The Hero of "Paradise Lost": A Long Debate
A good deal of critical discussion has
centred around the question, who is the hero of Paradise Lost?
Indeed, the complexity of the question is reflected in the widely divergent
views that have been held. A whole host of earlier and later critics—Dryden.
Goethe, Blake, Shelly, Lowell, Masson, Thomas Arnold, and Raleigh, to name only
the more remarkable ones—are of the opinion that Satan is the hero.
As Thomas Arnold has put it, “It has been
often said and it seems true that the hero or the prominent character of Paradise
Lost is Satan. Throughout the first three books, the attention is fixed
upon his proceedings. Even after Adam and Eve are introduced, which is not
till the fourth book, the main interest centres upon him; for they are
passive—he is active, they are the subject of plots—he is the framer of them.
They living on without any definite aim, are represented as falling from their
happy state through weakness and in a sort of helpless predestined manner;
while he is fixed to one subject, fertile in expedients, courageous in danger
and on the whole, successful in his enterprise. Clearly, Satan is the hero
of Paradise Lost”.
Or is he not!
Before going into any hasty conclusions,
let us examine the different viewpoints proposed by critics down the ages.
Satan as the Hero of "Paradise
Lost"
This seems a quite plausible view to some
critics who have their own set of arguments. No doubt in the first two books of
the poem Satan is pictured as a magnificent, heroic figure. He is endowed with
splendid qualities of head and heart which raise him about the level of other
characters in the epic. He is noble, selfless, enterprising, taking upon
himself the responsibilities of bold and perilous leadership. He is the
uncompromising champion of liberty, defiant of God the tyrant. “To bow and sue
for His grace” is an idea which he spurns even after his disastrous defeat. All
these have led critics to think that Milton, in spite of himself, has been of
the Devil's party. Moreover, the traditional idea of the epic hero as a great
warrior and leader lends support to Satan as the hero of the poem.
But there are other considerations that
are fatal to this theory. No doubt Satan appeals to human feelings as a great
tragic character. But he “is not only wicked but utterly and irretrievably
damned, like Marlowe's Faustus and Shakespeare’s Macbeth.” Besides, “his
history in the book is that of a person, in process of degrading change. It is
only the reading of the first two books of paradise lost that lends some colour
to the theory.” Wyatt and Low have summed up the whole matter: “In the first
two books Satan is naturally made a heroic figure; he is still an Archangel,
though fallen, one of the chief Archangels and king over his fellows. His
character, his power, his capacity for evil must be exalted in order to show
the epic greatness of the coming conflict, in order to arouse the reader’s fears
for himself, human sympathy with his first parent and gratitude for his
redemption. But we have not to wait for Paradise Regained to
see the steady deterioration in Satan’s character. Surely to take one instance
alone, there is little of the heroic in Satan when he takes the form of a toad
to whisper in Eve’s ear and is stirred up by the spear of Ithuriel (Book X). At
the close of the poem, Satan’s degradation is complete”.
Thus it is that to the readers who do not
go beyond the first two books of Paradise Lost, the title of Satan to the
heroship of the poem seems to be undeniable. But when the poem is read in its
entirety, the conclusion is inescapable that Satan cannot be regarded as the
hero of the epic. It is only ‘a nonsensical paradox’ to say that Satan is the
hero. Milton had a far different idea of the heroic. “To regard Satan as the
hero of Milton's epic is to stultify the poet's whole intention; if he is the
hero then Paradise Lost is a bad poem, since Milton will have
failed to express its meaning through the hero.” Moreover, Satan's heroic
grandeur is not seen so much in action as it is seen in his speeches. One
should always remember that Milton was a Puritan. For a Puritan, anything
flashy and glamorous is necessarily evil. After all, evil has to be attractive
if it aims to tempt people away from goodness. What is magnificent, glamorized
and beautiful need not be good, desirable or heroic, especially if it is
steeped in hypocrisy and deceit.
The Other Alternative: Adam
A second view is that Adam is the true hero
of the epic. It has it advocates in Dr Johnson, Landor, Stopford Brooke and
others. There is little doubt that Milton intended the poem to be an intensely
human one. His mission is to “justify the ways of God to men.”
Man, in his plan, is the central figure
around whom the plot revolves. It is the "fall of man," as represented
in the earliest ancestor of the human race. Adam is the real subject-matter of
the epic. Though Adam is a passive agent in the story, though he is more acted
upon than acting, yet he looms large in the whole story. From the opening line,
“Of man's first disobedience” etc., to the end, our Internet centres around him
and we cannot for a moment lose sight of him. It is round this central figure
that all activities of the Messiah and Satan are focused. In the end, Adam,
with Eve is purified. “That which they have lost they regain in another form –
“a Paradise within thee, happier far.” Over against this purification is set
the degradation of Satan.” (Stopford Brooke). It seems as if Milton forgetting
the main motive of the epic, has engrossed too much of his attention on Satan
in the first two books of the poem and has painted him in glaring colours. But
towards the middle, he reverts to his real theme, alienates our sympathy from
the Archangel to rivet it on Adam, the true he
Hero/Heroic/Heroism: The Defining
Principle
To get to the root of the problem, we must
first focus on what heroism is about. Heroism is not just about physical
prowess or outward charisma (how can we then call Maurya in Synge's play heroic?). It is also not always about being morally right (we will have to rule
out most of the Shakespearean heroes in that case). What defines a hero is one
simple thing: what choice is he offered and how he exercises his choice. He may
make a mistake (that is what hamartia is all about), but his mistake must
invariably be followed by anagnorisis (the final realization of his error of
judgement). Now let us focus on the three figures proposed earlier as heroes
of Paradise Lost.
As far as Satan is concerned, he was
offered a choice and he made a mistake. However, his mistake was not followed by
any realization of his folly. Neither was there any repentance in him? He
rather gloried in his fixity of mind and chose to delude himself in the idea
that the infernal world could give him heavenly solace if he was powerful
enough to imagine so.
When we come to Christ, we see him on such
a high moral pedestal that it is practically impossible to see him being in any
sort of conflict. Christ is out and out a strict follower of codes, never
questioning them, never contradicting them. However grand his stature be, he
can never be a hero simply because he fails to question and contradict himself.
We are left with the only option then: to
call Adam the hero of Paradise Lost (why Eve never makes her
way to the critical debates is a different matter altogether and needs a
completely new article). Adam, for one thing, does face a conflict, a choice
and decides to transgress. However, his transgression is not the wilful
transgression of Satan for personal grandeur but to act as a comrade, a
participant in his beloved's fate (at least that is how Milton presents him).
He chooses, makes a mistake and eventually realizes it. Of course, he does try
to shift the blame to Eve upon being confronted, but nonetheless, accepts his lot.
Adam is not just one individual but is a metaphor for the entire human race,
its failings and its glory. In Adam, one can even see the futility of human
endeavour and an all-pervading fatalism that characterized the classical tragic
heroes as well as the Renaissance heroes. Adam is neither Satan nor Christ. He
is the human agency that negotiates with the impulses swaying between these two
impulses. This negotiation and eventual realization make him heroic. Among the
three, Adam indeed is the closest to Aristotle's definition of a hero, at least
the way Milton presents him.
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