Satan's Personality in Paradise Lost by John Milton

Paradise Lost, written by John Milton tells the same story from Genesis; Adam and Eve’s creation. Milton’s story is told by Satan's eyes, once called Lucifer; an angel and servant in Heaven, who had enough from being a ’pitiful’ servant and tried to take God's authority position. Because of his demonic plan cast him out from Heaven. Looking for vengeance turned himself into a serpent that tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit that made the fall of men.

On Milton's work, Satan's personality is prominently described as mad and proud. Satan is very bad, but in a very seductive way, which makes him even more dangerous. Satan demands us to think that God is a boring and authoritative figure In order to ignore him by raising Satan, as in which he explains, '…being weak is miserable... / doing something good will never be our task... / and of good still to find means for evil...” (Milton 157-168). Satan dedicates himself to evil. Each discourse he delivers is dishonest and each story he tells is a falsehood. He works diligently to mislead his fellow men in Hell to vanquish God. He reasons that the hell he is feeling deep inside is his reason for being more evil, ‘’with vain intent... / to bottomless perdition...’’ (Milton 44-49); his evil interior will become his flaw.

Furthermore, his failure generates him to be too proud to be a servant, which guides his anger and, therefore, his rebellion. Satan's negation of becoming a slave becomes an irony when Satan actually turns into a slave to his emotions. Satan cannot renounce his pride and declines to reject it. His fall from freedom is the deliberate negation of his self-potential; ''... what a time his pride had cast upon him from Heaven, with all his host of rebellious angels, by whose aspiration to put himself in glory above his peers...''. (Milton 36-39). His self-assurance in believing that he will ever defy God exhibits an enormous vanity and pride. He is too arrogant to see God as the leader of Heaven.

Because of his pride, all what is good for Satan is nonsense for him, due that, he follows a wrong track; misery is just what he can achieve on his. However, he becomes to be a master in his persuasive diction, as how he claims, “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven in Hell, a Hell of Heaven...’’ (Milton 254-255), eventually, according to Milton, goodness, and madness are in the same state as Heaven and Hell. Even they are two sites and differ much from their appearances; they come from the same mind. If the mind’s condition is deficient, it will most likely defy God’s order and its nature of the world. Naturally, evil engages your mind. The consequence is that will be condemned by God and be thrown in hell. Milton's Satan is a good case. On the opposite, if one's mind is in good condition and follows God's command, will definitely be virtuous with compensation from God.

Satan is a glorious character. Though he is cruel and possess demonic ambitions to ruin God’s plans, he remained devoted to himself and his cause; it is why he as a spiritually corrupt ‘hero’ in Milton's Paradise Lost, makes him an outstanding character. Nevertheless, the final words of the excerpt convey the start of a new world and since Satan does not conform, it means that war is not over yet, the fight between good and bad is still alive, but life goes on.