Justify Character sketch of Satan as a great revolutionary hero or villain

The most majestic and complex character in Paradise Lost (Book-1) is undoubtedly satan who elicits contending options from diverse critics. The Romantics like Blake and Shelley like to see him as a hero of the epic. Satan , in this book , indeed appears as a Renaissance hero, an ambitious individual with great courage who can rebel against God for the cause of freedom and liberty .But paradoxically , if Satan’s defiance makes him an embodiment of the ideals of Humanism, his later proceedings , guided solely by evil and goaded by his desire to sabotage the plans his eternal enemy ,God , go directly against these ideals , thereby leading many critics to call him the villain of the epic. But, he is no simple villain like lago (Othello, by Shakespeare), who is driven by vanity and pretty malice. Rather, he is a charismatic personage , much akin to Macbeth (Macbeth ,by Shakespeare),as Helen Gardner compares him with, with much potentiality and goodness in him who corrupts himself driven by pride.

      It is Satan’s heroism , unyielding determination and strong will-power that earn him a permanent position in the mind of the readers. The romantic critics view him as a promethean character that wages an eternal was against an unjust God .Not only does he emphasize on liberty but also like a true leader persuaded innumerable number of angels in to the war against God .Now , after he has been defeated in  the war and doomed to suffer penal fire in Hell eternally , Satan ,like a potent hero , does not admit this defeat . As he says, one may be defeated physically , but the sense of actual defeat lies elsewhere:

“What though the field be lost

All is not lost: the unconquerable will,

The study of revenge, immortal hate,

And courage never to submit or yield.”

Satan is not repentant of what he has done, nor is he ready to admit that a single defeat can demonstrate the unchallenged sovereignty of God .Though they have been defeated in the “impious war”that they have started against the supreme authority of Heaven , that “Glorious Enterprize” certainly proved “dubious” and shocked the throne of the perpetual king of Heaven . It is only the thunder that made a difference and ultimately made him to be “hurld headlong. . . To bottomless perdition .”An ambitious character, Satan is willing to defend what he believes in even if it means suffering, hopelessness , restlessness and constant torment. His advocacy on freedom costs him the eternal realms of light and he is ready to accept the horrors of Hell fully knowing what great suffering Hell means to means to one who known Heaven:

“. . . this the seat

That we must change for Heaven,

This mournful gloom”

Satan represents a great revolutionary with a mind philosophically elevated. His great self-esteem and his elevated soul never let him to injure his reputation and that is why he can declare:

“Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven.”

A noble being , satan possesses some majestic intellectual faculties that are beyond the reach of common human beings:

“The mind is its own place and in itself

Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven”

Finally , Satan appears as a fearless leader who is eloquent , resourceful , and even sympathetic to his follower’s sufferings. He knows when his subordinates need to be jerked out to dejection . As he finds Beelzebub affected with misery, he spares no time to declare-“. . .to be weak is miserable /Doing or suffering”-and sets a program of action , thus distracting him from hopelessness. Despite bearing a self “rackt with deep despair” Satan’s voice displays implacable determination that is potent enough to charge his followers with Vitality:

“Awake , arise , or be ever fallen”

But , there are other sides in Satan’s personality which go directly against his heroic impression .when setting task for Beelzebub, Satan declares:

“To do aught good never will be our task ,

But to do ill our sole delight,”

This motive can be anything but heroic , for, these are the words of a person who is morally degraded . Again, Satan swears to do ill whenever possible , and to employ guile and fraud, and this hints at his corrupted mentality .His speeches, however magnificent they may appear , are fraudulent  and deceitful; in Hell, he is a typical aspirant politician who manipulates his followers with cheap rhetoric in order “to set himself above his peers”. Thus, Satan appears the most intriguing and compelling of the characters in Paradise Lost.

Critics argue over why Milton has put so much emphasis in portraying such a character who is basically a manipulator of evil. This  might be because Milton desired to strengthen reader’s distaste for Satan by highlighting his good qualities first. But there are Critics who argue that the grandeur and magnificence displayed in the poetry that Satan utters , would not have come out of Milton’s pen had he “devil’s party without knowing it”(The Marriage of Heaven and Hell ), for a devout  Christian like Milton would never consciously try to make the hero of his epic.