PAPER NO. - 1

Assignment Paper: - 1

Topic                     : - Character sketch of Satan

Student’s name     : - Makwana Jayshri D.

Roll  no                 :- 26

URL                      :-makwanajayshri261011.blogspot.com

Semester               :- 1

Batch                    :- 2010-11

                                                   Submitted to,

                                                  Mr. Jay Mehta.

                                                 Department  of  English

                                                 Bhavnagar University.

v Introduction :-

                       The Period extending from 1625 to1660 is generally described as “The Age of Milton” in literary history. The age of Milton is filled with the political and religious strife of the reign of Charles – 1 and the triumph of Puritanism. Shakespeare and Milton are the two Poets who stand head and shoulders above the other English poets.  If Shakespeare represents the Elizabethan age, Milton represents the Puritan age Milton brought a new force into literature by adding to the Renaissance culture and love of beauty the tremendous moral earnestness of the puritan. In other words, “Milton believed that before anyone can write literature, which is an expression of the ideal, he must first develop in himself the ideal man.” After Shakespeare, Milton is the greatest English poet.

                 

   A  master of grand style :

                                               With Milton’s sense of beauty was combined a stateliness of manner which gives a high dignity to his poerty. He is a master of what is known as the grand style he wielded the blank verse with an exceptional mastery. His poetry is distinguished also by its music. Milton is the greatest English poet, which means that he is the greatest English poet outside the drama. Moreover, in the almost unanimous judgement of the critics, he is to be regarded as one of the three or four supreme poets of the world. In him we have a wonderful union of intellectual power and creative power, both their highest. He is the most sublime of English poets, and our one acknowledged master of what Matthew Arnold calls the grand style,

                           “Milton’s language and versification have high merit. His style is full of majesty, and wonderfully adopted to his subject. His blank verse is harmonious and diversified, and affords the most complete example of the elevation, which our language is capable of attaining by the force of the numbers” Eliot regards Milton as the potent master of the artificial style and of corrupted  poetry.

v The poetical works of Milton:-  

   On the morning of Christ’s Nativity (1629)

   L’Allegro (1631)

   Arcades (1633 or 1634)

   Lycidas (1637)

   Paradise Lost (1658-1665)

   Paradise Regained (1666)

   Samson Agonistes (1667)   etc…..                                 

   Paradise lost as an epic poem:-

                                          The argument of paradise Lost may be stated briefly as follows; Satan, after his revolt and overthrow in Heaven, attempts to encourage his followers with the hope of revenging themselves on man. He raises pandemonium and summons a council, as a result of which he search for the new world and new creature, man. Then the scene is changed to heaven, where God the father shows Satan to the son, informs him of his misson, and foretells Satan’s success in ruining mankind. The son offers himself as a redemptive sacrifice and is accepted meanwhile Satan, directed by Uriel, reaches the earth, and perching in the shape of a cormorant on the tree of life overhears from Adam the prohibition not to taste the tree of knowledge, and resolves on the mode to be employed for the temptation of man to. This brings us to the close the fourth book. Raphael is sent to worn Adam of the impending danger, and in reply to his questios, relates in detail the story of the war in Heaven between the good and evil angles, the defeat and expulsion of the latter by the Messiah, and the creation of the world and man. This with the conversation that ensues, occupies Book -5 to 8. Book – 9 contains the actual temptation and fall, an in book -10 the son of God sentences and then clothes the trasgressors, sin and death have made a bridge over chaos from hell to earth, but God the father foretells their ultimate destruction by his son. The last two books contain a vision of the future revealed to Adam by Michael and the expulsion from paradise.

   Character sketch of Satan:-

The character of Satan is one Of the greatest creation                 in English literature Milton has endowed Satan with certain attributes worthy of epic heroes. But he has also heighted the fact that Satan is a personification of evil.

             Satan – head of the rebellious angels who have just fallen from heaven as the poem’s antagonist, Satan is the Originator of sin – the first to be ungrateful for God the father’s blessings. He emarks on a misson to earth that eventually leads to the fall of Adam and eve, but also worsens his eternal punishment. His character changes throughout the poem. He was the first of created beings who, for endeavouring to be equal with the highest and to divide the empire of heaven with the Almighty, was hurled down to hell. His aim was no less than the throne of the universe. His strength of mind was matchless as his strength of body. His power of action and of suffering was equal. He was the greatest power that was ever overthrown, with the strongest will left to resist or to endure. He was baffled, not confounded. He still stood like a tower.

                                     The very first reference to Satan is highly derogatory. In fact Milton’s true attitude towards Satan comes out clearly in this reference, After posing the question;

                               “Who first seduced them (our grand – parents; Adam and Eve ) to that foul revolt?” Milton replies; “The infernal serpent” namely, Satan in the guise of the serpent. It was Satan, who prompted by feelings of “envy and revenge”, deceived eve, the mother of mankind.His inordinate pride and his ambition to rise above God made Satan wage an “”impious war” in heaven, with the result that the God expelled him from there and flung him and his followers into the bottomless pit of hell. We should note that the characteristics of Satan which appear here are his excessive pride, his ambition to capture God’s throne, his envy, and his revengefulness. This is how Milton reveals Satan’s evil side.

    Satan’s physical dimensions:-

                   Satan’s physical dimensions which again exalt him in our eyes. He is “huge in bulk” and is compared to Briareos who fought against Uranus, and to Typhone who fought against Jove, he is also compared to the sea – Monster – Leviathan “which God of all his works created hugest that swim the ocean – stream” He now raises himself above the fiery lake and looks around with blazing eyes. This description of the external features of Satan is surely worthy of an epic hero.

    Satan’s disguise is successful in Book – 9:- 

Satan, in the form of the serpent searches for the couple. He is delighted to find eve alone. Coiling up, he gets her attention, and begins flattering her beauty, and godliness. Eve is amazed to see a creature of the garden speak. He tells her in enticing language that he gained the gifts of speech and intellect by eating the savory fruit of one of the trees in the garden. Eve is amazed by the power that this fruit, eve follows Satan until he brings her to the tree of knowledge. She recoils, telling him that God has forbidden them to eat from this tree, but Satan persists, arguing eat from the tree Satan says that God forbids it only because he wants them to show their independence. Eve is now seriously tempted. She reaches for an apple, plucks it from the tree and takes a bite. The earth then feels wounded and nature sighs in woe, for with this act, humankind has fallen and than Adam realizes that if she is to be doomed, then he must follow and he eats the fruits. After eating the fruit, his attraction to Eve changes subtly, and he looks at her more like a connoisseur, eager to indulge. Their arguing and blaming of each other demonstrate their lack of unity and peace, and demonstrate, as does the Earth’s sighing, their fallen state. And Satan was successful in his plane.

   Satan’s qualities of leadership

             On surveying “the soil” and “the region” of hell where Satan is now condemned to live for ever, he makes another speech which again some readers find to be highly inspiring and which, therefore, is likely to win them over to Satan’s side. He is the “New possessor” of hell, and he claims to be one “who brings a mind not to be changed by place or time” He is shows his great will- power and his great powers of endurance when he says:-

“The mind is own place, and in itself

can make a heaven of hell, a hell of

Heaven.”(lines- 254-255)   

    Satan’s capacity for leadership is clearly seen in the manner in which Beelzebub speaks of the response which Satan is bound to the receive from the fallen angels once they hear his voice which Beelzebub described as “Their liveliest pledge of hope in fears and dangers.”As we shall soon see, Satan holds a complete sway over his followers.   

Satan’s speech to the fallen angels is  brief, but it has the desired effect. He makes them feel ashamed of themselves for lying on the fiery lake in an object condition. He warns them that, if they do not immediately “awake” and “arise” their adversary will transfix to the bottom of the hell with his thunderbolts. The fallenangels are stung by the sarcasm by the threat, and so they are compared to watchman on duty, found sleeping by one whom they dread this as we have already seen, shows a heroic trait in Satan. He still looks like an Archangel, though defeated. Three times he feels choked by his tears of sorrow. At last he speaks, and the words come out of his mouth with sighs closely mingled with them. We are almost moved to sympathy for this rebel. In fact, the whole of this description is touched with the deepest pathos. Satan here appears to be a tragic hero.

     He first speaks of the total unexpectedness of the defeat they have suffered then he exculpates himself from any possible charge of negligence or delay in his operations against God. Satan goes on to informs his followers of the rumour in heaven that God intended to create a race of beings who would hold the same position in his eyes as angels. This speech shows much cunning. Satan makes his followers believe that God has bee playing tricks on them. He also makes them to defeat God and to regain their heavenly abode. Furthermore, He makes it clear that they must keep secretly planning  against God. Finally, Satan has rejected submission and peace and has given a call to his troops to ready for war; 

                                     “Peace is despaired;

                        For who think submission? War, then war

                       Open or under, must be resolved (lines 660-662)”         

                                   In Satan this power of egotism is the poison that permeates his whole being, vanquishing and vitiating all that is good in him. Satan here is always “The infernal serpent” nor simply a character who utilizes the serpent’s body as he does in Eden.The tone of the phrase “The infernal serpent” is both nasty and contemptuous.

   War  between the Satan and God:

                                   Raphael continues his story of the first conflict between Satan and the father Raphael returns to his story with Abdiel, who confronts Satan and the other rebel angels and tells them that their defeat is imminent. He leaves the followers of Satan and is welcomed back into the ranks of God. God appoints Gabriel and Michael the leaders of heaven’s army. Shortly there after, the two armies line up in full view of eachother, waiting for the one day sword slices through Satan’s entire side and only be wounded temporarily. Satan easily rouses himself and his followers that better weapons must yield better results there be no fighting on the third day, and that the war must next day, the son endowed with the power God. He drives them out of the gate of heaven through a hole in heaven’s ground. They fall for nine days through chaos, before landing in hell.

   Conclusion:-

                There is no doubt that Satan is the most heroic of all character in the epic. In the opening books where he the chief figure, he far surpasses all other characters. Though defeated, he is not vanquished. His spirit  remains undaunted. He is the Archangel who contends against the Almighty God. Satan’s character is round character fully devloped  throughout the epic. Milton’s Satan creates the feeling of horror and where as Dante’s Satan is horrible and he creats hatred in the minds of readers.