Is Satan a Hero?
(An analyzation of Milton’s Paradise Lost is connection with his Satan character)
From the beginning of time there have been many different ideas concerning good and bad. The oldest of these theories started thousands of years ago, and is still believed by millions today; this is the basic idea of God and Satan. God being the representative of good and Satan being to figure of all things bad/evil. Throughout history there have been countless authors that have written about the relationship between these two entities. However, perhaps one of the most controversial pieces of literature concerning this topic was written by John Milton. All his life Milton knew that he wanted to write a piece of literature that would become …show more content…
While some of the lines Milton’s character Satan says, can be argued as heroic, I think you could also argue them not to be. In the end, even though Satan did risk his life to leave Hell, it could be argued that he was merely doing it solely for himself. The man is Satan after all, so it would make sense for him to be a selfish individual. I think that if you also look at the underlying reasons why Satan does the things that he does, you will find that many of them are self-motivated in terms of self-fulfillment. There is no doubt in my mind that Satan is selfish individual, and we see this portrayed time and time again throughout the poem. In the end, Satan’s primary motivation is to get back at God for being kicked out of heaven, in my opinion he could care less about the other fallen angels, he is doing it for himself. I think that because Satan is portrayed as the epic hero in this poem, surprisingly it can be quite easy to see him as a hero, when really he is a much deeper and complicated character. A lot of the observations made on Satan’s character in Paradise Lost can be interpreted many different ways; it’s up to the reader him/herself to decide whether or not to view him as an epic hero or an epic
(An analyzation of Milton’s Paradise Lost is connection with his Satan character)
From the beginning of time there have been many different ideas concerning good and bad. The oldest of these theories started thousands of years ago, and is still believed by millions today; this is the basic idea of God and Satan. God being the representative of good and Satan being to figure of all things bad/evil. Throughout history there have been countless authors that have written about the relationship between these two entities. However, perhaps one of the most controversial pieces of literature concerning this topic was written by John Milton. All his life Milton knew that he wanted to write a piece of literature that would become …show more content…
While some of the lines Milton’s character Satan says, can be argued as heroic, I think you could also argue them not to be. In the end, even though Satan did risk his life to leave Hell, it could be argued that he was merely doing it solely for himself. The man is Satan after all, so it would make sense for him to be a selfish individual. I think that if you also look at the underlying reasons why Satan does the things that he does, you will find that many of them are self-motivated in terms of self-fulfillment. There is no doubt in my mind that Satan is selfish individual, and we see this portrayed time and time again throughout the poem. In the end, Satan’s primary motivation is to get back at God for being kicked out of heaven, in my opinion he could care less about the other fallen angels, he is doing it for himself. I think that because Satan is portrayed as the epic hero in this poem, surprisingly it can be quite easy to see him as a hero, when really he is a much deeper and complicated character. A lot of the observations made on Satan’s character in Paradise Lost can be interpreted many different ways; it’s up to the reader him/herself to decide whether or not to view him as an epic hero or an epic