A Complex Satan in John Miltons Paradise Lost :: Milton Paradise Lost Essays

Miltons Complex the Tempter in Paradise Lost   Miltons Satan continues to fascinate critics largely because he is more complex than the Devil of the Christian tradition appears. Satans rebelliousness, his empathizeking of transcendence, his capacity for action, particularly unconventional action, endeared him to certain types of read/write heads, nevertheless if their viewpoint might be considered theologically misleading. Milton often follows the road of clever definition for his characters, of reasoning demonstration. This serves well his theological and intelligent cohesiveness. However, when his paceght becomes more conceptual rather than metaphoric, it falls trap to its own special good-hearted of static imprisonment. Most of the images in Paradise Lost, however, have a strong life of their own they are properties rather than metaphors.   In the presentation of Satan, Milton is dealings with a special difficulty. He is not presenting a human intelligence , scarcely an angelic one-a being the nature of which is almost impossible for the human mind to grasp. Milton simplifies the matter by making spiritual intelligences more highly lissome versions of human intelligence. He is still left with one problem, that of introducing a flaws in this refined beings. Because of these refined intelligence, these creatures should incline solely to good.                     So farwel Hope, and with Hope farwel Fear,                   Farwel remorse all strong to me is lost                   Evil be thou my Good                                     (IV, 109-111)   In this intensely dramatic stat ement, Satan renounces everything thats good. His is not a miss of intelligence, or weakness of character, very simply an acceptance of evil. It almost justifies C. S. Lewis observation. What we see in Satan is the horrible co-existence of a subtle and incessant intellectual activity with an incapacity to understand anything.   Although the statement Evil be thou my Good, makes no sense on the surface, it has a symbolic meaning as an expression of Satans will to reject the hierarchy of values set beforehand him. In doing so he creates an illusory world that reflects his adopted values, which he accepts as universe. His reality is based on hatred. His hatred makes him psychologically certified on that he hates, thus making it all the greater. Throughout the desperate Milton dramatizes this dependence among the devils- even the hatred that gives them their energy is based on that reality which