1667: Satan

Milton's Paradise Lost provides a step on the path towards the antihero, and a sobering contrast to our present times

“Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n.”
- John Milton, Paradise Lost, 1667

The lifetime of John Milton was so turbulent it may be impossible for people today to adequately put themselves into his place. Whereas we became hysterical over an infection with a fraction of a percent fatality rate, Milton lived through the height of the Plague, a bacterium that killed as many as half of those who became infected. Today we panic about elected officials who might declare themselves a despot, while Milton lived through the English Civil War and supported the overthrow and execution of Charles I for tyranny. Milton even served as an official in the Commonwealth that Cromwell instituted after cutting off the king’s head. When the monarchy was restored in 1660, Milton’s very life was endangered by his prior support for a Republic that had lasted just eleven years.

It is against this backdrop that Milton wrote his epic poem, Paradise Lost. Written in an unrhyming poetic form popularised by Shakespeare (a huge influence upon Milton), it tells the tale of the revolt of angels against the hosts loyal to God. The rebels are defeated by the Son (the being who will later become Jesus) and cast down into hell, where Satan rallies the fallen angels into his own demonic kingdom. From there, he plots the downfall of God’s greatest creation, humanity, and assumes the form of a serpent to tempt Adam and Eve into disobeying God as he himself had done. This forces the Son to commit to an act of self-sacrifice in order to redeem humanity and undo their damnation.

Just as Shakespeare had created a psychologically compelling villain in Richard III, so Milton’s Satan is a powerful and charismatic leader, a master at manipulation, and even a potentially sympathetic figure. Despite his prideful refusal to bow to divine rule, Lucifer wrestles with guilt about what he’s done, and doubts the path he has chosen. When he advances arguments for freedom and autonomy, Satan expresses aspects of Milton’s political philosophy - providing political cover for Milton (who could easily have been executed by Charles II) by having these views expressed by the ruler of Hell.

It is therefore not entirely surprising that a century later, Milton’s Paradise Lost became an inspiration to the Romantic poets, who bucked tradition and carved out new possibilities for both literature and life. There’s no doubt at all that it is Milton’s Satan that inspires Lord Byron’s Manfred, Percy Shelley’s Prometheus, and both the monster and its creator in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. These characters are where the term ‘antihero’ acquires its meaning as a literary hero without the traits that would make them good. So is Satan the first antihero...?

At first blush this seems tempting, especially since the word ‘antihero’ appears in 1714, long before the Romantics but shortly after Milton. But this is misleading: Byron and his gang secured the meaning of antihero we use today: the original coinage is merely a synonym for villain. Even more importantly, Milton did not intend Satan to be seen in the positive terms that the Romantics attributed to him. As a devout Puritan protestant, Milton would have been shocked at Byron’s claim that “Satan is the most heroic subject that was ever chosen for a poem.” For Milton, it is the Son who is the heroic figure in Paradise Lost, and his epic poem serves to convey Christian heroism as a strict contrast to the classical heroism of the Greeks. The Son’s patience, fortitude, and will to self-sacrifice were far more noble to Milton than an Achilles or Heracles.

Yet don’t be tempted to think that because Milton was a Puritan extolling the heroic sacrifice of Jesus that his philosophy was mere doctrine. When he was just thirty years old, Milton somehow met Galileo during his house arrest: he considered the Catholic church oppressive, and likewise condemned the Church of England for its restrictive hierarchy and inflexibility. Milton wrote passionately against government licensing of publications, and considered censorship the despicable tool of a repressive government: “He who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye.” While Milton’s Satan was inadvertently a step along the path to the antihero, it should never be forgotten that Milton himself walked along that difficult path towards a just Republic.