Satan in Paradise Lost?

Question

In I think Book 2 of Paradise Lost, it talks about how Adam and Eve disobeyed God and how it was their choice. It also focuses on how Satan wants to make evil out of good.

Milton offers a solemn assurance that despite all Satan’s power and grandeur, the devil is still subject to God's purposes. How do these lines contribute a level of dramatic irony to Satan's ringing assertion of freedom in his final speech?

I don't really understand this and I would appreciate if someone can explain it to me. Thanks!

Answer 1

In a lot of ways Milton created the modern version of satan. Satans true role is distorted by most monothestic teachings. Miltons assurance is more in line with ancient Jewish tradition where Satan is simply an angel doing the work that God assigned to Satan to do.

The word Satan means challenger. With the idea of Satan challenging us, or tempting if you will. This description sees Satan as the angel who is the embodiment of man's challenges. This idea of Satan works closely with God as an integral part of Gods plan for us. His job is to make choosing good over evil enough of a challenge so that it becomes clear to us that there can be only one meaningful or logical choice.

Contrast this to Christianity, which sees Satan as God's opponent. In Jewish thought, the idea that there exists anything capable of setting itself up as God's opponent would be considered polytheistic or setting up the devil to be an equally powerful polarity to god or a demigod.

Oddly, proof for The Christian satan/devil mythology is supposedly found in the ancient Jewish texts that were borrowed to create the bible. One can’t help but wonder how Christians came up with such a fantastically different interpretation of Gods assistant Satan in their theology.

Other hints about Satan’s role in human relations can be seen if you look at the name Lucifer. It’s meaning in the original tongue translates as Light bearer or light bringer. Essentially the bringer of enlightenment. The temptations of the Satan idea bring all of us eventually into Gods light. Hardly the Evil entity of Christian mythology.

Knowing this we can see that Throughout his dealings with Eve Satan displays an intimate understanding of the psychology of persuasion, and an insight into her personal weaknesses. In Eve he finds a simple mind that has never been exposed to evil, and cannot recognize it. She is an easy target. Satan introduces ideas that had never occurred to her before in the form of questions in order to latch Eve's mind onto these concepts and to have her mull them over. However, he does not give her much room for independent thought - Satan provides the answers to all of the questions he has posed. Eve is pressured to make a decision as soon as possible, and is not awarded the leisure to work out the fallacies in his argument. She does not have the tools to combat Satan's superior intellect. With Eve's faith in God severely shaken and her hopes raised for the future, her decision to eat of the tree is a foregone conclusion.

None of this however takes place outside of Gods sanction. It is all done in an attempt to enlighten eve.

Love and blessings Don

Answer 2

Before Milton and Dante "facts" were not clear at all on the persona of Satan. These were two books backed intensely by the Christian Church. Fear is a much better way to herd people into Churches and fill those same churches coffers, than a promise of an abstract named Heaven that most people of that age could not even comprehend.