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Milton’s Satan: the Father of Post-Fall Humanity?
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name.
But what’s puzzling you is
The nature of my game.
Mick Jagger, “Sympathy for the Devil”
It is a common thing for human beings to celebrate the worst in ourselves as often as we celebrate the best. Perhaps this explains why many, when reading Milton’s Paradise Lost, have claimed to feel the strongest sympathy for Satan, the eternal antagonist of the divine and prime mover in the fall of humanity. Why is it so easy to sympathize with a character that is the traditional symbol of all that is evil? The answer may be that we see so much of ourselves in his actions. He is, at once, as unrepentantly vengeful as Heathcliff, as blindly persevering as Oedipus, and as manipulative as a number of characters from Jane Austen. As negative as the aforementioned characteristics nakedly sound, the respective characters that embodied them are today regarded as literary heroes. All of these attributes, after all, are in our nature and we at the very least identify with those who display them. Furthermore, as Satan may be the first character to display these characteristics openly and cause our subsequent adoption of them, the argument can be made that Satan is the father of mankind as we exist after the fall.
When Satan first alights on Hell’s shores, he is filled with an obvious sense of loss. He sees the “mournful gloom,” (PL 1. 244) and at first, he is afraid, he is petrified. He thinks that he could never live without God by his side. But then he spends so many nights thinking how God did him wrong and he grows strong. He learns how to get along. Indeed, much like Gloria Gaynor’s celebrated hit “I Will Survive”, Satan’s song of lament quickly turns to one of strength and acceptance.
…and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new possessor: one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n. (PL. 1. 251-255)
Wasn’t God the one, after all, who tried to break him with goodbye? Did God think he’d crumble? Did God think he would lay down and die? Oh not I…err, Satan. He will survive. As long as he knows how to scheme, he knows he’ll stay alive (Gaynor). For the sake of avoiding further torture of this metaphor, suffice it to say that it very easy for modern readers to see any of humanity’s old familiar tales of strength in Satan’s plight. Obviously Satan is no jilted lover, but surely some jilted lover in history has compared the feeling to changing Heaven for Hell. With this in mind, Satan’s pledge to overcome this state causes many to bond with him early on.
And scheme he does. Fresh from the throes of spiritual warfare, Satan rouses his subordinates to construct a new palace, Pandaemonium, and confer as to how to proceed. This raises another important point. Milton presents God and the angels in a very human way. In fact, Milton’s anthropomorphization of the incorporeal characters may be one of the greatest sources of interpretive questions regarding the overall text. Aside from the wings and omniscience, they have very human characteristics and, in this human universe, Heaven is by no means a democracy. It is a dictatorship with God as its ruler. He may not endorse beatings or political assassination (though exile is certainly an available option), but human beings would likely view Milton’s God, if he were an actual worldly human ruler, as a kind of passive-aggressive dictator at best. He may not include a lot of, “or else…” in his decrees, but at the end of the day, nobody ever forgets that he is the unquestionable, insurmountable authority. Satan’s great consult, on the other hand, could almost pass for a darkly wacky form of democracy. Even if it isn’t democratic in any real sense, the counsel at Pandaemonium at the very least welcomes differing opinions (even if the ultimate decision reflects the will of its leader). Satan must employ his rhetoric to rouse his minions to action and, ultimately, he listens to their proposals during the consult. Furthermore, we view the overthrow of a dictator as a heroic act to be celebrated. In this story, God appears as the dictator and Satan, the valiant rebel, set on overthrowing him in a story that would make the common person, especially a Republican, gleeful.
The consult’s final decision to attempt corruption of God’s new creation shows a kind of rebelliousness worthy of Fonzie (or any other archetype of that bolt of cloth). Perhaps the sentiment is far more malicious than the humorous counterculture ideal displayed by Fonzie. Nevertheless, the antiestablishment mentality is recognizable and relatable to a large mass of the populace and, in the face of no certain success, takes on the light air of anything Fonzie might have attempted if faced with the same establishment. Their decision, after all, is not one that has any reasonable chance at ultimately defeating God outright. It is, as Beelzebub says, merely an attempt to, “interrupt his joy” (PL 2. 371) by making man curse his creator as he shares in Hell’s punishment. Although they have no hope of defeating their oppressor, Satan embarks on a quest to ruin God’s day in the modern equivalent of leaving a flaming bag of canine feces on his doorstep as if to say, “I’m still here and I’m not giving up!”
One step no more than from himself can fly
By change of place: now conscience wakes despair
That slumbered, wakes the bitter memory
Of what he was, what is, and what must be
Worse; of worse deeds worse sufferings must ensue. (PL 4. 22-26)
Book 4 puts Satan into a position more than worthy of human pity. Even the narrator recognizes Satan’s profound, if brief, regret. In this passage, he is defeated. He is a being, once great, reduced to eternal chagrin and malice. Alas, he can make no more than one step toward changing. His nature and circumstance will allow no further improvement. The reader can view him with the same helping of empathy often held for characters like Frankenstein’s monster. He has great dismay for his status as a monster and wishes to be better, but continues to play the role of monster ascribed to him.
Prolific Christian apologist and all-around great thinker C.S. Lewis comments on Satan’s downfall to the status of monster in his book A Preface to Paradise Lost. “From hero to general, from general to politician, from politician to secret service agent, and thence to a thing that peers in at bedroom or bathroom windows, and thence to a toad, and finally to a snake-such is the progress of Satan” (Lewis 99). Paradise Lost introduces Satan at the beginning of his role as a politician and readers see him decline from there. Throughout the process, Satan remains his own worst enemy in a tragic progression worthy of Oedipus Rex. Blind to the logical fallacy that took him from hero to general, Satan continues to lean on that same fallacy through his continuing degradation. This fallacy is rooted in the perception of the source of one’s power, according to Lewis in what he refers to as the “doom of Nonsense” (Lewis 97).
According to Lews, this doom of Nonsense is akin to “the scent of a flower trying to destroy the flower” (Lewis 97). Satan fails to recognize the source of his exalted position and, in rebelling against the source, thus rebels against that which he hopes to uphold. Satan continues treading his own logical minefield as he continues his rebellion. This knowledge might not serve to increase an observer’s enmity of the apostate angel, but rather to enhance the magnitude of sympathy for such a kind of self-destructive blindness as self-destructive blindness can rank eminently among human faults.
Lewis argues further, concerning Satan’s thought process, “That the obedient angels might love to obey is an idea which cannot cross his mind even as a hypothesis” (Lewis 98). This raises another human element into the discourse. Presumably, before Satan’s published his dissenting opinion, God’s was the only decree recognized in Heaven. Therefore, before Satan’s contradiction, how could anyone call the will of God “good”? What is good, after all, without an existing evil for purpose of contrast? Was Satan, then, the first philosopher as he authored the original viewpoint of evil? Humans would likely have no knowledge of this philosophical problem of evil had Satan not tempted us into the fall. God granted us free will and set the tree of knowledge in our path, but Satan is the one who really presented us with the choice. In so doing, Satan may have given birth to humanity’s awareness of good versus evil and the curiosity that pertains to both. Without that alternate viewpoint, we may still live in paradise to this day, a paradise in which “good” is nothing but a meaningless pronoun.
Satan displays pitiable envy-driven hatred for Eden and its inhabitants. “…O, Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams / That bring to my remembrance from what state / I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere;” (PL 4. 37-39). Having lost his paradise, Satan views this new paradise with contempt as he feels its inhabitants have some kind of unfair access to God’s grace. Therefore, he seeks to ruin their paradise to prove another creation of God capable of sin. As the human saying goes, after all, “Misery loves company.”
In the line subsequent in Book 4, line 40, he recognizes that his pride and ambition are responsible for his fall. This ties him inexorably to the poem’s two human characters: Adam and Eve, for, ultimately, their sin against God is the same as his in principle although there is a great disparity in magnitude and intended malice. What is vanity, after all, but another word for pride? Even God acknowledges this tie in Book 3, although he does note that, while Eve was tempted by Satan, Satan’s only tempter was himself. This self-destruction, too, is a pit into which we humans fall. Satan is even momentarily hesitant, upon seeing Eve, to effect his end. This hesitance is short lived, however, and caused by sight of extreme beauty, as it often is in humans.
It is interesting to note the effect Eve’s beauty has on Satan’s determination in comparison to the effect her beauty has on Adam. While Satan is momentarily deferred from the path of evil by Eve’s beauty, Adam is ultimately set upon the path of evil by it. “…if death / Consort with thee, death is to me as life” (PL 9.953-954). Although Adam’s total love for Eve is clearly evident, his statement to Raphael in Book 8 that Eve is “Too much of ornament, in outward show / Elaborate, of inward less exact” (PL 8.538-539) makes the reader conscious of the strength Eve’s outward beauty lends to Adam’s love of her. This, coupled with her maidenly innocence, brings to mind what many have said of Edgar Allen Poe’s work. Few things are more poignant than the destruction of a beautiful maiden. In Satan’s hesitance to bring about this destruction, and Adam’s quickness to join her in it, the two characters display markedly similar susceptibility to her radiant poignancy.
In A Preface to Paradise Lost, C.S. Lewis points out what he perceives as a great distinction between Adam and Satan. In short, he asserts that although Adam is confined to a small geographical region, his thought process extends far beyond what he can see to the heavens, his creator, etc. Meanwhile, according to Lewis, Satan has had chance to view much more than Adam from Heaven to Hell and beyond but can only concern himself with his own predicament in what Lewis calls a “monomaniac concern with himself” (Lewis 102). This is true. Adam does indeed display a profound outbound curiosity while Satan can only seem to obsess about his situation and the perceived slight against his grandeur.
Lewis, however, seems to give less than due credit to the disparaging situations of Adam and Satan at the time of this contrast. Adam is still securely in paradise when he wonders about all things external and eternal. We only know Satan after he has fallen from grace. Satan may very well have dreamed of heavenly bodies before the nagging itch of rebellion snuck up his britches. This is obviously highly debatable and, frankly, of little consequence to the matter at hand. What is important to notice is how Adam, like Satan, shifts his attention immediately following his own fall from grace. Adam’s soliloquy in Book 10, beginning at line 720, smacks highly of Satan’s own self-pity. Long gone are the questions of what lies beyond what Adam can see and come are the consequences to himself, his other self, and their subsequent progeny. While one can say that Adam’s concern in this area is somewhat less self-serving as it has to do with the fate of subsequent generations, the same can be said of Satan who, arguably, feels a sense of duty to his apostate compatriots of the infernal council.
All theology and morality aside, Lewis raises the most important point concerning sympathy for Satan when he talks about Satan’s status as a literary character. His initial commentary states that “the imitation in art of unpleasing objects may be a pleasing imitation” (Lewis 94). This may be the crux of the debate concerning Milton’s Satanic predicament as far as it pertains to the readers’ sympathy. Certainly, as readers hear of Satan’s negative progression and accompanying sentiments, they may, from a place of safety, come to sympathize with him and even neglect his part in the damnation of a race of beings that never did him any harm. However, what if these readers were removed from their place of safety? It is easy, after all, to call Heathcliff a romantic figure provided that one is not the other half of the romance. As Lewis contends, Jane Austen’s character Miss Bates gives a great source of levity to readers of Emma while remaining a great source of annoyance and agony for the other characters of the book. Readers of Paradise Lost may have similar perceptions of Satan. From the safe distance of observance, Satan may seem a pitiable character. However, if those same readers were forced to share reality with Satan, would they feel the same? He may be the kind of guy it would be pleasing to have occasional acquaintance with but, the kind of relationship in which his actions have direct consequences on his friends’ lives is nearly unthinkable. Surely any real person who embodied all of the characteristics of Satan would quickly create much distance around himself. In strict terms of literary analysis, as Lewis says, the sympathy for Satan may derive simply from the fact that “Milton’s presentation of him is a magnificent poetical achievement which engages attention and excites the admiration of the reader” (Lewis 94).
Remaining simply in the realm of literary criticism may bypass discussion of Satan’s crime against a humanity that never did him wrong altogether. However, this is not the goal at hand. The goal is to show how the characteristics of Milton’s Satan are similar to those of mankind after the fall. All of these characteristics of Milton’s Satan: defiance, pride, perseverance, lament, regret, etc, are shared by us as human beings. Ultimately, they cause us to connect with Satan on a fairly profound level and obscure the larger picture that Satan ruined our first shot at paradise out of pure will, childish defiance and avarice. He did not have our best interests in mind, only his. This selfishness too, however, is a characteristic shared by humans. As Lewis says, “A fallen man is very like a fallen angel” (Lewis 101). Perhaps we are created in God’s image, but somewhere between birth and weaning we begin to resemble Satan a bit more closely. Is Satan, then, the father of the new, sin-addled, man and woman? Like him, we are capable of and have an instinctive desire for things that are grave transgressions against God in every imaginable way as if sin is an integral component of our amniotic fluid. The only difference between us and Satan, as he appears in Milton at least, is that we have a shot at regaining paradise via the sacrifice of God’s son. This chance is no doubt the continuing source of Satan’s anguish, for which we may pity him, as Milton has made him into a character to be pitied.
So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, have some taste.
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste, mmm yeah.
Mick Jagger, “Sympathy for the Devil”
Works Cited
Gaynor, Gloria. I Will Survive. By Freddie Perren and Dino Fekaris. Gloria Gaynor. 1978. CD.
Jagger, Mick. "Sympathy for the Devil." Perf. Keith Richards. Beggars Banquet. The Rolling Stones. Jimmy Miller, 1968. CD.
Lewis, Clive S. A Preface to Paradise Lost. New York: Oxford UP, 1961. Print.
Milton, John. "Paradise Lost." The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton (Modern Library). New York: Modern Library, 2007. Print.