An Brief analysis of Satan’s tragic character in Paradise Lost

吳瑾 華南農業大學外國語學院 廣東廣州 510000

Abstract: Reader-response criticism emerged during the period of the 1960s-70s. It provides the reader a higher position, believing that the reader plays an active role in producing meaning,rather than a passive receiver of a set of meaning in a literary work itself. According to this,people’s attitudes towards Satan in Paradise Lost,a masterpiece of John Milton, are varied. And this paper gives a brief analysis of Satan’s tragic character from my own understanding.

Keyword: reader-response criticism, Satan,tragic hero, Paradise Lost

Reader-response criticism emerged during the period of the 1960s-70s. It provides the reader a higher position, believing that the reader plays an active role in producing meaning, rather than a passive receiver of a set of meaning in a literary work itself. Because of this, there is an infinite number of possibilities for explaining the meaning of a literary work according to reader-response theory. From”Paradise Lost”, a masterpiece of John Milton, was published in 1667 until now, there are mainly three different attitudes about Satan:some are against him, seeing him as evil;some are for him, praising him as a hero;others are in the middle, considering him as both hero and devil.(Li Ying, 2006:8)In my personal view, Satan in Paradise Lost is a tragic hero.

The classic discussion of Greek tragedy is Aristotle's Poetics. He defines tragedy as "the imitation of an action that is serious and also as having magnitude, complete in itself." He continues,"Tragedy is a form of drama exciting the emotions of pity and fear.” The basic difference Aristotle draws between tragedy and other genres, such as comedy and epic, is the "tragic pleasure of pity and fear" that audience feel when watching a tragedy. For a tragic hero, in order to arouse these feelings, he or she cannot be either all good or all evil but must be someone the audience can identify; However, if he is superior in some way(s), the tragic pleasure will be intensified. His disastrous end results from a mistaken action, which in turn arises from a tragic flaw or from a tragic error in judgment. Often the tragic flaw is hubris, an excessive pride that causes the hero to ignore a divine warning or to break a moral law. Therefore, the main character in Paradise Lost, Satan, is a tragic hero.

Just like other tragic heroes in literature, to name but a few, Hamlet, whose melancholy character and the famous” To be or not to be?” make him on the scroll of fame; Prometheus, who stole the tinder in order to save human, at last ended with the horrible torture and pain; Satan, who used to be the brightest star in the sky and a chief commanding military, at last fell into the Hell and turned to be a serpent forever.

In Paradise Lost, the reason Satan decided to fight against God, is that he thought God was no longer omnipotent and fair. He saw the son of God ascend the throne, rather than himself; he saw that God forbid Adam and Eve to eat fruits from the tree of knowledge, which is because God was afraid that human would no longer be obedient to him after getting knowledge. As a result, Satan started his rebellion. I am inevitably thinking, that if God was not equipped with the greatest power and knowledge, will the so called “rebellion” turn into“a justicial action”?, an action that fight for fairness, for freedom, for glory or for dignity. He tried to build democratic rules in the Heaven. But obviously, he failed. From this aspect, the failure of Satan can be regarded as a frustration of a hero.The fall of this hero represents the tragic feature of this epic.

Many people might believe that the fall of human was caused by the seduction of the serpent. However,God should be all-knowing. He knew that Eve would be seduced and Adam would accompany her and choose to sin. But he just sent an angle to warn them rather than stopping them straightly and firmly. This might be a dramatic sarcasm.

The tragedy always ended with the death or a bad drop scene of heroes, but heroes always remain committed to their belief and dignity. Death pushes the plot to the climax, because as Professor Zhu Guangqian said:” Death always causes respect and sympathy in people’s heart.”