How Did Milton View The Nature Of Government

However, craving independence from God ferociously backfires on Satan when he finds out that even after leaving hell, he cannot escape it, “which way [he] [flies] is Hell, [he] [himself] is Hell,” (IV, 75). Satan finds his way to revolt against and separate from God to overrule Heaven and become king, instead however, he takes on the role of the representation of all evil which is evidently seen in his interactions with Eve.

Satan was unwilling to back down, no matter how great God’s power. This mission stands out as an element of the epic hero. In almost all epics written the hero has to stifle past guarded boundaries in order to complete goals. Satan’s bravery in trying to learn answers concerning his existence in heaven and his damnation to Hell is noble. Determination to derive truth is an admirable quality. Though his bitterness creates negative characteristics, his core purpose is not entirely blasphemous. He considers all that is placed before him and says in book 1, “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven” (263). He knows that Hell is a place of doom and torture, but he is committed to living there with dignity and hopes to eventually rise above the creator and gain back what he feels he is entitled to as a living being. This acceptance of his conditions and determination to overcome makes him the underdog that an audience cannot help but root for. Everyone knows what it’s like to be in dark place with no visible escape. People want to be able to relate to a character that remains hopeful. In this sense Satan seems very heroic and critics have even gone as far as interpreting God as the villain.

Young children and adults across the world are taught that God is a hero above the rest. He is both omnipotent and omnipresent, almost like how Santa Clause is described as to little children. God does no wrong and is incapable of committing a sin; He is a picture perfect being. Satan is God’s archenemy and polar opposite, he’s popularly known for his evil ways and the fiery inferno that he inhabits, described in the book Dante’s Inferno. Rarely do people confuse the idea that God is the hero and Satan is the evildoer that needs to be extinguished from the world. I can safely say that in terms of Christianity and its beliefs there is no mistake to who the epic hero of the bible is. In John Milton’s poem “ Paradise Lost,” the lines

     Charles I considered himself to be an absolute monarch in England in the 1630¡¯s. A large portion of the parliament dislikes him because they wanted more of a say on the government and because the

The English had been under the combined rule of both the king and the assembly for so long that they were not ready to give all the power of government to a single person. The least influential, Charles I, was born in 1600 and died 1649 when he inherited the throne parliament was very upset with the monarchy and sought to lessen the power of the monarchy. Charles I tried to rule without consenting Parliament, but Parliament had so much control at the time that he failed to decrease its power. However, Charles believed in the divine rights of kings. Charles went on to oppress his people by levying taxes without the consent of the parliament. Many of his subjects saw him as a tyrannically oppressive leader. He created

   Satan's primary operational problem in Paradise Lost is his lack of obedience. The fundamental misunderstanding which leads to Satan's disobedience is his separation of free will from God's hierarchical power. In the angel Raphael's account, Satan tells his dominions, "Orders and Degrees/Jarr not with liberty" (5.792-93). Tempting as this differentiation seems, Satan is mistaken. Free will and hierarchical power are not mutually exclusive, as Satan suggests, but overlapping concepts. Even though Satan has been created with sufficient freedom to choose to disobey, he tacitly acknowledges God's sovereignty when he exercises his choice. Satan is constrained existentially, from the outset, by

Milton draws his inspiration from these verses in describing Satans pride and his attempt to wage war in heaven. However, in his attempt to make Paradise Lost both a conversation and a narration, Milton decides to describe Satans descend from heaven in closer detail, even with the risk of committing sacrilege.

To be an absolute monarch is to believe that a divine power has granted one the ability to rule them all. Charles, I ruled with a similar view to what gave him the right to act and rule in such a manner as he did. Charles, I reigned as though the people were but his subjects, and he was God. However Charles’ view of himself, his early reign was plagued with predestined horror, and his eventual implemented policies would rarely benefit anyone; at times, he himself received no advance from his primarily domestic policies. As a child whose father -- James Stuart -- himself obtained a disdain for the Parliament, Charles’ relationship with Parliament was predetermined quite before he began his reign.

Charles made many mistakes during his reign, one of which was when the Scottish were rebelling against the king, Charles made a new tax to pay for the army and declared war on the Scots. This was an extremely foolish decision as he could have gone to parliament and asked for their help to deal with the Scots, so then the Scots were dealt with and Charles would have been re-united with parliament. Another bad decision that he made was in 1640 parliament offered him to re-join forces but instead he closed them down again.

Satan encourages his followers and reminds them of their original cause. He shows great leadership skills by re-emphasizing their ideas that at least when they are reigning in Hell, G-d doesn't interfere, and although it is Hell it is still worth ruling rather than serving in Heaven. Satan is dwelling on his power which could be seen as his tragic flaw. He is allowing his pride and ego to surface by glorifying Hell (calling it "profoundest") and declaring himself in possession of Hell. He starts to think of the idea of Heaven and Hell as a mindset. He starts to believe that the mind is what creates a place as Heaven and a place as Hell. Satan feels as though Heaven is Hell because he must serve G-d there, but in Hell, he has a true Heaven because he is served and worshipped. This could be determined as his tragic flaw.

In Milton’s Paradise Lost, surely we have come to ponder upon the makeup of Satan’s attractable character—his rebellious, seductive, almost “bad-ass” attitude—a case of admirable evil. But let us not forget his ambition, his strive to weld the image of God. We have seen many moments throughout where we get Satan’s ground for imitating the image of God: “…In imitation of that Mount whereon / Messiah was declar’d…” (V 764-65). But why does Satan do this? What is it in Satan that causes him to “look up” to God? Is God a tyrant yet a role model to Satan? I propose that Satan’s drive is something more than just an act of pretending; maybe, it is rather a means of trying to grasp what he has been taken away from him. Or, we can say that Satan was more. Perhaps he came to existence not in the mold of angel, but as a divine tool. There must be a reason as to: why Satan was considered God’s “first and favorite angel”? This seems to suggest that Satan is, originally, at some level of divinity; an experiment of God’s that was put to the test (or is a test)—a divine prototype.

In this plan for man's salvation the end shall justify God's means. Therefore justifing the problem of evil and reasons for allowing both sin and death to exist. This ultimate plan of God's Milton presents in Paradise Lost is also a Greater Good Defense. Still, some might not understand why God finds it necessary to put his creations through this process. Milton shows us how this process benefits mankind who has fallen from grace, and also benefits God.

Satan is indeed “Hurled headlong flaming from th’ethereal sky” (Book I, line 45) and into Hell where he will live in fire. But as a leader, and a true protagonist, Satan chooses to accept his situation and rise as a hero for the pack of fallen angels he has led from Heaven. Even if God is his enemy, at least he is not serving anyone. He possesses his own heaven now, though not joyful and happy as the heaven he was just expelled from, “Farewell happy fields/Where joy for ever dwells: hail horrors, hail/Infernal world, …/ Receive thy new possessor” (Book I, lines 249-253). Satan makes Hell his Heaven with his mind, as he says, “The mind is its own place, and in itself/Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n” (Book I, lines 254-255). Satan acknowledges that he has made a Hell of his previous Heaven, but he also uses that reasoning to make Hell into his own Heaven. His anti-heroic qualities are apparent, though, when he tells his followers in Book I, “To do aught good never will be our task/ But ever to do ill our soul delight” (lines 159-160). It cannot be forgotten that Satan is evil by his creation and through his free will. God created Satan with all of his imperfections but makes it clear that he had a choice by

As Satan later claims, “To reign is worth ambition .. /Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.” (PL, I: 262-63, p.156) His statement suggests that his fatal flaw might be his ambition, his desire to become even more powerful than he once was. This image of Satan having a 'fatal flaw', something that drives him into destruction, connects him with the idea of Aristotle's hamartia, and connects him to the imagery of the other a 'good person' who has fallen from grace, but is nonetheless a hero. Satan is also connected to Aristotle's idea that “heroic virtue is superhuman, godlike, and divine”5, when he is described to be “stretched out huge in length” (PL, I: 209, p.155) across the lake, further imprinting the image of his heroic status.

Because of the strict rule of God in this situation, Satan's rebellion is made to seem heroic. He is standing up against the rule of a tyrant, and helping and encouraging others to do the same. Part of the reason Satan in considered such a good leader in this story is because of his ability to persuade his followers through his