Hero Worship?

Jared Ganley

Although William Blake and Percy Bysshe Shelley saw Satan as the real hero of
Paradise Lost, and applauded his rebellion against the tyranny of Heaven, I would
disagree with their interpretation of the character. I have a very hard time
believing that Milton intended (or for that matter accidentally created) the
character Lucifer as anything other than one of the best-written foils for the
behavior of other, less-interesting-but-more-important-to-the-stated-intent-of-
the-author, characters. Though I like the character of Lucifer, I cannot claim
that he is in any way heroic. Lucifer is the natural result of the sort of
compositional sleights-of-hands necessary to make abstract and uncertain biblical
names seem to breathe, want, and will.
If a character is to be sympathetic to the reader, the reader must be able to see
some commonality between his or her individual human state and that of the
character portrayed. Keep in mind that in endeavoring to “…justifie the wayes of
God to men (26)”, Milton was rather limited in how he could animate his players.
Since the language and the experience of Milton’s audience is limited to those
things that the human mind can clearly and distinctly conceive; and since the
sympathy of one’s audience depends on the accuracy and eloquence of the author’s
description of the human condition, Milton had to find a way to depict things that
were beyond human reckoning using the limited human language. Just as Milton had
to describe Eden using only language and symbols that were knowable in what he had
experienced as the fallen and imperfect world, he had to represent God, The
Messiah, the angles of heaven and hell, as well as sinless Adam and Eve in human
terms. The problem in characterizing beings that by definition lack human
qualities is that those beings naturally lack any sympathetic characteristics.
That Milton was able to create so a vivid and compelling a character as Lucifer is
a tribute to his insight into the human condition. But how he executed his vision
with such intensity; in my opinion making Lucifer the most human (using “human”
here to mean sympathetic and identifiable for the reader) of his characters, may
cause some confusion for his readers. I believe that though the character of
Lucifer is the most beautifully written being in Paradise Lost, Milton provides
adequate reason and evidence to read that character as an antagonist, a villain,
and a foil, not the hero of Paradise Lost.
So what then is a hero? The heroes of the Iliad and the Odyssey possess the
commonality action in the face of mortality. The Homeric hero performs his duty
despite his awareness that he is subject to the most powerful force in the Greek
reckoning of nature- death. As the heroes of Homer’s epics confront their own
mortality in armed combat, they engage in the exposition of the most necessary of
the heroic virtues - a willingness to risk all the earthly pleasures of life,
family, and wealth. This voluntary (though not completely in the case of
Odysseus) venture to garner personal glory through living (and perhaps dying)
bravely, meeting civic duty, and potentially securing the same risked earthly
pleasures of life, family, and wealth, is what distinguishes the hero from other
character types.
Those readers who are taken in by Lucifer’s rhetoric in the first two books of
Paradise Lost may perhaps see Lucifer as having many, if not all of these traits.
After all, wasn’t Lucifer willing to incur the wrath of the most powerful being in
the Christian conception of the world on a question of principal? While Achilles
and Odysseus courted only death, Lucifer gambled eternal damnation against the
maintenance of his own pride. One could argue that Lucifer’s willingness to risk
his place among the angles, to possibly lose perfect heavenly bliss without end,
and the incur wrath of the most powerful being in the universe to validate his own
pride is a perfect mirror of the Homeric hero.
We should not be so easily fooled. When Lucifer first broke with God and led his
troops into open revolt, he had no conception of the risk he took. In fact all of
Lucifer’s actions may be interpreted as being based in his own fundamental
misunderstanding of the sprit and nature of God. Lucifer immediately illustrates
the elemental error in his knowledge as he refers to the power that thrust the
fallen out of Heaven: “…so much the stronger provd / He with his Thunder: and till
then who knew / The force of those dire Arms? (92-94)” In his pride Lucifer never
considered the possibility that he could be defeated, so in his undertaking revolt
against God he could not have consciously known he risked anything. Equally,
since Lucifer was the first to ever challenge God, he had no model from which to
gauge the power or the wrath of God. Lucifer’s ignorance, through his own gross
miscalculation of God, makes it impossible for his actions to be seen as heroic.

Is Lucifer Tragic? By appearing in a story that is told as an epic, the character

of Lucifer cannot (by the definition of tragedy) exist as a tragic hero. In
Paradise Lost, since Milton obeys the epic convention of beginning the story in
medias res, any of the characters of the story are denied tragic dimensions
because no tragedy can begin in the middle. Since the Milton’s epic does not
adhere to the conventions of a tragedy, none of its characters may be understood
to be tragic.
As I understand the world of literature, all writing can be essentially divided
into three groups, the comedies, the tragedies, and the histories. All of these
categories may be distinguished by the manner in which their plots are developed
to climax and resolution. The comedy may be understood as a story that begins
with all situations and conceivable conclusions for a given group of characters
pointing towards a single possible outcome, as the story reaches its climax, this
certain finality booms into potential. Where there was but one conceivable
outcome in the beginning, the possibilities for the characters at the play’s
conclusion approach infinity. The tragedy exists most commonly as an inversion of
this formula. In the tragedy all things seem possible for the protagonist at the
play’s commencement, but due to some malignant flaw within that protagonist, all
possibilities for positive resolution are inexorably snuffed out. The epic,
specifically Paradise Lost, most readily lends itself to the genre of the history.
The history progresses to show such events as are necessary to convey a relevant
perspective on the past through the representation of the actions of specific
characters.
Though, it can be argued that Lucifer’s pride is the flaw that drives him from all
possible positive resolutions to his situation, I believe that the form that the
story takes, as well as the treatment of Adam and Eve, invalidates this
interpretation. Lucifer’s character provides an excellent explanation for
forthcoming events in Eden, and also works to provide a most wonderful frame for
Milton’s illuminated retelling of Genesis as history. Furthermore, we may
surmise from the later treatment of Adam and Eve’s fall redemption, that Lucifer’s
flaw never truly reaches tragic dimension.
Lucifer, in reality, never faces the objective loss of possibility. In fact, in a
world that contains Milton’s God, there can truly never be any objective loss of
possibility. Lucifer eliminates his own potential for forgiveness when he
declares of his own contrition “That Glory never shall his wrath or might / Extort
from me. To bow and sue for grace / With suppliant knee…(110-112)”. Without the
loss of possibility there can be no tragedy. Since Milton’s God never denies
Lucifer the possibility of forgiveness, the fallen angel is never denied
possibility.
That Lucifer is more interesting and agreeable to our sympathies as readers is not
a reflection of some unconscious, accidental, or subversive intention in the mind
of Milton. Lucifer’s humanity is rather a natural extension of the fact that
there can be very little interesting characterization done of anyone or of any
being that is perfect in its superlative great-making qualities. Milton’s
attempts to depict The Devine and his progeny put me in mind of Douglas Adams’
attempts to describe the infinite universe in his Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
“Infinity is…Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some. Much bigger than
that, in fact, [it is] really amazingly immense, totally stunning [in] size, [a]
real ‘wow, that's big’ time. Infinity is so big that by comparison, bigness itself
looks really titchy. Gigantic multiplied by colossal multiplied by staggeringly
huge is the sort of concept we're trying to get across here…You just won't believe
how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long
way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts…(107)”. Every time
God smiles, or displays any specific behavior that might be used to create a
feeling of closeness between the reader and God, the mind naturally recoils, a
human qualities in God seem near heresy.
To have to use human terms to describe things that are beyond human
conception is enough to send even the greatest manipulator of language running for
an umbrella of post-modern jargons. Yet, Milton (heroically?) attempts the task.
The manner in which he accomplishes that attempt, using human characteristics in
beings that by definition are not human, may be confusing to some readers. Once
we read something where an author magically places an attribute in a character
where it doesn’t belong, it can be very tempting to begin to place other
attributes, equally out of place, with that character when it is convenient for us
as readers to do so.
Some readers see Lucifer as a hero, or label his defeat as tragic, because
deep down they are able to identify with his human qualities. It is not unusual
that when we perceive elements of ourselves within a character that we should be
drawn to that character, but for Milton, great making qualities, for the most
part, abandoned mankind with Adam and Eve’s original disobedience. In Milton’s
world the only being that can become heroic is that character that initially
conspicuously lacks all human qualities, The Messiah. The Messiah, all-knowing
and all-powerful extension of The Creator, willingly and knowledgeably sacrifices
his own Godly existence (though not his divinity) to become man. The Messiah
gambles his own place next to God that he might save mankind. In his sacrifice
The Messiah, for all his blandness, becomes the hero of Paradise Lost. Though the
Messiah does show the human capacity of mercy, and the Father the desire for
justice, perhaps it is somewhat indicative of the present state of our culture
that we often gloss these attributes as an identifiably human. That we are not as
readers more interested in, or better able to develop an affinity for our savior
may be the greatest source confusion over the role of hero in Paradise Lost.
Ultimately the question of the hero is irrelevant. The triumph of Paradise
Lost is not is its espousal of any specific religious or political undertone, but
rather in the beauty and the sensitivity with which Milton is able to show the
world of man. Fro me, the most lasting impression of the poem is how Milton was
able to use his sensitivity to human behaviors and their motivations to inspire
the imagination. Milton enabled me to vividly picture Eden, Heaven, and the souls
who dwelled there, as well as the fallen Earth, Hell, and the souls God cast into
them.