Few people would disagree that Milton's Satan is a kingly character. This is true so far as his status as a literary creation goes. But some leave argued that this character "is or ought to be an object of admiration and sympathy, advised or unconscious, on the part of the poet, his readers or both" (Lewis 197). This position, eyepatch it is a strong tribute to the power of Milton's ability to gain a character, makes little sense in light of what it is that Satan actually does and says in the prevail of the poem.
Leaving aside exist knowledge of the story and background of Paradise Lost (although this is unaccepted for anyone raised with any awareness of who Satan is believed to be), it is
The gloomy Satan filled with defiance, therefore, moves on to effect a busy schemer as he debates his course of action with the council in hell, produces his incestuous family, and sets out to destroy God's saucily creatures. Throughout all this activity Satan is also engaged in ceaseless self-aggrandizement as he lies more or less his self-creation. He begins with his self-description as a sort of defeated fighter aircraft and continues to speak of his unending resistance. Satan had already decided, during the battle in Heaven, that liberty alone was not enough and encouraged his soldiery by telling them they were in pursuit of "what we more affect, / Honour, Dominion, Glory, and repute" (VI, 421-22).
The second book of the poem shows Satan on the tush of hell and the glory he finds there is followed by his modishness as he outwits angels to discover humanity's home and outwits humanity to piddle himself, and Sin and Death, on Earth. In his own telling, Satan moves from victory to success as he fights his pointless action against an opposite he can never defeat. But, in contrast with his self-deceptive, all told imaginary, acquisition of greater and greater glory Satan's true relocation goes in the other direction. As Lewis notes, Satan passes "from hero to normal, from general to politician, from politician to secret service agent, and therefrom 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" (201).
Frye, Roland Mushat. God, Man, and Satan: Patterns of Christian Thought and Life in Paradise Lost, Pilgrim's forward motion and the Great Theologians. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1960.
But the full strength of this idea of Satan as a reversed image of God is uncommunicative for Satan's role as the parodic opposite of Christ in which, "by reminding us of the coming Saviour, Satan ironically acts as an quality of his own ultimate failure" (Forey 305). The idea of Satan as the opposite of humanity's redeemer
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