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/lit/ - Literature

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7169525 No.7169525 [Reply] [Original]

Is it edgy to feel sympathy for Satan? I am only in Book 6 but I feel like this slight twinge of respect for a creature that attempts to challenge an omnipotent and omnipresent being. I really liked the part where he and the other spirits debate about how to fight something that knows literally everything. Plus I get some serious Odyssey vibes from this too, especially when he was travelling to Earth. So I think Milton wanted you to feel SOMETHING besides utter contempt for Satan. Trying hard not to impose my 21st century sensibilities onto this while reading it.

Am I pleb for reading this in the first place?

>> No.7169533

literally everybody likes satan, he's the most sympathetic character in the book

>> No.7169534

so what you're saying is, you feel sympathy for the devil?

>> No.7169537

>>7169534
>Vietnam era movie
>"It ain't me" starts playing

>> No.7169592

Why did Angels know of spears and other weapons.

>> No.7169593

>>7169592
I think they invented them notions and taught the crafts of war to men, according to all that weird shit with the book of Enoch.

>> No.7169619

If God is all-mighty, then Satan is merely carrying out his will.

>> No.7169621

>>7169534
>Clearly has never read Paradise Lost

There was a whole generation of poets who were inspired by the idea that Satan was the protagonist. There's a lot of theories about it, I'd highly recommend reading some Romantic era poetry if you're more interested in this.

>> No.7169630

>>7169619
What if God was one of us?

>> No.7169691

>>7169621
>Lost

>> No.7169954

>>7169691
L O S T

>> No.7169959

>>7169630
Then you're not a christian.

>> No.7169962

>>7169959

He's not far off. According to Christianity, God became one of us.

>> No.7169969

>>7169525
Yeah, Milton wants you to know the seductiveness of evil, and give you a sense of how it is possible for something as high and glorious as a prince of angels to fall.

I think the book is ultimately about the absurdity of this, apparently-seductive freedom: the freedom Satan desires is ultimately futile and meaningless- his self-will doesn't end up creating anything new, but simply alienates him from his creator, destabilising his form, driving him from everything else, driving him lower and lower in the order of being until he is grubbing in the dust and doomed to perish by the very thing he sought to damn out of spite.

>> No.7170042

>>7169525

Yes. Milton's really sympathetic to Satan and even fucks up from time to time when he seems to sympathetic to him as well as when he exalts him moreso than God and his group.

>> No.7170068

>>7169619
Carey's comic series "Lucifer" is a great adaption of this, he councsciously knows his rebellion and downfall was a plot of God to create the dicotomy of Heaven and Hell and struggles with existencial crisis

>> No.7170072

>>7169630
Just a slob like one of us?

>> No.7170096

>>7169962
But it was done in a smug way...

>Look what you made me do
>I have to die now


...what a drama queen.

>> No.7170106

>>7169969
>>7170042
I think we should hesitate before pronouncing what Milton wants or means for his reader. Fish's seductiveness theory is getting a bit long in the tooth and doesn't give the reader enough credit for being able to see the evil in Satan. Satan seems like a sympathetic character when he is presented (presents himself?) as a tragic hero struggling knowingly in vain. That changes, or at least ought to change, when he targets innocent victims in order to hurt someone else. That is neither heroic nor noble. Removed from the high rhetoric of Bks I and II, his actions are vile. I worship the Romantics, but I sometimes wonder if they ever read the whole of the poem. My initial sympathy and almost admiration for Satan can't last beyond his voyeurism in Bk IV.

For my money, if you don't come out of reading PL with the greatest sympathy for Adam and Eve, you've not read it close enough. This is a poem that demonstrates the greatest virtues of humanity being found in sympathy, compassion, grace, and sacrificial love.

>> No.7170145

>>7170106

Having written a 4k word literary paper (EE) on the very topic, Milton has a pretty noticeable crush on the devil, even after he fucks over Adam & Eve. The final point I made in that paper was that the change of God's view of death and free will from Book 3-4, ruthless punshiment to Book 11, a promise for a better world as a result of sin and death, seems a little bit messed up when you run with the notion of the infallibility/eternelness of God (he's God, not Hillary Clinton.) This change, as I wrote, comes as a result of Satan's fuck up and demise, maybe showing a place where Milton messed up in the presentation of God to pull a 180 and fix it when the "great fiend" is gone.

>> No.7170331

>>7169525
I got the impression that part of Milton's project was to show the reader that they'd fall just as effortlessly as Adam and Eve did. Not that you come away from the poem thinking 'devil...good' but that you catch yourself thinking this in the middle of the poem and realize you might as well have made the original mistake.

>> No.7170393

>>7170331
Nobody said they thought the devil was good, we've just been discussing that Milton, whether intentionally or not, wrote it so that more than a few people walk away with at least a passing sympathy for Satan. He's really an archetypal example of an Anti-Hero and I use the term cautiously because pop culture has thoroughly corrupted its meaning. As someone else pointed out you can't defend, from an ethical standpoint, harming those who've done nothing to you to get back at someone you have a feud with. However, we can relate to the despair and hopelessness that Satan feels at having been humiliated decisively by God as well as the self-doubt in his actions along the way.

>> No.7170438

>>7170393
Yet many people have defended Satan's actions, both in heaven and in eden.

My point is that any affinity with Satan, whether it be reverence or sympathy, is a product of the reader's 'fallenness' and is a means to connect us closer to Adam and Eve. I don't think it was any secret to Milton that the devil was the life's blood of his poem; Milton and the devil shared political views. But the poem suggests you ought to be concerned by these feelings.

>> No.7170531

>>7170438
I actually totally misread you post, ignore my response.

>> No.7170941

>>7169537
>It ain't me
Am I being baited?

>> No.7170993

>>7169592
Rafael clearly says that all his descriptions of what happened in Heaven are just hopelessly inadequate metaphors that he uses so humans can understand what's going on.

>> No.7171002

>>7169525
Satan is but a tool of God. He is just doing his job. Unless you believe that Satan has powers equal to God, but in that case he would be considered a God too, and that wouldn't be monotheism anymore, would it?

>> No.7171026

It's the whole fucking point to feel sympathy for him. It dwindles as Satan regresses into lesser forms.

>> No.7171048

>>7170941
yes it's a meme

>> No.7171068

>>7170941
you just got meme'd on, son

>>7169525
Nothing edgy about feeling sympathy for the devil. He was a genuinely sympathetic villain.

>> No.7171071

>>7171002
>That Socratic reasoning

>> No.7171095

Satan is a metaphor for human downfall.
Of course he's sympathetic.

>> No.7171109

>>7169525
Basically the problem of evil is insoluble, the biggest challenge in theology and Milton, the arrogant bastard that he was, tried to take it head-on and failed (gloriously). Satan can be viewed sympathetically because, even though Milton is NOT trying to make him the good guy, ultimately this 3000-year old Hebrew myth of The Fall makes absolutely no sense and cannot be reconciled with the Christian conception of the divine.

Personally? First time I read Paradise Lost Satan to me came off as a tyrannical egomaniac, a pathological liar and a self-loathing, pathetic loser. During the War in Heaven a *cherub* beats his shit down, and when Michael confronts him in the Garden he runs away. Ultimately, all his power comes from his lies and rhetoric, and these collapse in the end to show him as twisted, reprehensible, utterly self-hating, as he freely admits to himself. Nothing noble motivates Satan, just hatred and psychological torture. When God turns them into snakes at the end it just shows how there is nothing to admire in Satan, we can only pity the choice he made to attack God (with the intention of becoming tyrant himself, of course).

Not that God comes off great either though.

>> No.7171138
File: 9 KB, 480x360, tips.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
7171138

>>7171109

>> No.7171144

>>7171138
*tips crucifix*

>> No.7171172
File: 29 KB, 563x400, biretta.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
7171172

>>7171138
*tips biretta*

>> No.7171178

>>7171109
>doesn't know what a biblical cherub is

:(

>> No.7171187
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7171187

>>7171144

>> No.7171197
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7171197

>>7171172
Right ahead of the curve!

>> No.7171203

>>7170072
Like a holly Rolling Stone.

>> No.7171206

>>7171178
It might have been a cherub or not, I can't remember too clearly.

Anyway, the point is that Satan gets absolutely shitcanned in the most pathetic way by an angel ranked below him in power. He sits out the rest of the war with a sore head.

>> No.7171211

>>7171197
You're the one who uses memes to mock any atheists you see. You don't tolerate shit.
It's the only way you can answer back...

>> No.7171225

>>7171211
>It's the only way you can answer back...
It's the only way you deserve to be treated

>> No.7171238
File: 115 KB, 900x900, pepe_uuuugh.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
7171238

>>7169525
>feeling sympathy for the devil
>Please Allow Me To Introduce Myself starts playing

>> No.7171286

>>7171225
Christian are more euphoric and more arrogant than atheists, you guys are so certain that god exists that anyone that goes against that must be mocked.

>> No.7171302

>>7171286
I never said that I was a Christian, your arrogance blinds you

>> No.7171338

>>7171206
Cherubs as defined by the Bible/other contemporary texts are badass Bulls with wings and are the second most powerful form of angel. So sure, satan may have ultimately gotten beat up by a lower ranking angel, but it isn't like the Jaguars beat the Patriots or anything. It's more of a Chiefs vs Packers type deal

>> No.7171343

>>7171109
What point are you trying to make exactly?

>> No.7171353

>tfw book 12, adam gains his wisdom on the mountain from michael
>michaels final lesson, for adam to add to his life love, faith, temperance, charity and goodness so that he may not be loath to leave this paradise, but be happy to one day find himself a paradise within, a paradise happier far

>finish the first time
>yeah whatever fucking finally im done
>finish the second time through
>literally bawling my eyes out, sitting on my dorm shitter

>> No.7171403

>>7171343
None in particular

>> No.7171417
File: 135 KB, 364x336, ourfaceswhen.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
7171417

>>7171286
>tfw I'm theist but don't anchor myself to one religion

>> No.7171610

God knows, sees, and commands all, and he designates an angel to be the hated lord of all evil. He casts him from paradise and shits on him literally every chance he gets. Wouldn't you feel sympathy for the ONE creature in all of existence who, by his very creators own hands, is completely unforgivable and ireedeemable? Isn't it kind of bullshit that the creator of all makes you, and then makes you be an incorrigible asshole for 100% of your existence?