Literary Representation of Satan

Paradise Lost, first published in 1667, is an epic poem that details man’s first disobedience and
subsequent fall from grace. It is most noted for Milton’s sympathetic treatment of Satan, who is both the
anti-hero and antagonist of the epic poem. Throughout the arc of the poem, Satan’s character gradually
transforms from angel to devil and lastly to serpent. Milton portrayed a very different Satan than any
other that had been seen prior to that time in both art and literature.

John Milton (9 December 1608–8 November 1674) was an English poet best known for his epic
poem Paradise Lost, first published in 1667. Originally published in ten books, it was divided into twelve
books in 1674 following the style of Virgil’s Aeneid. In the opening lines of book I, Milton states the
main purpose of Paradise Lost:

. . . what in me is dark,

Illumine; what is low, raise and support;

That to the height of this great argument

I may assert eternal Providence,

And justify the ways of God to men. (book I, 22–26)

The universe is, generally according to Milton’s viewpoint of religion, divided into four major regions:
glorious Heaven, Dreadful Hell, confusing Chaos, and a young and vulnerable Earth in between. “With
the established settings of good and evil, light and dark, much of the action occurs in between on Earth”
( Shawcross, 1993: p. 28 ).
Paradise Lost is about hierarchy as much as it is about obedience. “The layout of the universe―with
Heaven above, Hell below, and Earth in the middle―presents the universe as a hierarchy based on
proximity to God and his grace” ( Shawcross, 1993: p. 29 ). The spatial hierarchy leads to a social
hierarchy of angels, humans, animals, and devils. The Son is closest to God, with the archangels and
cherubs behind him. Adam and Eve and Earth’s animals come next, with Satan and the other fallen angels
following last. To obey God is to respect this hierarchy.
Satan refuses to honor the Son as his superior and questions God’s hierarchy. When the angels in Satan’s
camp rebel, they hope to beat God and thereby dissolve an unfair hierarchy in Heaven they believe to be.
The rebels are punished by being banished far away from Heaven, when the Son and the royal angels
defeat the rebel angels. Satan argues later, they can make their own hierarchy in Hell at least, but they are
still subject to God’s overall hierarchy, in which they are ranked the lowest. Satan continues to disobey
God and his hierarchy. So it makes sense that he seeks to corrupt mankind.

Likewise, humankind’s disobedience is a corruption of God’s hierarchy. Before the fall, Adam and Eve
treat the visiting angels with proper respect and acknowledgement of their closeness to God, and Eve
embraces the subservient role allotted to her in her marriage. When Eve persuades Adam to let her work
alone, she challenges his superior position and Adam yields to Eve, his inferior. Again, when Adam eats
the fruit, he knowingly defies God by obeying Eve and his inner instinct instead of God and his reason.
Adam’s visions in Book XI and XII show more examples of this disobedience to God and the universe’s
hierarchy, but also demonstrate that with the Son’s sacrifice, this hierarchy will be restored once again.
Throughout the arc of Paradise Lost, Satan’s character gradually transforms from angel to devil to
serpent. Prior to Paradise Lost, Satan was generally depicted in one of three forms: a demonic monster, as
the serpent, or as some other hybrid form. However, as he begins to stir, we are given a few more details
on his appearance:

With Head up-lift above the wave, and eyes

that sparkling blaz’d, his other Parts besides
Prone on the Flood, extended long and large
lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge
as whom the Fables name of monstrous size,
....................................
. . . that Sea-beast
leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim th’ Ocean stream
....................................
So stretcht out huge in length the arch-fiend lay
Chain’d on the burning lake.
(book I, 193–97, 200–202, 209–10)

Satan is described as being an intimidating figure of “mighty stature.” We may, however, get a sense of
Satan’s greatness in the way that his figure stands tall over those of his fellow rebel angels. In lines 225–
26, we are given evidence of the presence of Satan’s wings: “then with expanded wings he stears his
flight / aloft.” Milton does not specify whether Satan’s wings are feathered or those of a bat. He portrays
Satan as both a being of heavenly descent and one who has been changed by the fall from Heaven:

. . . his form had yet not lost

all her Original brightness, nor appear’d
less then arch angel ruind, and th’ excess
Of Glory obscur’d . . .
....................................
. . . but his face
deep scars of thunder had intrencht, and care
Sat on his faded cheek . . .
....................................
. . . cruel his eye, but cast
Signs of remorse and passion to behold
the fellows of his crime. (book I, 591–94, 600–2, 604–6)

Therefore, we can assume that Satan’s wings are still the ones he bore as a celestial angel. Even in his
fallen state, Satan is still described as a radiant being, and one who shows remorse for the current state of
the rebel angels.

In Book IV, he experiences “troubled thoughts” for:

Within him Hell

He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell
One step, no more than from himself, can fly
By change of place. Now conscience wakes despair
That slumbered; wakes the bitter memory
Of what he was, what is, and what must be. (20-25)

Satan embodies the powerful idea that Marlowe’s devil Mephistopheles expresses when he speaks to
Faustus in the latter’s study: “Myself am Hell, nor am I out of it.” Tillyard (1938) commented on this by
saying that Satan’s words regarding the change of place, which will never change his mind, suggest his
heroic stature and a mind that will not relent, but will follow the plan of revenge till the end, no matter
what the results are. Satan’s outward appearance shows his spiritual decline. In Book IV he has
degenerated to such an extent that, when he is discovered tempting Eve, his former companion in Heaven,
Gabriel, does not immediately recognize him. In Book XI he returns to Hell after successfully destroying
the innocence of Adam and Eve, and is turned into the serpent whose form he had adopted when
concealed in Paradise. The passages describing Satan’s appearance are like a chart indicating his moral
decline from the imaginative picture of an “Archangel ruined” which exactly describes him at first. These
passages emphasize the reality behind Satan’s evasions and pretence. They increase our awareness of the
hollowness of Satan’s heroic postures. They also keep before our eyes the deceptiveness which is a great
part of the experience and pleasure of sin.

The scenes of book IX The Fall can be read chronologically from front to back. The foreground is a
darkened area depicting Satan considering the coiled form of a serpent. Satan’s appearance is further
transformed from that of book III: His legs have morphed into goat’s legs, and his hands are clawed like
an animal’s. His arms are hairy, and his tail longer. He is again pictured with a pair of bat-like wings, and
is the largest figure of the composition, indicating his importance as the cause of man’s fall from grace.
Milton describes in length Satan’s journey to find a way back into Eden after being forced out by the
angel Gabriel. After eight days, he is successful, and searches for the perfect creature to take form of in
order to deceive eve.

………………..thus the Orb he roam’d

With narrow search; and with inspection deep
Consider’d every Creature, which of all
Most opportune might serve his Wiles, and found
the Serpent subtlest beast of all the Field.
Him after long debate, irresolute
Of thoughts revolv’d, his final sentence chose

Fit Vessel, fittest Imp of fraud, in whom

to enter, and his dark suggestions hide
From sharpest sight: for in the wily Snake,
Whatever sleights none would suspicious mark,
as from his wit and native subtlety
Proceeding, which in other beasts observ’d
doubt might beget of diabolic pow’r
active within beyond the sense of brute. (book IX, 82–96)

The next two scenes show Adam and Eve as they discuss the division of their labors and separately work
in the garden. Further on, eve is depicted beneath the tree of knowledge standing before Satan disguised
as the serpent as she is about to bite into the forbidden fruit.

This is Milton’s serpent, not the serpent in the tree of traditional iconography, nor its frequent alternative,
the serpent with the female head.” the coiled serpent represents Satan’s character as a master of guile and
deceit. The remaining two scenes of book IX’s composition depict the corruption of Adam by Eve and the
pair shamed, disgraced, and covered by leaves.

Milton can scarcely intend that we should regard him as ‘hero’-as worthy of sustained admiration-one
who passes from the splendor of archangelic being to the state of loathsome reptile. Because Satan’s
character is round, it changes significantly from Book I though Book X, in which he makes his final
appearance as a miserable creature, suffering from hell, but unable to repent. In Book I he is courageous
and heroic with so many grand qualities, but as we see him in Book X, a complete degeneration has taken
place in his character, which is illustrated by the different shapes he takes; from a determined hero into a
cursed serpent.

If Paradise Lost narrates the fall of man, it narrates too-and no less clearly-the fall of man’s
temper. The self-degradation of Satan is complete: outward and inward: of the form and of the spirit: a
change-ever for the worse-of shape and mind and emotion. There is the outward sign. Before his
expulsion he is preeminently a lustrous being, clothed with ethereal radiance and glory. And afterwards
he retains something of this original brightness: howbeit much has passed from him. But gradually what
was left decreases in proportion as the evil in him prevails: so that Uriel perceives the foul passions that
dim his face (IV. 124-130); while Gabriel marks his “faded splendor wan” (IV. 870). And the Cherub
Zephon taunts him therewith (IV. 835-840). Equal is his loss of physical force. On the fields of Heaven he
does not fear to meet Michael in combat (VI. 246-260); in the Garden of Eden he doubts himself a match
for Adam. In fact he is glad that he has to deal with the woman, not the man (IX. 480-488). Nor is this
because of lost strength alone. He shuns the “higher intellect” of Adam (IX. 483), who would be better
able than Eve to see through his arguments and so resist temptation. He is conscious of his own decline in
intellect. The strong intelligence which inspires his speeches in the first two books has degenerated, by
perverse use, into mere sophistical slyness, a base cunning. He is no more the mighty-minded archangel:
he is naught but the serpent- “subtlest beast of all the field” (IX. 86) Lastly, every impulse in him towards
good has died out. The element of nobility that redeemed his character at the outset from absolute
baseness has been killed. In evil he moves and has his being so that he confesses “all food to me becomes
bane”; and in destroying lies his sole delight (IX. 118-119).

In conclusion, we can say that Satan’s body changes significantly from Book I to his final appearance in
Book X. The change of Satan’s body demonstrates the fact that disobedience of the hierarchical nature of
universe in moral sense results in the gradual degradation in body. “Satan begins the poem as a just-fallen
angel of enormous stature, looks like a comet or meteor as he leaves Hell, then disguises himself as a
more humble cherub, then as a cormorant, a toad and finally a snake”. His ability to reason and argue also
deteriorates. Through the first two or three books of Paradise Lost, Satan seems as if he is the hero of the
poem. This is partly because the focus of the poem is all on him, but it is also because the first books
establish his struggle― he finds himself defeated and banished from Heaven, and sets about establishing
a new course for himself and those he leads. “One important way in which the narrator develops our
picture of Satan―and gives us the impression that he is a hero―is through epic similes, lengthy and
developed comparisons that tell us how big and powerful Satan is” ( Fish, 1967: p. 13 ). For example,
when Satan is lying on the burning lake, Milton compares him to the Titans who waged war upon Love in
Greek mythology. Then at a greater length, he compares him to a Leviathan, or whale, that is so huge that
sailors mistake it for an island and fix their anchor to it. In the beginning of the poem, Satan, as a fallen
angel, has a big body and a heroic image. Satan displays all of the virtues of a great warrior such as
Achilles and Odysseus. He is courageous, undaunted, refusing to yield in the face of impossible odds, and
able to stir his followers to follow him in brave and violent exploits.

In Book III, Satan lands on earth and is drawn by the golden sun, hanging above the green and lush land.
He flies towards it and sees an angel standing on a hill. To deceive him, Satan changes to a low-ranking
angel. Recognizing the other angel as the Archangel Uriel, Satan approaches and addresses. Satan’s
transformation and his speech are so flawless that even Uriel cannot see through the subterfuge. The
encounter between Satan and Uriel demonstrates Satan’s capacity for deception and fraud, as he subverts
Uriel’s role as a guardian by disguising himself as a cherub. Through Satan’s deception of
Uriel, Milton shows the significance of the sin of fraud, or hypocrisy. Fraud is an especially damaging sin
because it is visible to others, hurting them in ways they are not even aware of. Milton has the opinion
that leading innocent people to evil is much worse than leading you to evil
.
Satan is later described as leaping over Eden’s fence like a wolf into a sheep’s pen. While he does not
exactly take the form of a wolf, he continues to be compared to and associated with wild, predatory
animal. He takes the shape of a bird on the top of the Tree of Life, and then morphs into a toad to whisper
temptation into Eve’s ear. Satan’s shapes become progressively less impressive and stately. Once as an
imposing figure, he shrinks himself to become a lesser angel, then a mere bird, and finally a much less
appealing animal: a toad. Finally, Satan, in the form of serpent, flatters Eve by saying that eating the
apple will make Adam seek her out in order to worship her beauty. While in Hell, Satan tells himself that
his mind could make its own Heaven out of Hell. Hell is not simply a place, but rather a state of mind
brought on by a lack of connection with God. He brings Hell with him wherever he goes.