Reflexive Reading: Paradise Lost Edition

        Milton gives Satan some very interesting characteristics in Paradise Lost, he makes him appear heroic, valiant, purposeful, a great rhetorician and all in spite of the fact that he is presented as rebelling against the ultimate power, God. At the same time it interesting to note that it is rebelliousness that also makes him relatable to us as a character, we find something noble in his fight for freedom. I think people in general seem to love rebels, law breakers, when they see their cause as being noble in someway and what is more noble to us Americans than fighting for freedom?

I think, as I've said that Satan's motivation in Paradise Lost seems to be a freedom, to not be tied down by rules. In a way it seems as though Satan is trying to escape the limits that God has set, he's trying to possess more than he already has and feels he deserves to have more power than he is seems to be allowed to have. Satan's quest seems superficially to be heroic but really when we strip him of all his fanciful rhetoric his motives are just those of greed and envy for something that has not been permitted to him. In really his motives aren't really freedom against an unjust ruler, as God does not seem to have anything that isn’t understandable from Satan and the rest of the fallen angels, or if he had we will never know because Milton never made it quite clear why the war was started. Servitude seems to be an issue for Satan, perhaps God is a harsh dictator. This can be seen when Satan claims “To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:/ Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n.” (Milton, 262-263) Here it is apparent that Satan had the ambition to try to rule Heaven, or at least be in power in some place, because while his first intent was to rule Heaven, he seems to accept the idea of having some sort of power to rule even if it is in Hell. Therefore, it appears that Satan's true motives are selfish and greedy, and although it appears as though they are noble nothing positive comes of it, something which Milton represented in a literal way by placing Sin and Death as the offspring of Satan's rebellion.

        I feel as though Satan in Heaven found himself questioning why there were rules and boundaries, why he could not obtain more power, or knowledge than what he already possessed from God. I find it curious that Satan asks to himself when spying upon Adam and Eve the reasons that God might have for forbidding them to eat from the tree of knowledge, it is an example of the true nature of Satan. He states, “Knowledge forbidden?/ Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their Lord/ Envy them that? Can it be sin to know,/ Can it be death? And do they only stand/ By ignorance, is that their happy state,/ The proof of their obedience and their faith?” (515-520) Satan is not simply jealous or envious of Adam and Eve
because they are beautiful creations but because they are innocent and ignorant, without sin, and this caused by the fact that they have knowledge of good or evil, which is God has seemingly endowed the angels with. However, at the same time Satan also questions if their happiness and the harmonious relationship they carry on with their Lord is only based on the fact that they are ignorant. Satan brings up some interesting questions like whether only obliviousness can keep the peace? Or whether God can only secure their faith and obedience by having them be ignorant? These are interesting questions for Milton to ask in his poem, because it pertains not only to God, or religion but to politics as well, a topic which concerned him very much as well. Can we trust a ruler, a human or deity, to rule humanity honestly and justly when we as subjects are kept in ignorance? Is that not in some sense evil? Despite the fact that this text is suppose to be religious, the ideas of what is good and what is evil are not always made clear. Evil is not necessarily Satan's rebellion, evil is not Adam and Eve's defiance, in other words these things are not considered evil, neither for Milton nor God. I don't believe that Paradise Lost really explores the nature of evil, to me it seems to explore questions of oppression, power, motivation, and knowledge. Satan might have caused the fall of human kind and while it could be thought of as destructive and malicious, but in a sense he also set Eve and Adam free of the bonds of ignorance and gave them the ability to aspire to something higher than themselves.