Essay about Satan in Paradise Lost and The Myth of Sisyphus

Satan’s character embodies the idea of a heroic figure because he questions what he feels to be true, even though his tragic fall is that he becomes easily misguided.

He is bitter of his losses, but he also acknowledges the reality of his circumstances. Satan is ultimately a heroic figure because he is able to bear the weight of impossible pain and suffering while still moving forward and fighting for what he believes in. He is someone who persists against all odds, recognizes the risks of his decisions, and he acts anyway. A true hero is not one who is wholly good, but an individual who is willing to face challenges to get what he deserves. As Satan himself says, “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.” This acceptance of his conditions and the commitment to moving forward despite them makes him

Since the beginning of Paradise Lost, a reader can witness the dramatizing power possessed by Satan, and how he takes advantage of this very power in order to satisfy his own causes. One such property of Satan's fantastic powers is his ability to manipulate any individual into a false belief of who he really is, and therefore prevent a habitant of paradise from discovering his true purpose that is hidden behind his actions. One such example of this, and one of the most major in the epic, are the events that occur in Book IX involving Satan and Eve around the forbidden tree. Here, Satan uses, what is to Eve, excellent reasoning to convince her to eat the forbidden fruit, thereby exploiting

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.

Satan’s fall can be easily broken up into four steps: he came to think of himself too highly, putting himself equal to God; he made a following for himself; he plotted a rebellion with his fellow rebel angels; and he attempted to carry out the rebellion. His attempt to overthrow God and obtain power was, however, futile and easily thwarted. Satan was severely demoted and he spent the rest of the plot trying to pervert every good thing as if it would be to any avail to do so. He attempted to exert his own powers over creation and tried to get a foothold so that he could gain more power. His extreme arrogance led to his fall from grace. “This is the same willfulness which lies behind his rebellious claim in heaven that he is ‘self-begot’…What Satan the general refuses to give up here…is…individual glory, which he pursues at all costs.” (Loewenstein, 56-57). Considering that Satan was an angel in the presence of God at the beginning, he had no excuse such as ignorance to claim. Satan’s rebellion began within himself with little else to prompt him. Satan had the ambition to raise a rebel force, but army or no army, he surely would have thought himself more powerful than he ought have. His pride also got in the way of him ever being restored to his former position. “As part of his task of exculpating God…Satan explains that even if he could repent and get back to heaven ‘by act of grace’, it would do

   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

In “Paradise Lost” I think that Milton’s character Satan may be considered one of the most complex characters and is always changing. Of course at first he comes off as a very evil guy, who had a strong thirst for vengeance and liked to wreak havoc. Even though

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

First, to prove that Satan must be something more than a mere “favored” angel, some kind of divine being, let us consider Adam’s longing for a companion (as I think the concept here holds basis): he reasons with God as to why it is appropriate for him to have an equality alongside, and of course, God, “not displeased,” grants Adam’s request, that is to become, Eve. Now imagine God in the shoes of Adam, that is

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

"In the forefront of the battle, where we expect him, is Milton's Satan, the great rebel of Paradise Lost" (Hamilton 7). Hamilton also introduces the idea of an underdog, describing Satan as a person fighting against an inferior power, with extreme odds against a victory for his side (14). In the scenes around the battle in heaven, Milton shows how Satan is viewed as a leader by the other fallen angels.

Milton, through Satan's soliloquies in Book 4, shows that Satan's idea of free will is a facade, and God carefully manipulates him to fulfill his plan of Adam and Eve's fall. While speaking, Satan inadvertently places doubts in the reader's mind that his will is free. Satan proves through his actions that God created him to act in a very narrow range, even though he himself does not realize this. The combination of pride, ambition, abhorrence of subordination, and ignorance of his own state as a puppet lead to perpetually diminishing stature and divinity.

God throws Satan and his followers into hell for their defiance. Satan shows rebellion towards God, this is the first rebellion there ever was. According to Webster’s dictionary rebellion is organized opposition to authority, a conflict in which one faction tries to take control from another. I think rebellion also includes disobedience. John Carrey says that in the epic “Satan concedes his own criminality, and his own responsibility for his fall. He facilitates between remorse and defiance. He confesses that his rebellion was completely unjustifiable, that he had the same freewill and power to stand as all God’s creatures, and that he therefore has nothing to accuse but heavens free love dealt equally to all”(134). Basically Satan did this to himself. We do not really understand why Satan defied God and we probably would not understand.

Following the standards of classic tragic heroes, Satan is a determined leader with an extreme amount of hubris. He knows that God is the most powerful being and yet he still