The Fall of Satan from Paradise Lost by John Milton
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Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, Heavenly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Horeb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed
In the beginning how the Heavens and Earth
Rose out of Chaos; or if Zion hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flowed
Fast by the oracle of God, I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all temples the upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for thou know’st; thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like sat’st brooding on the vast abyss
And mad’st it pregnant: 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.
Say first, for Heaven hides nothing from thy view,
Nor the deep tract of Hell, say first what cause
Moved our grand parents in that happy state,
Favored of Heaven so highly, to fall off
From their Creator, and transgress his will
For one restraint, lords of the world besides?
Who first seduced them to that foul revolt?
The infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile,
Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived
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The mother of mankind, what time his pride
Had cast him out from Heaven, with all his host
Of rebel angels, by whose aid aspiring
To set himself in glory above his peers,
He trusted to have equaled the Most High,
If he opposed; and with ambitious aim
Against the throne and monarchy of God,
Raised impious war in Heaven and battle proud
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power
Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky
With hideous ruin and combustion down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms.
Nine times the space that measures day and night
To mortal men, he with his horrid crew
Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf,
Confounded though immortal. But his doom
Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain
Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes,
That witnessed huge affliction and dismay
Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate.
At once as far as angels ken he views
The dismal situation waste and wild:
A dungeon horrible on all sides round
As one great furnace flamed, yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all; but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever-burning sulfur unconsumed:
Such place Eternal Justice had prepared
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For those rebellious, here their prison ordained
In utter darkness, and their portion set
As far removed from God and light of Heaven
As from the center thrice to the utmost pole.
O how unlike the place from whence they fell!
There the companions of his fall, o’erwhelmed
With floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire,
He soon discerns, and weltering by his side
One next himself in power, and next in crime,
Long after known in Palestine, and named
Beelzebub. To whom the Arch-Enemy,
And then in Heaven called Satan, with bold words
Breaking the horrid silence thus began:
“If thou beest he—but O how fallen! how changed
From him, who in the happy realms of light
Clothed with transcendent brightness didst outshine
Myriads though bright—if he whom mutual league,
United thoughts and counsels, equal hope
And hazard in the glorious enterprise,
Joined with me once, now misery hath joined
In equal ruin: into what pit thou seest
From what height fallen! so much the stronger proved
He with his thunder; and till then who knew
The force of those dire arms? Yet not for those,
Nor what the potent Victor in his rage
Can else inflict, do I repent or change,
Though changed in outward luster, that fixed mind
And high disdain, from sense of injured merit,
That with the Mightiest raised me to contend,
And to the fierce contention brought along
Innumerable force of spirits armed
That durst dislike his reign, and, me preferring,
His utmost power with adverse power opposed
In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven,
And shook his throne. What though the field be lost?
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All is not lost; the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what is else not to be overcome?
That glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
With suppliant knee, and deify his power
Who from the terror of this arm so late
Doubted his empire, that were low indeed,
That were an ignominy and shame beneath
This downfall; since by fate the strength of gods
And this empyreal substance cannot fail,
Since through experience of this great event,
In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced,
We may with more successful hope resolve
To wage by force or guile eternal war
Irreconcilable to our grand Foe,
Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy
Sole reigning holds the tyranny of Heaven.”
So spake the apostate Angel, though in pain,
Vaunting aloud, but racked with deep despair;
And him thus answered soon his bold compeer:
“O Prince, O Chief of many thronèd Powers,
That led the embattled Seraphim to war
Under thy conduct, and in dreadful deeds
Fearless, endangered Heaven’s perpetual King,
And put to proof his high supremacy,
Whether upheld by strength, or chance, or fate;
Too well I see and rue the dire event,
That with sad overthrow and foul defeat
Hath lost us Heaven, and all this mighty host
In horrible destruction laid thus low,
As far as gods and heavenly essences
Can perish: for the mind and spirit remains
Invincible, and vigor soon returns,
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Though all our glory extinct, and happy state
Here swallowed up in endless misery.
But what if he our Conqueror (whom I now
Of force believe almighty, since no less
Than such could have o’erpowered such force as ours)
Have left us this our spirit and strength entire
Strongly to suffer and support our pains,
That we may so suffice his vengeful ire,
Or do him mightier service as his thralls
By right of war, whate’er his business be,
Here in the heart of Hell to work in fire,
Or do his errands in the gloomy deep?
What can it then avail, though yet we feel
Strength undiminished, or eternal being
To undergo eternal punishment?”
Whereto with speedy words the Arch-Fiend replied:
“Fallen Cherub, to be weak is miserable,
Doing or suffering: But of this be sure,
To do aught good never will be our task,
But ever to do ill our sole delight,
As being the contrary to his high will
Whom we resist. If then his providence
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,
Our labor must be to pervert that end,
And out of good still to find means of evil;
Which oft times may succeed, so as perhaps
Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb
His inmost counsels from their destined aim.
But see the angry Victor hath recalled
His ministers of vengeance and pursuit
Back to the gates of Heaven; the sulfurous hail
Shot after us in storm, o’erblown hath laid
The fiery surge, that from the precipice
Of Heaven received us falling, and the thunder,
Winged with red lightning and impetuous rage,
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Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now
To bellow through the vast and boundless deep.
Let us not slip the occasion, whether scorn
Or satiate fury yield it from our Foe.
Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild,
The seat of desolation, void of light,
Save what the glimmering of these livid flames
Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend
From off the tossing of these fiery waves,
There rest, if any rest can harbor there,
And reassembling our afflicted powers,
Consult how we may henceforth most offend
Our Enemy, our own loss how repair,
How overcome this dire calamity,
What reinforcement we may gain from hope,
If not, what resolution from despair.”
Thus Satan talking to his nearest mate
With head uplift above the wave, and eyes
That sparkling blazed; 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,
Titanian or Earth-born, that warred on Jove,
Briareos or Typhon, whom the den
By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream:
Him haply slumbering on the Norway foam,
The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff,
Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell,
With fixèd anchor in his scaly rind
Moors by his side under the lee, while night
Invests the sea, and wishèd morn delays:
So stretched out huge in length the Arch-Fiend lay
Chained on the burning lake; nor ever thence
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Had risen or heaved his head, but that the will
And high permission of all-ruling Heaven
Left him at large to his own dark designs,
That with reiterated crimes he might
Heap on himself damnation, while he sought
Evil to others, and enraged might see
How all his malice served but to bring forth
Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy shown
On man by him seduced, but on himself
Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance poured.
Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool
His mighty stature; on each hand the flames
Driven backward slope their pointing spires, and rolled
In billows, leave in the midst a horrid vale.
Then with expanded wings he steers his flight
Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air
That felt unusual weight, till on dry land
He lights, if it were land that ever burned
With solid, as the lake with liquid fire;
And such appeared in hue, as when the force
Of subterranean wind transports a hill
Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side
Of thundering Etna, whose combustible
And fueled entrails thence conceiving fire,
Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds,
And leave a singèd bottom all involved
With stench and smoke: such resting found the sole
Of unblest feet. Him followed his next mate,
Both glorying to have scaped the Stygian flood
As gods, and by their own recovered strength,
Not by the sufferance of supernal power.
“Is this the region, this, the soil, the clime,”
Said then the lost Archangel, “this the seat
That we must change for Heaven, this mournful gloom
For that celestial light? Be it so, since he
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Who now is sovereign can dispose and bid
What shall be right: farthest from him is best,
Whom reason hath equaled, force hath made supreme
Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields,
Where joy forever dwells! Hail, horrors! hail,
Infernal world! and thou, profoundest Hell,
Receive thy new possessor; one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; the Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.
But wherefore let we then our faithful friends,
The associates and copartners of our loss,
Lie thus astonished on the oblivious pool,
And call them not to share with us their part
In this unhappy mansion, or once more
With rallied arms to try what may be yet
Regained in Heaven, or what more lost in Hell?”
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The Fall of Satan from Paradise Lost by John Milton
Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century
English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten
books; a second edition followed in 1674, redivided into twelve books
(mimicking the division of Virgil's Aeneid) with minor revisions
throughout and a note on the versification. The poem concerns the
Judeo-Christian story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and
Eve by Lucifer and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Milton's
purpose, stated in Book I, is "to justify the ways of God to men" (l. 26)
and elucidate the conflict between His eternal foresight and free will.
The main protagonist of this Protestant epic is the fallen angel,
Satan. Looked at from a modern perspective it may appear to some that
Milton presents Satan sympathetically, as an ambitious and proud being
who defies his tyrannical creator, omnipotent God, and wages war on
Heaven, only to be defeated and cast down. Indeed, William Blake, a
great admirer of Milton, and illustrator of the epic poem, said of Milton
that 'he was a true Poet, and of the Devil's party without knowing it'.
Some critics regard the character of Lucifer as a precursor of the
Byronic hero.
Milton worked for Oliver Cromwell and thus wrote first-hand for
the English Commonwealth. Arguably, the failed rebellion and
reinstallation of the monarchy left him to explore his losses within
Paradise Lost. Some critics say that he sympathized with the Satan in
this work, in that both had experienced a failed cause.
The story is innovative in that it attempts to reconcile the Christian
and Pagan traditions: like Shakespeare, Milton found Christian theology
lacking, requiring something more. He tries to incorporate Paganism,
classical Greek references and Christianity within the story. He idolized
the classics but intended this work to surpass them.
The poem grapples with many tough theological issues, including
fate, predestination, and the Trinity. As an Arian, Milton did not believe
in the Trinity, but only in the Father and the Son. He presents a Father
who is good but irascible and sarcastic, and a Son who is generous and
optimistic. The Son serves as a "vessel" for the Father's more goodnatured aspect.
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The Fall of Satan from Paradise Lost by John Milton
Story: The story is divided into twelve books against Homer's
twenty-four books of the Iliad and Odyssey. The longest book is Book
IX, with 1189 lines and the shortest, Book VII, with 640. Each book is
preceded by a summary titled "The Argument". The poem follows the
epic tradition of starting in medias res (Latin for in the midst of things),
the background story being told in Books V-VI.
Milton's story contains two arcs: one of Satan and another of Adam
and Eve. Lucifer's story is an homage to the old epics of warfare. It
begins in medias res, after Lucifer and the other rebel angels have been
defeated and cast down by God into Hell. In Pandemonium, Lucifer
must employ his rhetorical ability to organize his followers; he is aided
by his lieutenants Mammon and Beelzebub. At the end of the debate,
Satan volunteers himself to poison the newly-created Earth. He releases
Sin and Death into the world, and braves the dangers of the Abyss in a
manner reminiscent of Odysseus or Aeneas.
The other story is a fundamentally different, new kind of epic: a
domestic one. Adam and Eve are presented for the first time in Christian
literature as having a functional relationship while still without sin. They
have arguments, passions and personalities, as well as sex. Satan
successfully tempts Eve by preying on her vanity and tricking her with
semantics, and Adam, seeing Eve has sinned, knowingly commits the
same sin by also eating of the fruit. In this manner Milton portrays
Adam as a heroic figure but also as a deeper sinner than Eve. They again
have sex, but with a newfound lust that was previously not present. After
realizing their error in consuming the "fruit" from the Tree of
Knowledge, they fight. However, Eve's pleas to Adam reconcile them
somewhat. Adam goes on a vision journey with an angel where he
witnesses the errors of man and the great Flood, and he is saddened by
the sin that they have released through the consumption of the fruit.
However, he is also shown hope - the possibility of redemption - through
a vision of Jesus Christ. They are then cast out of Eden and an angel
adds that one may find "A paradise within thee, happier farr." They now
have a more distant relationship with God, who is omnipresent but
invisible (unlike the previous tangible Father in the garden of Eden).
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The Fall of Satan from Paradise Lost by John Milton
Main characters
Satan - Satan has been seen as the story's object of admiration,
and there is a point to emulating or celebrating him like a true hero. He
struggles to overcome his own doubts and weaknesses, and
accomplishes his goal of corrupting mankind. Satan is regarded as the
most intriguing and compelling of the characters, mainly for his
complexity and subtlety. In these regards, he is similar to the character
of Iago in Shakespeare's Othello. Another current believes that Satan's
role as the hero mimics Achilles's injured merit, Odysseus's wiles and
craft, and Aeneas's journey to find a new homeland. Others claim that
Milton personifies in Satan the spirit of the English Revolution; that
Milton's Satan represents the honor and independence of the nation
asserted in the face of an incapable government.
First known as Lucifer, he was a proud angel who failed to think of
himself as equal to the other angels. The day God pronounces the Son as
his successor in power, Lucifer rebels out of envy, taking with him a
third of all the population of angels in Heaven. He is extremely proud
and confident that he can overthrow God; his speeches are always
fraudulent and deceitful. He assumes many forms during the story,
which are reflective of his moral and rational degradation. First, he is a
fallen angel of enormous stature; then a humble cherub; a cormorant; a
toad; and finally, a snake. He is a picture of incessant intellectual
activity without the ability to think morally.
Adam and Eve - Adam is strong, intelligent and rational, made
for contemplation and valor, and before the fall, as perfect as a human
being could be. He is flawed however, and at times indulges in rash and
irrational attitudes. His pure reason and intellect are lost as a result of the
fall, Man never being able again to converse with angels as near-equal
(as he did with Raphael) but forever one-sided (as he did with Michael
after the fall). His weakness is his love for Eve. He confides to Raphael
that his attraction to her is almost overwhelming – something that
Adam's reason is unable to overcome. After Eve eats from the Tree of
Knowledge, he decides to do the same, realizing that if she is doomed,
he must follow her into doom as to not lose her - even if that means
disobeying God.
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The Fall of Satan from Paradise Lost by John Milton
Eve is the mother of all mankind, inferior in rational faculties to
Adam, considered to be closer to God, made for softness and "sweet
attractive Grace". She only surpasses him in beauty, beauty as such she
even falls in love with her own image upon seeing her reflection in a
body of water (a reference to the Greek myth of Narcissus). It is her
vanity that Satan taps into in order to persuade her to eat from the Tree
of Knowledge, through flattery. Eve is clearly intelligent but unlike
Adam she is not eager to learn, being absent from Adam and the angel
Raphael's conversation in Book VIII, and Adam's visions presented by
Michael in Books XI and XII. Eve does not feel it is her place to seek
knowledge independently, as she prefers to have Adam teach her later.
The one instance in which she deviates from this passiveness is when
she goes out on her own and ends up seizing the fruit of the Tree of
Knowledge.
God - Milton's God is omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent,
which means that He has foreknowledge of further events, but does not
predestinate – which would negate the whole idea of free will. The
problem with interpreting the character of God in Paradise Lost is that
he is more of a personification of abstract ideas than a real character. It
is wrong to think of Him as a kindly old man or as a human father as He
is ultimately unidentifiable. He is the embodiment of pure reason. He
allows evils to occur, but to make good out of evil. The literary critic
William Empson crystallized many reader's qualms about Milton's God
in his influential book of the same name.
The Son - The Son is the manifestation of God in action, the
physical connection between God the Father and his creation, together
forming a complete and perfect God. He personifies love and
compassion and volunteers to die for humankind in order to redeem
them, showing his dedication and selflessness. Through his human form
the Son will be descended from Adam, through whom all men died, but
He will be a second Adam, by whom all men shall be saved. In
Judgment Day, the Son will appear in the sky and have dead summoned
from every corner of the world, sentence the sinners into Hell. Adam's
final vision in Book XII is of the Son's sacrifice as Jesus.
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The Fall of Satan from Paradise Lost by John Milton
Summary of The Fall of Satan
Milton's epic poem opens on the fiery lake of hell, where Satan and
his army of fallen angels find themselves chained. Satan and his
lieutenant Beelzebub get up from the lake and yell to the others to rise
and join them. Music plays and banners fly as the army of rebel angels
comes to attention, tormented and defeated but faithful to their general.
They create a great and terrible temple, perched on a volcano top, and
Satan calls a council there to decide on their course of action.
The fallen angels give various suggestions. Finally, Beelzebub
suggests that they take the battle to a new battlefield, a place called earth
where, it is rumored, God has created a new being called man. Man is
not as powerful as the angels, but he is God's chosen favorite among his
creations. Beelzebub suggests that they seek revenge against God by
seducing man to their corrupted side. Satan volunteers to explore this
new place himself and find out more about man so that he may corrupt
him. His fallen army unanimously agrees by banging on their swords.
Satan takes off to the gates of hell, guarded by his daughter, Sin,
and their horrible son, Death. Sin agrees to open the gates for her creator
(and rapist), knowing that she will follow him and reign with him in
whatever kingdom he conquers. Satan then travels through chaos, and
finally arrives at earth, connected to heaven by a golden chain.
God witnesses all of this and points out Satan's journey to his Son.
God tells his Son that, indeed, Satan will corrupt God's favorite creation,
man. His Son offers to die a mortal death to bring man back into the
grace and light of God. God agrees and tells how his Son will be born to
a virgin. God then makes his Son the king of man, son of both man and
God.
Meanwhile, Satan disguises himself as a handsome cherub in order
to get by the angel Uriel who is guarding earth. Uriel is impressed that
an angel would come all the way from heaven to witness God's creation,
and points the Garden of Eden out to Satan. Satan makes his way into
the Garden and is in awe at the beauty of Eden and of the handsome
couple of Adam and Eve. For a moment, he deeply regrets his fall from
grace. This feeling soon turns, however, to hatred.
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The Fall of Satan from Paradise Lost by John Milton
Uriel, however, has realized that he has been fooled by Satan and
tells the angel Gabriel as much. Gabriel finds Satan in the Garden and
sends him away.
God, seeing how things are going, sends Raphael to warn Adam
and Eve about Satan. Raphael goes down to the Garden and is invited
for dinner by Adam and Eve. While there, he narrates how Satan came
to fall and the subsequent battle that was held in heaven. Satan first sin
was pride, when he took issue with the fact that he had to bow down to
the Son. Satan was one of the top angels in heaven and did not
understand why he should bow. Satan called a council and convinced
many of the angels who were beneath him to join in fighting God.
A tremendous, cosmic three-day battle ensued between Satan's
forces and God's forces. On the first day, Satan's forces were beaten
back by the army led by the archangels Michael and Gabriel. On the
second day, Satan seemed to gain ground by constructing artillery,
literally cannons, and turning them against the good forces. On the third
day, however, the Son faced Satan's army alone and they quickly retreat,
falling through a hole in heaven's fabric and cascading down to hell.
This is the reason, Raphael explains, that God created man: to
replace the empty space that the fallen angels have left in heaven.
Raphael then tells of how God created man and all the universe in seven
days. Adam himself remembers the moment he was created and, as well,
how he came to ask God for a companion, Eve. Raphael leaves.
The next morning, Eve insists on working separately from Adam.
Satan, in the form of serpent, finds her working alone and starts to flatter
her. Eve asks where he learned to speak, and Satan shows her the Tree
of Knowledge. Although Eve knows that this was the one tree God had
forbidden that they eat from, she is told by Satan that this is only
because God knows she will become a goddess herself. Eve eats the fruit
and then decides to share it with Adam.
Adam, clearly, is upset that Eve disobeyed God, but he cannot
imagine a life without her so he eats the apple as well. They both, then,
satiate their new-born lust in the bushes and wake up ashamed, knowing
now the difference from good and evil (and, therefore, being able to
choose evil). They spend the afternoon blaming each other for their fall.
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The Fall of Satan from Paradise Lost by John Milton
God sends the Son down to judge the two disobedient creatures.
The Son condemns Eve, and all of womankind, to painful childbirths
and submission to her husband. He condemns Adam to a life of a painful
battle with nature and hard work at getting food from the ground. He
condemns the serpent to always crawl on the ground on its belly, always
at the heel of Eve's sons.
Satan, in the meantime, returns to hell victorious. On the way, he
meets Sin and Death, who have built a bridge from hell to earth, to
mankind, whom they will now reign over. When Satan arrives in hell,
however, he finds his fallen compatriots not cheering as he had wished,
but hissing. The reason behind the horrible hissing soon becomes clear:
all of the fallen angels are being transformed into ugly monsters and
terrible reptiles. Even Satan finds himself turning into a horrible snake.
Adam and Eve, after bitterly blaming each other, finally decide to
turn to God and ask for forgiveness. God hears them and agrees with his
Son that he will not lose mankind completely to Sin, Death and Satan.
Instead, he will send his son as a man to earth to sacrifice himself and, in
so doing, conquer the evil trinity.
Michael is sent by God to escort Adam and Eve out of the Garden.
Before he does, however, he tells Adam what will become of mankind
until the Son comes down to earth. The history of mankind (actually the
history of the Jewish people as narrated in the Hebrew Bible) will be a
series of falls from grace and acceptance back by God, from Noah and
the Flood to the Babylonian exile of the Jewish people.
Adam is thankful that the Son will come down and right what he
and Eve have done wrong. He holds Eve's hand as they are escorted out
of the Garden.
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