Satan in "Paradise Lost" has an aristocratic temperament. He represents a revolutionary spirit, which is enough to shake the system of divine right of kings. The revolution may not be successful, but it is inspiring. Secondly, readers can also see a classical tragic spirit from the figure of Satan. He becomes God's purpose tool to awaken mankind to a new path of faith in compounding with God without knowing it.
Satan’s greatest flaw is his arrogance. He was the author of crime, he was the first to be ungrateful for the blessings of God the Father, and he saw himself as an innocent victim because he had been passed over for promotion to an important position. But in a heaven where all angels are equal, all loved, and all happy, his ability to think so selfishly is amazing.
His confidence in his ability to overthrow God shows extreme vanity and arrogance. Satan is devoted to sin, and every word he speaks is a lie, and every story he tells is a lie. Satan's unrepentant evil nature is unwavering. Even when he was defeated and thrown from heaven, he did not consider changing.
By letting Beelzebub reveal his own plan of action, he did his best to deceive his fellow demons in hell. He insisted to his fellow devils that their happiness would lie in doing evil rather than doing good. Especially, as he explained to Beelzebub, he wished to pervert God's will and find a way to make good produce evil.
In general, the image of Satan is complex and contradictory. He is not a single hero or devil. Readers should look at the character of Satan with dialectical thinking and treat him as a whole.
Extended information
The interpretation of the image of Satan created by "Paradise Lost" has formed a lineage of erroneous hermeneutics. The English poet John Dryden (1631-1700) was the first to believe that Satan was the main character of poetic drama and the real hero. William Blake made the famous assertion in the 1790s that "Milton became an accomplice of the devil without knowing it."
By the 19th century, the mainstream tended to regard Milton's epic as the most determined example of resistance to tyranny. Shelley (1792-1822) highly praised Satan, believing that his moral image was much higher than that of God, and even compared Satan to Prometheus who fought against the tyranny of Zeus. Hazlitt (1778-1830) also admired Satan's defiance and charisma.
Celebrities who belong to this context also include: Wordsworth (1770-1850), Byron (1788-1824), Keats (1795-1821), Belinsky (1811-1848) , Engels (1820-1895) and so on. Conservative Christians like Wodehouse also mistook him for an epic hero who broke icons and resisted power.
Especially the interpretation represented by Belinsky, from the standpoint of historical materialism, directly corresponds to the image of Satan and the Puritan revolutionaries, praising his resistance to authority.
This kind of politicized misunderstanding is so pernicious that to this day, many people in domestic academic circles still spread false rumors and regard Satan as Milton’s self-portrait, taking it for granted that Milton defended regicide. The proposition is reflected in Satan's rebellion against God, and Satan's sorrow after his failure also reveals "the depression and depression of the British people and poets."
However, in fact, if there is a projection of Milton's self-image in "Paradise Lost", it cannot be Satan, but Abed who does not collude with Satan and the light of the dark age. Son of Noah (see my article "Milton's Power"). For example, Abed, after he rebuked the demons with righteous words, he returned to God with his head held high.
God praised this: "In order to defend the cause of truth, you bravely fought against the treasonous thieves alone. The power of words is more powerful than the power of their weapons; in order to prove the truth, you suffered endless humiliation. "It is far more unbearable than violence." (Page 220)
As long as we have a little understanding of Milton's slanderous attacks by political opponents throughout his life, we can deeply understand his self-portrait here. . Since Milton took Abed's spirit of "Though thousands of people will leave me" as an example, he was obviously ashamed to associate with Satan.
Fortunately, more and more people are basing themselves on the text, correcting the source, and correcting their biased understanding of Satan. "The greatest Oxfordian" C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) confirmed that Satan, the fallen archangel, is an irrefutable negative image; Blessington found that although Satan has eloquence, he lacks real fighting power; Stedman It is believed that Satan's own barbaric cruelty is completely inconsistent with the moral standards of an epic hero.
In China, scholars such as Qi Hongwei and Shen Hong also criticized various subjective beautifications of Satan. These commentators have noticed to varying degrees that the praise of Satan lacks sufficient textual basis (for example, Satan's terrifying monologue and hideous face in Book 4 were the earliest written by Milton), and is also inconsistent with Milton's belief as a devout Christian. Serious discord.
No matter how you interpret Satan, don't forget that "Paradise Lost" is first and foremost a literary epic. Milton's creations are of course marked by his own special experiences, but those political, social, era, and author's personality factors are, after all, background, simply from the perspective of political allegory or theological proposition.
It is dogmatic and inappropriate to label Satan as an epic hero or the incarnation of evil, a Puritan revolutionary or a tyrant. The fundamental attribute of literature and poetry is to show human nature and Life itself has the richness of flesh and blood. Regarding Satan specifically, it is precisely because Milton grasped the complexity of his temperament that he became an extremely successful character in "Paradise Lost".
But no matter what, we must correctly uphold the purpose and focus of the analysis. We must not blur the standards of justice and goodness because of this complexity, so as not to fall into the Satan-like tendency to use evil for good. , in the chaotic logic of using ugliness as beauty, humbleness as sublimity, and cruelty as heroism.
Baidu Encyclopedia-Lost Paradise