Analysis Of John Milton 's Paradise Lost

Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost is a complex character meant to be the evil figure in the epic poem. Whenever possible Satan attempts to undermine God and the Son of God who is the true hero of the story. Throughout the story Milton tells the readers that Satan is an evil character, he is meant not to have any redeeming qualities, and to be shown completely as an unsympathetic figure. Satan’s greatest sins are pride and vanity in thinking he can overthrow God, and in the early part of the poem he is portrayed as selfish while in Heaven where all of God’s angels are loved and happy. Satan’s journey starts out as a fallen angel with great stature, has the ability to reason and argue, but by Book X the anguish and pain he goes through is

In Paradise Lost by John Milton, it falls into the account of the book of Genesis; he adds a lot of detail about the beginning, the creation of man, and the beginning of Satan. Even though it is a hard read for new readers, Milton keeps ones attention by adding specific detail of what happen during the times of Adam and Eve. For some of the things he said happen, doesn’t go along with what is said in the Bible. Taking ideas from the Bible and extend them into more detail, it almost made Satan look like he was punish for no reason, almost the hero in the story, but at the same time isn’t, just another angel that has fallen over jealously. He is just a sympathetic character that knows he got kicked out of the presence of God, and wants to destroy what he created for doing so. Without him tricking Eve, we wouldn’t be here today. For Milton, he had to create tension about what happen, even though God already knew.

John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost explores themes of divine power to justify the ways of God. His portrayal of Satan as the protagonist rather than the villain allows reader’s to see that God doesn’t control people’s actions, and that instead we all have free will even though He does have the power to manipulate it. By including Satan’s side to the story as well as his fall, Milton is able to inform readers about the reason for the happy fall as well as include themes of pride, deceit, and communication. The idea of the happy fall successfully justifies the idea that people have obtained free will from Adam and Eve’s disobedience to God, and that God did plan the fall, but for humanity’s own benefit and to stop Satan. The retelling of The Fall in the epic poem allowed Milton to portray to reader’s that God’s actions were made to benefit all of humankind.

John Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost, has been the subject of criticism and interpretation through many years; these interpretations concur in that Adam and Eve are the sufferers of the poem, and it is their blight to lose Paradise because of their disobedience; however, their exile is merely a plight brought by Satan, and it is he who suffers exile before any others. Satan changes from Book I of the poem to Book XII; his introduction is heroic and grand, appearing as a hero rebelling against an unjust God. But by the finalization of Milton’s poem, Satan is a burnt shell of himself and, though ruler of Pandemonium, he sits in a throne in the lowest pit from God’s light. Satan’s exile brings forth the salvation of mankind and his own regressive transformation; tying in with the theme of disobedience, Satan’s exile gives

In Milton's Paradise Lost, he writes the story of the fall of Satan, his followers, and mankind. Many critics often view Satan as the unlikely or tragic hero of the epic poem. Satan is, obviously, the main character throughout most of the poem, but not necessarily the hero. Satan's main purpose is to fight G-d, and try to be on the same level as Him. The important thing is to realize that Satan is sin, and being humans, who are all born into sin, we can easily relate to a sinful character. G-d is holy and perfect. This is something which we, being fallible humans, cannot begin to comprehend. Satan does, at the beginning, follow many of the attributes which coincide with Aristotle's definition of a tragic hero; however, after the

When a person hears Satan, a streak of fear, and the thought of evil arises. People fear Satan, and think of him as evil, but in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, he displays a thought of the Father being the evil being, and Satan a tragic hero. In Paradise Lost, Book 1 and 2, the minor areas where God is shown, He is displayed as hypocritical. He contradicts himself by creating the humans to be of free will, but when Satan displays free will, he is shunned. Satan could be described in many terms, and by many people, but all can be disputed. According to my sources, Satan is displayed as the hero, while God is the evil deity, and Milton was wrong for writing Him as so. In this essay, I will show my thoughts on the subject of Satan as an evil

John Milton’s Paradise Lost is an epic poem that describes the fall of Satan and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. Satan is the protagonist of Paradise Lost and has several characteristics in which readers may identify with him. Throughout the poem, Satan is not only a tragic hero but also the key character that drives the plot and portrays many flawed human qualities. As an angel fallen from the high esteem of God and a possessor of hubris that leads to his downfall, he represents a tragic hero but also a character in which readers may identify with.

The true hero of Paradise Lost is Satan because He receives a noble birth, Was a warrior, and travels all around the earth many times. Throughout Paradise lost by John Milton, it states many times with evidence that Satan is truly the hero in the story. The article The idea As Satan As The Hero Of “Paradise lost” by John Steadman, shows evidence from paradise lost that explains how Satan is viewed as the hero and not the villain. This Paper will show that Evil sometimes prevails and is the hero of it all, and with the evidence given from each paper should be enough to prove this. Although it seems unusual that the king of evil and leader of hell could ever be a hero, but if looked at carefully, characteristics of an epic hero can be seen. From being tossed out of Heaven, to tricking Eve into eating the apple from the Garden, his journey was definitely epic.

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Grandiose, thought-provoking, formulaic: these are all adjectives evoked within us by epic poems and tales, driven by an unexplainable connection to a hero who through conquering strife and enduring tribulation ultimately is liberated and subsequently hailed and praised. From Gilgamesh to Beowulf to Hector and Odysseus, epic heroes and the stories that accompanied them have long driven themselves into the fabric of cultures creating a lure of nobleness, achievement, and godliness that ordinary men strived for and worshiped.

In John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Satan is one of the major figures of the book. The poem’s intense focus on his temperament portrays psychological information of someone with a conflictive personality, one that pushes and pulls at his emotions. Differing from his fellow fallen angels, he has no regrets for his decisions and is a fearless leader, but in private his deeper, darker thoughts take hold. Lisa Ampleman, a managing editor of the Cincinnati Review says “he is not the absolute evil we may have expected, and a sympathetic devil is a dangerous devil” (Ampleman). This danger creates an interesting story of the creation of man and how man came to fall just as Satan had. As

John Milton divided the characters in his epic poem Paradise Lost into two sides, one side under God representing good, and the other side under Satan representing evil and sin. Milton first introduced the reader to the character Satan, the representative of all evil, and his allegiance of fallen angels that aided in his revolt against God (Milton 35). Only later did Milton introduce the reader to all powerful God, leader and creator of all mankind (John). This introduction of Satan first led the reader to believe acts of sin were good, just like Eve felt in the Garden of Eden when she was enticed by Satan to eat the fruit off of the Tree of Knowledge (Milton 255). The later introduction of The Almighty had the readers change their feelings towards sin, as the ways of God were introduced to them and these ways were shown to be the way to feel and believe. This levy of good vs. evil carried on throughout the poem with the interaction of Satan and his fallen angels with God and his son in Heaven.

In Paradise Lost the reader was able to actually see as more than just a manipulative spirit. We got to see him represented as a strong leader that will fight for what he believes in. The beginning of the poem focuses on Satan’s journey from heaven. According to Matt Wallace, William Blake stated that the reason Milton wrote “at liberty of Devils and Hell was because…he was of the Devil’s party without knowing it” (2008). It is unknown as to where the source of Milton’s Satan came from. Maybe there is more to Milton’s Satan than modern critics have realized.

Satan is the first figure to speak in Milton’s poems in Paradise Lost. His words to Beelzebub are the sort of utterances a politician would make to his party members after a defeat. It combines convincement with the virtue of emotional manipulation. Satan’s words shift like a dream from expression of grief and sympathy to the restatement of united defiance, to which Beelzebub replies unconsciously. Milton creates this shift so subtly that it is hardly noticed and highlights through this that the gift of the gab—the talent of persuasive speech—is virtually the only resource that Satan possesses. However, the gift of the conversation is extensive and enough for Satan to carry on and try to meet his motives. It earns Satan the allegiance of

Through his work of Paradise Lost, Milton exposes his view that God allows suffering in order for a greater good of the human race to exist. Milton uses the Fall- both Satan’s and Adam and Eve’s- as a device to demonstrate human corruption, as each fall is “a step down from a higher being to a lower being”. Both the Fall of Satan and the Fall of Adam & Eve are falls away from a position of divine power to a position of chaos and disorder- something Milton illustrates as an undesirable event. Milton introduces Satan as a selfish, power-hungry character; similar to an individual of today’s society who believes they are the greatest- nobody can ‘one-up’ them. He inherently denies of the existence of a greater God, as that would discredit his own belief that he is the utmost being. Instead of blind denial, Satan instead builds up a power against God himself, in an effort to “contest the throne of Heaven” (slide). However, this in of itself is a hypocrisy on his own beliefs, as he cannot be autonomous in a search for autonomy, since he is unable to defeat God on his own. This is Satan’s first fall, because he has now relinquished his stance on denying a being greater than himself, and must maintain his uprising unless he wants to face what Milton would consider a second Fall. Milton uses Satan as a representation of disobedience within the human race; he is the ‘wrong direction’ in the two paths of moral decisions. He uses Satan to show that rebellion that stems from self-