The Role Of Satan In John Milton's Paradise Lost

A Brief Analysis on Satan in Paradise Lost

The Bible is one of the classical works in western literary circle even in world literary circle, so does Paradise Lost written by John Milton. At Milton’s time, works were almost influenced by the atmosphere of the bourgeois revolution. Therefore, works which can show a revolutionary enthusiasm were popular with people as an encouraging guidance. The book showed a revolution from primitive society to civilized society should depend on knowledge and labor. At the same time, there are two opposite aspects in the universal just like the difficult fight in revolution of human beings. And that is the original tragedy of Paradise Lost. Because of the great influence on human beings, John Milton’s Paradise Lost was very profound so that it was called “Western Three Epics” with Homer’s Homer’s Epic,

There are kinds of points from different scholars, especially in the aspect of criticism in the main character, the evil Satan (the Angel Lucifer). Some think the spirit of Satan is the symbol of the people who revolute the Old Things bravely. While others think the role Satan should be criticized because he betrayed the God and betrayed his noble angel position. However, such various points about the character Satan make the character much more vivid. Different from those different views on Satan, I think we can understand this role thoroughly according to comparing the role with our own classical character. That is to say, we can comprehend the role deeply depending on that we use our own culture to analyze the foreign role. I think we can compare Satan with King Zhou of Shang (a character in a famous Chinese ancient book named the Creations of the Gods). By the way, there are some comparing about such relationship existed before, but the character was not the King of Zhou, it was the greatest evildoer