CC-VII Satan's Character in Paradise Lost

Whether Satan is the hero of paradise Lost as a whole might be a matter of permanent controversy lost in BKI, it is undisputable that Satan and not Adam who steals the show. Milton has lavished all his power,all his skills, as Raleigh Observes, in the portrayal of him. And he draws him with such rich complexity that he denies to be exclusively of a hero or a villain. Rather he appears as a villain hero the balance being tilted towards the former. And his degradation from a heroic stature to a devilish infancy can well be traced in the five speeches ascribed to him on the first look.

                In his first speech to Beelzebub Satan tries to exhort the exhausted fallen angles with fiery words of inspiration - " what though the field be lost? All is not lost ;"  Given the unconquerable will, and unyielding courage, Satan shows a defiant attitude sounds heroic, it is immediately undercut by his falsehood, involved in his 'sense of injured merit- Physical and moral - Guess, the son of god had the greater claim than him to heavenly status. In fact, blindfolded by the unruly passions of pride and lust for power, Satan unlike his creator does not only see reason that " God is just" but also tries to play the trump card like a diplomatic politician by resarting to expediency. His is a malign motive like casius not the philanthropic one like Prometheus, and it is further evident from the fact that he goes to average himself  upon god  by undoing His divine scheme by fraud and 'guile'. His second speech bears ample testimony to this heinous motive -

    " To do aught good never will be our task,

     But ever to do ill our sole delight". 

              In fact, if Satan is a rebet, he-simultaneously as cillatis between good and evil, hope and despairs. In the face of horrible hell, he goes to assert in his third speech the purity and integrity of his mind almost in a philosophical vein- " The mind is its own place, and in itself / can make a heaven of Hell, a Hell of heaven". But Satan fails to live up to his ideal. He is self-contradictory; his unholy passions have condemned and reduced him to hell. As he admits to himself in a soliloquy in the fifth book- " which way I fly is Hell/myself am Hell "(73-76). yet, Satan's is a hopeless hope, may a self-presumption in terms of power mongering- " Better to reign in hell, than serve in Heaven". 

                Satan's notion of liberty and servitude is here totally a misleading submission to god, it is not slavery but self-aggrandisement in the name of rebellion against His Satan feeds his own self and not to god.

     In the fourth speech Satan's words of rousing the legions - " Awake, arise or be for ever fallen" are unmistakenly heroic in their Renaissance spirit of indomitable will power, energy and enter prise. But they hare to sound basis for self-realisation which is the hallmark of the renaissance as it is misdirected for  foul end . It is at lest a piece of sophistry governed by the crude diplomacy of a politician to rally the routed armies for winning personal gain. side by side displaying his gingoism (" War then, war/ open or understood ") , it hides his dark 'design' by fraud or guile of deceiving 'the mother of mankind ' and with that end of prying into the space where the innocent Adam and Eve live. Is not Satan's Speech a piece of Casuistry as it involves the fallacy that while he thinks, it all but impossible for god to win over his enemy by brute force alone, he himself goes to win it by brutal cunning  and treachery?

           Thus the five speeches reveal Satan to be degraded from " hero to general, from general to politician, from politician to secret agent, and thence anything that peers in at bedroom or bathroom window, and thence to a toad, and  finally a snake," as C.S.Lewis nicely described in his preface.

              It would, heaven, be a lopsided view to suggest that " Milton was of the devil's party with out knowing it", as Blake would  have it. For one thing, Milton's adversary (Charless I) was really a despot but Satan's is benevolent, and Milton is of God's party. In fact, Milton sees Satan in the eyes of an artist as that of a Puritan. As such for all of his Machiavellian Renaissance outlook, our sympathy for the character is not totally defected, particularly when we find " Cruel his eye, but cast sign of remorse and passion ....." (BK II, 605-606). well does a critic observe, " there would be no difficulty if Satan were simply an Iago, the difficulty arises because he is a Macbeth