JOHN MILTON – SATAN’S SPEECH

The extract belongs to Book I from “Paradise Lost” by John Milton. “Paradise Lost” tells the biblical story of Adam and Eve, with God and Satan (Lucifer), who is thrown out of Heaven and later tries to corrupt human kind. Satan, the most beautiful of the angels, is hurled into Hell with his stunned followers because of his defeat in the war of Heaven. It is a religious epic poem in which Satan is the epic hero: leadership, courageous…he embodies the figure of the rebel against authority.

The extract can be divided into 3 paragraphs: the description of Hell, the comparison of Hell with Heaven and the comparison of Satan with God. Here Hell and Heaven are only states of mind. Hell is in the mind because the mind can change the external world: if we live in a Paradise but our mind perceives it as a Hell, that place will be Hell and viceversa.

This passage deals with Satan’s arrival in his new kingdom, Hell. Satan is surveying his new home after his down fall: he compares the new world to Paradise and feels lost because everything is different here: there is only mournful gloom all over the place instead of the celestial light of paradise. Later he accepts the new situation and welcomes his new world.

In the following lines Satan shows all his ambitions, all his self confidence and determination; he realizes he is now new possessor of a place where he may reign secure. His ambition is to have a reign somewhere, no matter if that place is gloomy and horrible. He is great in the self-assurance of his strength: he brings a mind not to be changed by place or time, a mind can make a Heaven of Hell and a Hell of Heaven.

After that he compares himself to God: he is equal to God in reason and inferior only in power. When God banishes him from Heaven, he feels himself injured and wants to take a revenge against him, corrupting his new creation: man. Satan is very proud, and his boundless pride makes him believe that is better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven. In this way he refuses the idea of the inferiority and underlines his superiority.

In conclusion we can say that Satan is the hero of Paradise Lost who embodies the characteristics of the epic hero and moreover he embodies the puritan ideals of independence and liberty since he is seen as a rebel fighting against the absolute power of a tyrannical God, just as Milton, defender of liberties, struggles his battle against a despotic king.