satan does the same thing in a similar way by bringing death to God’s own children. Lucifer causes trouble and even mortality to Adam and Eve’s perfect life. Once he introduces sin to them, all of God’s children thereafter are doomed. It is from these actions, that it is easily said that the Monster and Satan are damned for eternity.
His attempts at bringing about the downfall of Adam and Eve, as well as his encounters and interactions with the rest of God’s creation, address the initiation stage. The return is depicted in Satan’s venture back into the underworld, as well as the consequences that fall on everyone, following his actions
The monster believes that he is like Satan. He once was good, saving a young girl from drowning, but like Satan, he has fallen into the pits of hell. Where he consistently seeks revenge on Victor, his creator, who is seen as an allusion to God. This relationship between the monster and its creator, can be viewed as a parallel to God and Adam/Satan. Like Adam, he was created by God (Victor), and craves for a companion, just like the monster, who constantly implies that, “I am alone.
By the development of the genre , the gothic villain appears as the main character in a gothic story . The gothic hero – villain characteristics often embody three main types as their model : Milton’s Satan, a rebellious compelling figure derived from Milton’s “Paradise Lost”; or Prometheus ,a mythological character who exceeded his limit by stealing fire from Zeus, the father of gods in Greek mythology, and offers it to mankind ; or Byronic hero, a complex moody, cynical, character derived from the famous English romantic poet Lord Byron, marked by his rejection of traditional values with noticeable intelligence, cunning, intense feeling of passion and strong sensual desires .
1. Paradise Lost was written by John Milton and first published in 1667, and has influenced poetry and literature in many ways since then. In fact many of the authors and works that we have read in this class were influenced by Paradise Lost. I think the biggest influence that I have seen was the use of opposition. I’m sure that this was not something the Milton started but he was a master at using the imagery of light and dark to compare good and evil, God and Satan, as well as Heaven and Hell.
To begin his mission, Milton devoted his first book of Paradise Lost to introduce Satan along with his falling angels in Hell attempting to plan a revenge on God. So, Satan is the central figure of book 1, a figure that Milton presents with plenty of epithets and with a magnificent energy and a personal pride. To what extent did Paradise Lost present Satan as a moral agent? Given the politics of the English revolution and restoration, how precisely should we interpret Satan’s language and policy in Hell? Did the spiritual poem reveal the 17th century religious beliefs or Milton’s ones?