The only fault lies with God. The logic of Satan says that if God had not created him so high above other angels, he would not have had the same ambition.
Satan ignores his close run with repentance and once again says that it is natural to become better. He feels that because God created him with such a nature, that to be punished is wrong.
He cannot help what he is. These thoughts lead to Satan projecting his own tyranny on God. Satan himself is obviously a tyrannical character. According to his reason, everyone else is as well. From the beginning he pushes his own tyranny on God. He sets God up as a grand tyrant whose only intention was to orchestrate the fall of Satan. He blames the war on God as well, and blames the loss of the battle on the trickery of God in lines of Book I.
He justifies his attack on God by saying:. Satan reasons that others felt as though God was a tyrant, therefore the attack was completely justifiable. He even seems to say that God purposely made him with the ambition that would cause his fall. Satan, because he is a fallen angel, cannot understand the workings of God, therefore only sees Him as he views himself, a tyrant. Satan even goes as far as to give God human qualities. The logic behind it is similar to that of his perspective of God as a tyrant.
This reason shows God possessing the same emotions and traits as a fallen angel or human. When Satan hears Adam and Eve talking about the forbidden tree, he wonders why they are not allowed to eat from it. Through his reason, eating from the tree of knowledge would make them better, which he sees as a good thing. God cannot feel envy to his own creations, therefore would have no reason to keep them low and enslaved.
Satan also equates God with selfishness. He makes it seem as though God feels threatened by his creations, and needs to withhold things from them in order to keep them under control. With the logic of Satan, God becomes almost human. Satan also begins to pervert the good qualities of other characters.
Still to owe! Love of God and gratitude are meant to be freely given and a positive concept, yet Satan turns it into a negative, forced task. When he plans the temptation of Eve, Satan wants to use love against her. He wants to twist her love and use it to destroy, rather than celebrate it for the beauty it holds. Satan thinks very much like a human would think, which helps him in his temptation of Eve.
They understand his logic and therefore listen to what he says. He is getting a foothold in her command of reason and opening her up to the possibility of bettering herself. But his ability to think so selfishly in Heaven, where all angels are equal and loved and happy, is surprising.
His confidence in thinking that he could ever overthrow God displays tremendous vanity and pride. When Satan shares his pain and alienation as he reaches Earth in Book IV, we may feel somewhat sympathetic to him or even identify with him. But Satan continues to devote himself to evil. Every speech he gives is fraudulent and every story he tells is a lie. He 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. In Book I, he persuades the devils to agree to his plan. In Book IV, however, he reasons to himself that the Hell he feels inside of him is reason to do more evil. As a rebel, he challenges an omnipotent foe, God, with power that is granted him by his foe. God simply toys with Satan in battle. Satan is, in fact, cartoonish when he and Belial gloat over the success of their infernal cannon in Book VI.
Satan and Belial stand laughing at the disorder they have caused, but they are unaware of the mountains and boulders just about to land on their heads. If all of Paradise Lost were on the level of the battle scene, the poem would be comic. But Satan's temptation of Adam and Eve moves the demon closer to tragedy. Satan's motives in destroying the human couple may be arguable, but the effect and its implications are not.
Satan brings the humans down and causes their removal from Eden. In so doing, he also provides the way to salvation for those humans who choose freely to obey God. However, Satan provides nothing for himself. Hell is where Satan is because he has no way to rejoin God. Unlike humanity, Satan and the other fallen angels have already sealed their fates. They live always with the knowledge of Hell. In the end, Satan calls to mind the Macbeth of Shakespeare.
Both characters are magnificent creations of evil. Both are heroic after a fashion, but both are doomed. Both are fatalistic about the afterlife. Satan knows that he must remain in Hell; Macbeth says that he would "jump the life to come," if he could kill Duncan with no consequence on Earth. Both characters are the driving force in their own works. And finally both create a kind of Hell; Macbeth's on Earth, Satan's in the universe.
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My Preferences My Reading List. Paradise Lost John Milton.
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