"To admire Satan, then, is to give one's vote not only for a world of misery, but also for a world of lies and propaganda of wishful thinking of incessant autobiography." Discuss, in the light of this remark, some of the speeches by Satan, or statements made by the poet about him, in Paradise Lost, Book I.
In the opinion quoted in this question, some of the evil aspects of Satan's character are clearly indicated. Those who, on account of a misreading of Satan's character, are led on to admire Satan and to regard him as the epic hero, do not realise that Satan is essentially a personification of evil even though he possesses certain qualities which lend him dignity and grandeur. It is obvious that, if we admire Satan, we are voting for the kind of suffering which Satan and his followers have to endure in Hell. Satan tells many lies and, when he is not lying, twists or distorts the facts. He carries on propaganda against God to whom he refers as the foe and the enemy. His wishful thinking consists in his ambition to usurp the throne and monarchy of God which he can never attain. His incessant autobiography consists in his persistent egotism which deludes him into imagining himself as the future ruler of Heaven. To admire Satan, therefore, means to welcome all these things and to show a readiness to live in a world characterised by such obnoxious features.
The misery into which Satan has fallen, and into which we shall fall by becoming his disciples, is described by Milton at the very outset when we are told that he was "hurled headlong flaming" from Heaven "with hideous ruin and combustion", down to "bottomless perdition". He received this punishment because of his plans for self-aggrandizement, namely his starting an impious war against God, because of his pride and egotism, in order to supersede God and establish himself as the heavenly ruler. After recovering his senses on the fiery lake in Hell, he is tormented by the thought "both of lost happiness and lasting pain". If Satan himself remains perturbed after his loss of Heaven, what can we expect by voting for him? Hell is described by Milton as a kind of horrible dungeon, a great burning furnace, where only "sights of woe" are to be seen, where "peace and rest can never dwell", and where "hope never comes that comes to all". Milton is showing us Hell partly through our own eyes and partly through the eyes of Satan, so that we experience the objective and subjective horrors of the place. Not only do we see Hell, but we are able to look from within at the personality whose proper abode it is. Hell is a place of self-contradictory disorder wherein fire and flame can exist without light, and where darkness, itself "visible", can actually reveal regions of sorrow. The hopelessness of Hell is crucial because hope is the one thread that gives meaning to consciousness in the midst of affliction and torment. This hopelessness is the only possible and logical outcome of that impious war and vain attempt whereby a subordinate being has tried to assert himself against the supreme being.
Satan's very first speech (addressed to Beelzebub) supports the view stated in the question. In this speech. Satan seems to invent an imaginary history and build up an imaginary self. He makes it seem that his rebellion was an expression of his "fixed mind" and his "high disdain" for God resulting from his "sense of injured merit". What romantic critics have failed to notice is that there is irony underlying this speech of Satan. The irony reduces Satan's stature even when it superficially seems to be building up. We see Satan's casuistry in his assertion that he will not "repent or change". (He is associating "repentance" with "change" and is therefore feeling proud of his constancy). But he has already changed and is changing before our eyes. We saw him first as "the infernal Serpent", so that we already know him in a changed form. The whole poem is the story of his inevitable degeneracy, the result of obstinacy in evil. There is something weak and childish in his asserting that he is full of high disdain and has a sense of injured merit. Then the speech seems to rise to something more impressive when he says: "What though the field be lost?" etc. But this is high rhetoric. We should note the barrenness, the sheer negative quality of the line: "And study of revenge, immortal hate". Revenge will be eternally studied; hate will be sustained for ever. By no valid moral criterion are these admirable.
Satan also appears as a propagandist in this same speech. In the first place, he refers to his battle with God on the plains of Heaven as "dubious", meaning that the issue of the battle was undecided or uncertain, though it was as decisive a battle as can be imagined. (In his second speech he actually admits this fact when he speaks of the "angry victor" having withdrawn his "ministers of vengeance"). He also claims that he and his forces are "in arms not worse, in foresight much advanced", which is again nothing but self-conceit and propaganda. He rejects any possible suggestion of pleading for mercy from God, because that would mean an "ignominy and shame" worse than this downfall. This is sheer egotism. He tells another lie when he says that God till recently doubted his own sovereignty because of his fear of Satan's power: "Who, from the terror of this arm, so late doubted his empire". Thus, falsifying both the present situation and the past, Satan proposes eternal war and irreconcilability with that power whose omnipotence he can no longer question. (What could be more illogical and misleading than such an attitude ?) After this outburst by Satan, Milton briefly and quitely reminds us that Satan is "vaunting aloud, but racked with deep despair". This means that the speech was a put-up show, a noisy boast from a wrecked being in the depths of despondency.
Satan's second speech confirms the impressions already created. To do anything good is now permanently out of the question, he says. Always to do evil will be the only possible delight, simply on the ground that it negates the will of God. God's providence will work to produce good even from evil; Satan's motto must therefore be to pervert the good into evil. What can, then, we expect from a world ruled by Satan, and how can we vote for his empire? His cunning or casuistry is seen again in his decision to reassemble his forces exactly at the time when God has suspended his hostile operations. Again and again, Satan will admit the superior effectiveness of God's thunder and yet he will call upon his followers to continue their war against God. Never was a creature so self-deluded, and never did a being delude others to such on extent. Satan's enterprise may be regarded as a devastating epic parody because it rests on the shaky foundations of evil. His declarations are in the nature of pseudo-heroic posturings. His final contradictory reference in this speech to hope and despair is the kind of rhetorical flourish to which we become accustomed as we listen to him. This is part of his wishful thinking and his incessant egotism.
At the root of Satan's enterprise against God and his determination to persist, is the fundamental perversion of his will. This, in turn, implies a perversion of the intellect as his anger shows that he has lost his original comprehension of God and has attributed to him motives and a being like his own. He falls into the heresy of the Manichees who held the angels to be co-existent with God, attributes his own creation to Fate, and proclaims his independent immortality. He thus reveals himself as the "father of lies", though at first our perception of his true nature is dimmed by our admiration for his seeming heroic qualities.
Milton's comments on Satan at this stage reinforce the impression of his wickedness. Milton says that God left Satan free to pursue his "dark designs" so that with "reiterated crimes" he might "heap damnation on himself. God allowed him to pour on himself "treble confusion, wrath and vegeance". Satan was made to see that all his malice brought forth infinite goodness and grace shown by God towards man after he was seduced by Satan.
In Satan's next speech, we have the contradiction between his confession of inferiority to God in respect of force and his claim to equality with God in respect of the faculty of reason. The speech contains rhetorical assertions of self-confidence, but here again irony underlies the rhetoric. The mind is indeed its own place and can make a Heaven of Hell or a Hell of Heaven. But this does not mean what Satan thinks it means. It means that Satan can never escape from Hell, but is doomed to carry it around with him for ever (like Mephistopheles in Marlowe's play). As for the famous line: "Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven", the mixture of pride and malice in it should not remain unnoticed. What Satan is really saying here is that, so long as he is boss, he does not care what he is boss of. This speech, like the one preceding it, is "a combination of vanity, self- deception, whistling in the dark, and rabble-rousing". In the course of this outburst of absurdity, Satan declares: "Here at least we shall be free". The idea of freedom in this place of utter desolation from which every living thing would shrink is simply absurd. "Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven" is a slogan which indicates a monstrous leap into unreality.
Milton describes the fallen angels as abject and lost, lying under "amazement of their hideous change". What could therefore be more illogical and misleading than Satan's addressing them as "Princes, Potentates, Warriors, the flower of Heaven?" As a critic points out. this mode of address is "like entering a death-laden, disease-ridden concentration camp, strewn with near-skeletons, and beginning": "Ladies and Gentlemen." Satan, in this speech also, persists in lies and false propaganda. He tries to convince his listeners that they can still win the war against God if they try.
Subsequently Milton tells us that, though Satan is not now in a state of despair, there is a doubtful expression on his face. However, he recovers his habitual pride and, using empty words, raises the fainting courage of his dejected followers. He then makes a war-like speech, full of contradictions and absurdities, when closely examined. He first flatters his listeners. They are "matchless", except against God. Who could possibly have anticipated that a force so great as theirs would ever be defeated? (This only shows Satan's misjudgment, but he is not any wiser even after losing the battle). Who indeed can even now believe that a force like theirs, so great that their expulsion from Heaven must have virtually "emptied" the place, will be incapable of re-possessing their heavenly abode? (This is sheer propaganda, because Satan knows that Heaven has not been emptied and that he can never defeat God). He next directs attention from himself as the possible cause of their misery to themselves as virtually undefeatable. (This is a continuation of his propaganda). He turns God into the object of his followers' anger by saying that God was simply upheld by convention or custom or tradition and that God deceptively concealed the extent of his real strength, thereby leading rebellious-minded angels into temptation, and thus himself brought about their fall. (This is a surprising example of casuistry). Now that they know God's power, as well as their own, they shall not provoke war. After having said this, he declares that war, open or secret, must be decided upon, thus confirming his malicious intentions in spite of the consequences. The way Satan speaks to his supporters reminds us of the way the Nazi leader, Hitler, used to urge the Germans to fight in order to conquer the world. Both suffered from megalomania.
[Manichees-followers of a religious system (3rd to 5th century) that represented Satan as co-eternal with God.]
Important Questions with Answers
- Analyse and comment on the opening of Paradise Lost (Book I).
- What picture of Satan do you get from Book I of Paradise Lost?
- Discuss those traditional prescriptions of the epic from which are illustrated in Book I Paradise Lost.
- What purpose is served by the epic similes in Book I of Paradise Lost?
- On the basis of your reading of Book I of Paradise Lost, brig out Satan's qualities of leadership.
- What picture does Milton present of the angels in revolt?
- Analyse the speeches of Satan in Book I of Paradise Lost to show that Milton does not intend us to sympathies with Satan.
- "To admire Satan, then is to give one's vote not only for a world of misery, but also for a world of lies and propaganda of wishful thinking of incessant autobiography". Discuss in the light of this remark some of speeches by Satan or statements made by the poet about him in Paradise Lost Book I.
- How is Milton's personality reflected in Paradise Lost, Book I?
- Write an essay on Milton's style as revealed Book I Paradise Lost.
- Explain how Milton's poetry weds the puritan spirit with that of the Renaissance.
- What is blank verse? Discuss Milton's handling of it in Book I of Paradise Lost.
