God’s Wayward Creation: A Profile of Satan

Milton’s Satan of Paradise Lost is a tortured character, wanting to experience good, but unable to escape the Hell that permeates his environment and his mind. As a living justification for the suffering and dissent of those who have fissured from Christian dogma, the base assumption within the narrative that this dogma is legitimate creates circular reasoning as to the upholding of God and the discrediting of the opinions of blasphemers. In representing Satan as wrong for believing that good can be divorced from God, the text upholds that God is the creator and definer of all goodness, and is thus intrinsically tied to it. In Satan’s failure to rid himself of the evil that engulfs him through any means but rectification with God, Milton asserts that the only salvation is through God and that Hell is nothing but the side effect of separation from God. Thus, in rejecting God, Satan is represented as inventing Hell for himself, and entering a loop of continually distancing from God in retaliation for the scarcity of good and plague of evil he’s incurred, only exacerbating his suffering and solidifying his faulty beliefs. Yet, not only are Satan’s intended methods for acquiring the good that he craves innately flawed, but in a God-centric system of good and evil, the craving itself takes on its own intrinsic significance, as it can be distilled as a yearning for God. Satan’s resentment of Hell, then, and his longing for good represents that he, as one of God’s creations, retains a residual longing for God, albeit repressed, as he in turn inadvertently suppresses his own happiness. His insistent distancing from God in the pursuit of his goals exemplifies not only his inherent misconception of good and evil, but his misunderstanding of himself, all of which reinforces the Christian belief that God is righteous and that sinners’ misery is their own doing.

Satan, though he distances himself from the idea of God Himself, is not so fast to do the same for the things that represent God: namely Heaven and humans. In describing his first impression of humans, whom his “thoughts pursue / With wonder” (IV.362-363), his reasoning as to why is their “divine resemblance” (IV.364). The divine being God, he is implying that what he enjoys about humans is their proximity to the being that he claims to despise. But not only is it their resemblance, but how it “so lively shines / In them” (IV.363-364) that attracts him. He, a fallen angel, clearly having been made by God and in some ways resembling Him, is described as having lost much of his luster due to his fall, and so the fact that it is the image of God that is specifically living and shining that attracts him represents that he senses the inherent value of the continuing closeness to God that he has lost. Satan shows a similar intuitive appreciation of the landscape of Heaven, crafted by God, recognizing the “sweet interchange” (IX.115) of the landscape, and listing the numerous features, including the “shores with forests crowned” (IX.117). The implication relating to a crown is regality and birthright, and the association of it with God’s masterpiece, Eden, shows an implicit adherence to God as a rightful monarch, given that Eden is a reflection and extension of its creator.

Despite this, something is continually holding Satan back from appreciating God, the entity that is directly represented by these creations, and onto whom the praise naturally falls. In Satan’s glowing review of the humans, the sanctity of his words is restrained by the use of “could” before “love” (IV.363). In Eden, it is “[w]ith what delight” he “could… have” (IX.114) explored Eden, and “[i]f [he]… could joy” (IX.115) in anything. In both cases, the very fact that he recognizes what he would enjoy implies that the enjoyment is in fact his natural response. His suppression, then, results from his repressed want for God, even if this entails the loss of the happiness God creates in him through His creations. His reasons for choosing this stance are evidenced in the beginning of his first speech, where he bemoans the “grief” (IV.358) he feels at humans existing in the “high room of bliss” that he references as “our[s]” (IV.359). This expression implies a woundedness at being replaced, as well as the sense that he belongs in Heaven and in the emotional tranquility it conjures. Satan also expresses the sentiment that “[p]leasures about” (IX.120) him stir “[t]orment within” (IX.121) him. The shared structure between these two statements emphasizes that the pleasure is paired with his surroundings and that the torment stems from within. Thus, he is internally creating misery for himself while the environment which exists in a godly state is itself pleasureful, and the use of “the more [he]… see[s]” (IX.120) and the “so much more [he]… feel[s]” (IX.121) exemplifies not only the transformation from the concrete to the fallible, in the good his senses are communicating to him versus the evil his perception interprets, but the compounding magnitude each good thing has on increasing his wretched state, the ‘so much’ indicating the disproportionate nature of the resultant suffering. God, then, is not to blame for Satan’s misery: it is Satan himself who sees the good of God, and makes it a thing of Hell in his refusal to be aligned with Heaven’s Maker.

This is a similar sentiment to the one that he expresses of Adam and Eve, which can through this lens be interpreted as an expression of his own personal experience. “[A]ll these delights” (IV.367), he warns, will not only “vanish” but themselves “deliver” the pair “to woe” (IV.368); “[m]ore woe,” the “more… joy” (IV.369) they are currently experiencing. He carries a sense of the knowledge of good as its own evil, when out of reach, and the reason he believes it out of reach is because it is under God’s domain, which he cannot stand to also be under, even to be one with good. He expresses, too, happiness as “ill secured” (IV.370) and Heaven as “[i]ll fenced” (IV.372). The first, surely, is how he feels about his own happiness, looking back on it from a place of grief. The second however is more complex, as it is something that if true serves to benefit him, even if he can see that it would harm Adam and Eve, his imagined audience. Here, he seems to lose the learned helplessness that he has gained in the idea of finding joy where God looms, forever the master: here, he believes he has a power that is contradictory to God’s will, and a fault of God’s plan that he can exploit. He believes, still, that Heaven is not so unreachable, and that his ability to breach it means he still has a way to play God’s foe. The word ‘ill’ takes on two different meanings to him, then: in the first, it is an ill that has befallen him, and in the second, he is the ill personified as he embodies humanity's destruction. The first is something to be escaped, and the latter is something to be embraced. Here then, is where he moves past his preliminary misconception of his inability to exist under God and be happy, to its application towards an alternative way for him to find some satisfaction.

In understanding Satan’s misguided attempts to either bring himself happiness or God grief, the first misstep to take note of is the distortions in his comprehension of the concepts of good and evil. That good can exist without God, and evil attributed directly to God, are ideas of his that in their falseness influence his decision-making to be similarly flawed. He expresses, on the one hand, that he has no interest in residing in Heaven, “unless by mast’ring Heav’n’s Supreme” (IX.125), his reasoning being that Heaven with God would only bring him misery. This relates back to his suppression of his own happiness in the name of distancing from God, given that his disdain for God is translating to Heaven as it is, and so his belief becomes that in usurping God he may then once again experience the goodness of Heaven without having to be subjugated. The use of unless emphasizes his belief that the lack of God is in his view more crucial to his thriving than the joys of Heaven, yet, he does not consider that Pandemonium already is the godless kingdom under his rule that he believes he craves, nor that in expunging the godliness from Heaven he would be turning it into the place of suffering that Pandemonium already is. Thus, he is imperceptive of what truly brings him happiness, and what is just a multiplier of suffering in terms of the presence or absence of God. 

Besides perceiving evil in good’s domain of Heaven, he further posits the possibility of good in evil’s domain, describing the merits of Hell. Of Adam and Eve, he says, “Hell shall unfold, / To entertain you two, her widest gates” (IV.381-382), and describes the welcome of “all her kings” (IV.383). Though this is an attempt to paint Hell as a Heaven-like place, an acceptable alternative, he himself is someone who has fled from Hell at the first opportunity to be back in Heaven, creating mischief. Further, his description of multiple monarchs, as opposed to one king, sets Pandemonium apart from Heaven even as he is trying to relate the two, a crucial difference from a monotheistic perspective. He even takes to lying in his portrayal, with the description of Hell opening its gates, when he himself had to barter his way out of the ones guarded by his descendants; the use of widest exemplifies this bluff, especially when he begins to describe the “room / Not like [the]… narrow limits” (IV.384) of Heaven, for the pair to populate. This combination of describing Heaven as flawed and Hell as more fitting is hindered by the fact that the wideness that Satan contrasts to the narrowness of Heaven is in reference to gates that are ever-closed: the purported truth predicated on this lie falls with it, then, as memory allows the clarity that Satan’s desperation disallows. In this way, Satan's own words are their own counterarguments, memories, his own counterexamples, and his desperation for godless joy the only thing keeping him from fully recognizing and accepting the baselessness of good without God and evil from God on their face.

Further, as a being of God, his pervasive misunderstanding of good, evil, and God ties directly to a misunderstanding of himself. This evidences itself in two very different ways in each of these excerpts, as his descent draws him further down into the depths of his wretchedness. In the first his intentions are self-described as “league with” the humans, “[a]nd mutual amity” (IV.375-376), and in this way, he is continuing to represent that he wants what God has for himself, even if his faulty premise of good and evil make this belief misguided. He does not describe that he wants to become Heaven’s ruler specifically, just that he wants to corrupt God’s new favorites to his side, saying, “I with you must dwell, or you with me” (IV.377); whether in Heaven or Hell, his purpose is to possess that which matters most to God, in this case, humanity. This is a misunderstanding of himself because of his inflation of himself as a being of vengeance, meant to contend with God as a rival. Still, he expresses himself as “forlorn” as he “could pity” (IV.374) the humans, “[t]hough” he himself remains “unpitied” (IV.375). Once again his language represents holding himself back, this time his conscience. The use of ‘could’ implies it is his natural reaction that he is removing himself from by a fraction, and the mentioning of his own feeling of abandonment seems a kind of justification for his damning actions; the repetition of a form of ‘pity’ implies that he believes being unpitied himself absolves him of having to pity Adam and Eve, painting it more as a courtesy on his part to do so to any degree. And despite his fervent need for vengeance, he claims to be “loath to this revenge” (IV.386) which involves innocent victims in the pursuit of slighting his true enemy. In this stage of his fall, then, his conscience remains to some degree, not just a trick used to manipulate, given he is his own audience, even as he directs the speech towards humans in spirit, and yet he believes that if he acknowledges the wrongness, he can reason it away, or get away with it through pure self awareness. This devaluation of his conscience as a part of him, crafted to lead him on the righteous path of God, is an inherent misunderstanding of his purpose. His pushing past his own conscience in the name of some larger goal is a misprioritization in terms of his self-identity, as his conscience is, or should be, considered more a part of him than his corrupted goals.

The second excerpt takes place with Satan in a decidedly more fallen state. He has let go almost entirely of any of his own goals for happiness in lieu of causing as much destruction to God and His good as possible. No longer is a pity for humanity present, rather he wishes to make “others… such / As [him]” (IX.127-128); that is to say, “miserable” (IX.126). Not only is it others he has no regard as to the suffering of, but himself as well, willing to give in to his destructive spiral even knowing “worse to” him will “redound” (IX.128). Satan has decidedly lost the “hope” (IX.126) that he had in book IV, as the misconceived thoughts and beliefs that he has operated under in regards to good and evil have corrupted him further the more he has engaged with them and increased their power over him. Here, he admits that “only in destroying… [he] find[s] ease to [his]… relentless thoughts” (IX.129-130), revealing the truth of his destructive spiral as this: evil has consumed him so fully that performing evil is the only way to get a brief respite from the overwhelming thoughts that torture him. Evil, however, has already been revealed as only gaining increasing hold over him with repetition, and so this fix is short-term and ultimately an arbiter of more pain. The use of ‘ease’ and ‘relentless’ here exemplifies this sense, as relentless is a word that invokes severity and endurance, whereas ease implies only the ability to decrease the intensity and is by its nature reactionary. Satan then has entered a survival mode: so far removed is he from what it is to be happy that he cannot even fathom focusing on it, given his need to mitigate the Hell his mind has cemented into. Instead of the increasing costs of giving in to evil bringing him to the reality that what he needs is God, and that only accepting God can cleanse him of his pain and deliver him to good, he sees himself so far removed from God and from good, that he can only perceive his purpose as being a conduit for evil. What he fails to realize is that the freedom he has from God means nothing if he cannot emancipate himself from evil; he has done nothing but find himself a crueler, more unyielding master.

Satan is a complex character, clinging to ideals that only bring him misery, destroying his own life along with others: a villain who does not benefit, himself one of his victims. He innately recognizes good as tied to God, and himself as miserable without good, yet he stubbornly refuses to perceive himself as needing God Himself, nor to understand himself as a creation of God. Satan, in refusing to see that God is not his enemy but his only potential savior, is doing nothing but rejecting his own self-understanding for the versions of himself, God, and the world that he intends to see. If Hell is the separation from God, and this is what Satan identifies himself with the most, then no amount of suffering or potential for joy will ever pull him back to reality; in this way, he is correct when he recognizes “I… myself am Hell” (IV.75). As a representative figure for sinners at large, Satan’s alignment with the suppositions that Christians accept, but that non-believers themselves do not, such as that God is real, and that a perfect Heaven and a miserable Hell exist, enables Milton to strawman the arguments of the latter through the use of the former, creating an argument that can definitively win.