Satan And Satan In John Milton's Paradise Lost

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John Milton was a very interesting human being. Milton was a poet who lived during the seventeenth century and he wanted to create something astounding that rivaled Homer and Virgil, authors of the world’s great epic poems. He decided to follow the story of Adam and Eve from the Bible’s, Genesis 3. To explain the acts of God to men was his chief goal and he achieved it by telling of the first disobediences towards God and what he did as a consequence. What’s even more interesting, is that Milton wrote the whole poem, Paradise Lost, completely blind. He didn’t exactly write it, but rather recited it to his daughters who wrote it down. Another very interesting thing Milton did, was he decided to portray Satan as not only a villain, but also as a hero in Paradise Lost. Oddly, in Paradise Lost, Milton portrays Satan as a hero. Milton wanted to create an epic poem just as Homer and Virgil did, but there cannot be an epic without an epic hero. Milton did not create God or Christ as the epic hero, but rather he chose Satan. The poem begins with Satan and his other fallen angels …show more content…

Satan is made up of pride, ambition, jealousy, temptation, manipulation, fraud, and sin. When Satan makes his way to the Garden of Eden (Paradise) he looks over and all he sees is his beauty and innocence. Just as he used to be, and he for a second considers if he repented, whether God would forgive him. Then he realizes that if he asked God for forgiveness, it would be a lie and if he returned to Heaven, he would still not be free. So he goes on his task to corrupt man. This moment of internal struggle within Satan, just reveals how evil he is. He knows there is a possibility of repenting, but he refuses it and it shows that he is a true devil and villain. Satan is the true embodiment of Hell. The quote “The mind is its own place…” (Paradise Lost) is ultimately true for Satan and his

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