Character Sketch of SATAN

                                                                  

                                                                   Paper No: 1 Unit No: 3

                                                                   Name: Pooja N.Trivedi

                                                                   Roll No: 36

                                                                   M.A. Part - I SEM – I

                                                                   Year: 2010-11

Submitted To:    Mr. Jay Mehta

                         Department of English

                          Bhavnagar University,

                          Bhavnagar.

 

Satan is an embodiment of antagonism that originates from the abrahamic religions, being traditionally considered as Angel in Judeo-christian belief and Jinn in Islamic belief. Originally, the term was used as:

“A title for various entities that challenged the religious faith of humans in the Bible.”

Since then the Abrahamic religions have used “Satan” as a name for the devil. Known by a variety of names Satan, Lucifer, and Mephistopheles – the devil remains one of the most intriguing and ubiquitous figures in western literature, with such literary luminaries as Dante, Milton and Goethe finding in him the perfect personification of “the human impulse toward evil”. Since the advent of the Bible, the Devil has existed as the quintessential adversary and the ultimate antithesis to goodness and morality. In the Medieval era, the Devil evolved from a relativity minor role in the Holy Scripture to a dominant figure in the didactic mystery and morality plays of the day. During the reformation and renaissance Luciferian figures continued to be abstracted and allegorized in literature that is until the publication of “Paradise Lost” in 1661 where Satan has been portrayed as magnificent character who is subservient to protagonist.

Joseph Addison says “Satan” is “the most exalted and most depraved being.” In his epic-peon ‘Paradise Lost’ John Milton (1608-1674) lavished all his power, all his skill and the greater part of his sympathy on the splendid figure of Satan from beginning Milton fixes consciously his gaze on Satan. It is his suffering, his revenge, his struggle that constitute the main charm of the peon. Around this character Milton has thrown a singularity of daring, a grandeur of suffering and a rushed splendor.

“Milton’s devil as a moral being is far more superior to his God.” Wrote Shelley and for Blake. “Milton was of the devil’s party without knowing it.” The question confronts, here which has prudent reply is whether Milton’s portrayal of Satan is villainous or heroic?

In Book I Satan emerges as the most dynamic and most impressive character and embodiment of heroic spirit. The loftiest of Milton’s sentiments are found in his speech, e.g.

“To be weak is miserable

Doing or suffering”

                                                OR

                   What thought the field be lost?

                   All is not lost, the unconquerable will

                   And study of revenge, immortal late

                   And courage never to submit or yield”

C.W. Lewis holds the view that Satan thought himself neglected. He thought so because Messiah had been pronounced. Head of the Angels. This unjust and ill founded sence of wrong done to him is the root of his whole procumbent the doctrine that he is self existent being not a derived being, a creature.

Satan impresses us by his exceptional will power and courage. Satan expresses Heroic energy in such a way that no other character in the epic does. It is through Satan, his conflict and endurance. The odds are against him. He has to wage war against the omnipotent. Almighty but still he persists and struggles and wins our profound admiration and sympathy. In fact, his very revolt against God is act of unprecedented daring. His encouraging address electrifies the dormant spirit and dropping heart of the fallen angels and infuses a new spirit of courage in them. As he warns:

“Awake! Arise or be forever fallen.”

And again he says:

“Here we may reign secure and in my own choice

To reign is worth ambition though in hell.

Better to reign in hell, than to serve in heaven.”

As the poem proceeds, we watch a slow and steady determination, both moral and physical in character of Satan. His grandeur and magnificence fades away gradually and are replaced by meanness and baseness. His persistent refusal to choose the right, his deliberate choice of evil ultimately brings about his final degradation.

As in Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’ the tragedy opens with the villain of the piece and through a long soliloquy a peep is given to the readers into his mind and heart. Here, Satan is one of those villains who cannot endure the sight of the happiness of the others and who toy to wreck if by every means of disposal.

The Satan we have in Book IX is absolutely different from and inferior to the Satan we have in Book I from great revolutionary and leader, he degenerates into creator a mere twister. His professed glorious enterprise his much talked assault on the meanness attacks on two innocent and harmless characters: Adam and Eve.

Satan excited his passion for revenge to his former fierceness by taking to himself. For the time being he forgets his purpose and plans. Soon, however, he recovers and decides to assume the form of a snake, the craftiest of the beasts of the field. He knows that revenge is wicked, but such hot passion tortures his soul, that he is determined to have his revenge and face the consequences:

“So much hath hello debased, and pain

Enfeebled me to what I was in heaven.”

Further he uffers :

“O foul descent that I who erst contended

with Gods to sit the highest ”

“That to the hight of deity aspired but what will not ambition and revenge.

Descend to?”

          Gradual diminution of Satan’s character is and integral part of Milton’s epic design through Satan’s fall. Milton expounds that once baseness has been deliberately chosen there can be no redemption. Even the glorification of Satan is a dramatic device. In order to make the victory of over evil. It was necessary to make the force of evil as grand as that of good. An adversary of God had to be a massive stature. The power that was to seduce eve must have an impressive personality and character or else how could the mother eternal be seduced?

The seeds of decay are there in Satan from the very first. Even in his most eloquent speeches of liberty and freedom, he cannot forget to think of evil. Notice the following lines in the way he speaks, the very first book where Satan is portrayal of heroic dimensions:

“Ought to good never will be our task

But ever to do ill, our sole delight and study to revenge immortal hate.”

The way he seduces eve by lying, tempting and warning like a dirty politician diminishes him in our eyes. The man who began as a hero now ends in shear villain. God punished him for his evil deeds by malting him a serpent forever. Thus in the end he is not only defeated but degraded and dammed Milton point out.

“Who aspires most down or law as high he soared.”

Milton’s Satan is not a comic or grotesque figure like Devil or vice of me devils writers or the demons of other epic poets. Though it is true that the representation of his ‘self begotten’ attempts is comic and contradictory, Milton’s Satan is neither a fool nor a clown. He has the beauty of sublimity and the grandeur and majesty and dignity of bearing, perhaps; therefore, Reeling rightly notes that the nobility and greatness of some half-dozen of finish poetic passages in the world. The most stapes duos of the poet’s imaginative creations are intended to heighten by contrast the greatness of Satan. The same ability of Satan’s character is also praised by C.W. Lewis:

As he says,

“Set a hundred poets to tell the same story and ninety of the resulting poems, Satan will be the best character.”

Satan looms up as a magnificent figure, entirely different from the devil of the miracle plays and completely overshadowing the hero both in interest and in manliness. As in the view of prof. Macmillan.

“Milton’s Satan is distinguished from all other demons that have been described in literature by the absence of the grotesque.”

Indeed Satan’s character has been treated with such sympathy and dramatic power that Milton, in the person of Satan has revealed to the world his own proud spirit of independence and superiority to the blows of fortune. Satan, it has been said is a self portrait, a rebel. It is through Satan that Milton’s own heroic energy has been expressed. Lewis is of remark “We have in Satan” he says, “an expression of Milton’s own pride, malice, folly, misery and last.” But Milton expresses in Satan much more of himself than this.

One the whole, Satan is such a magnificently, drawn character and such is the fascination he has exercised on the readers of ‘paradise lost’ that ever since Dryden said that Satan is real hero of the epic, critic after critic has taken him to be. There is no doubt, that he dominates early looks of epic but after that consequently there is progressive degradation and shrinkage. By his own will he beams a serpent in Book IX in book he is replant whether he will or no.

The Progressive degradation, about which he is aware, is carefully market in the poem. He begging by fighting for ‘liberty’ how ever misleading, at once sinks to fighting for ‘Honor’, Dominion, Gloric and renounce. Defeated in all such, he craves for revenge which frames the main subject of the poem. In the remarks of Macmillan.

“From hero to general from general to politician, from politician to secret service agent and thence to a thing that peers at bed rood…. And finally to a snake – Such is the progress of Satan.”

Inspire of his final degradation it is Satan who gives real epic grandeur to ‘Paradise Lost’. He was the greatest power that ever overthrown. His ambition was the greatest and so was his fall and punishment. His stench of mind was as matchless as his strength of body.

Yet, we are more in dined to agree with C.W. Lewis who is of view that Satan expresses as particular nature, an aspect of human nature itself.

“He has the strange fascination of evil about him, and evil there is in all of us.”

A fallen man is very like a fallen angel. It is, therefore that trait of man has been put, but it is unwarrantable to include that he was pleased with that part of Satan or expected us to be pleased. No doubt his energy is unreasoned, no doubt it is devoted to his wicked passion for revenge, and he is carried away by hate and envy, but still we cannot help with admiring him for the heroic energy with which he achieve his aims. In short if Satan be ‘Paradise lost’ would be no more than a tedious theological thesis composed in verse. To end Satan’s glory with William Hazlitt’s words who justifies him as the heroic subject:

“Satan is the most heroic subject that was ever chosen for a poem, and the execution is as perfect as the design is lofty. He was the first of created beings, who for endeavoring to be equal with the highest and to divide the empire of heaven with the almightily was hurled down to bell.”