Satan, A Hero??

Dore, Gustav.
Satan Talks to the Council of Hell. c. 1866.

In one of our classes when we were just starting Paradise Lost, we talked about the question of whether or not Satan could be considered the hero of the epic. I was really interested in the idea of someone (especially from the 17th century) trying to make the Antichrist into a hero or sorts, and for the first couple books it almost seemed like Satan was going to the star of Paradise Lost. As the story progressed though, attention turned to God, to Adam and Eve, and Satan became less and less, well, cool. His character became increasingly deceitful and greedy - Satan became less a champion of those in servitude and more a selfish, jealousy-driven being stuck in the past. After the epic was over, I wanted to try and look back at the plot to see if Satan's journey modeled the monomyth idea of a typical "hero's journey" (I'm weirdly into the idea of the monomyth for some reason), but when I looked into the specific plot transitions and character development during the stages of the monomyth, Satan didn't adhere to any of them, in fact he went through almost the exact opposite stages. That was I stumbled upon the idea of the "Byronic hero". Doing some research, I read that critics of Milton never sympathized with Satan until the Romantic era, and that was when the view of Satan as an archrebel fighting tyranny came to be. The poet Lord Byron came to develop a hero type in several of his works that is now called the Bryonic hero. The Byronic hero is said to possess flawed grandeur - they have grand aspirations and are in many ways morally superior, but have flaws such as pride and vengeance that eventually control them ("The Satanic and Byronic Hero: Overview").
This type  of hero seemed to match Satan incredibly well as he is portrayed in Paradise Lost. When Satan delivers his first epic speech in Book I, he is rallying the fallen angels after their fall from Heaven and is portrayed as morally superior to his defeater, God: "Here at least/We shall be free... .To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:/Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n." (Milton 1.258-63). Key characteristics of Byronic heroes are being deceitful, emotionally conflicted, seductive, and having a troubled past ("Byronic Hero"). Satan was extremely deceitful - deceit came to be one of the words associated with Satan, as he took on the shape of animals to eavesdrop on Adam and Eve in Eden, the form of a heavenly spirit to question the angels about humans, and ultimately the body of the Serpent in Eve's fateful temptation. The other three traits Satan also embodied, but sometimes in a more subtle way. You don't really see Satan's emotionally conflicted side until he is first looking on Eden in Book IV, showing regret  about rebelling against God: "He deserv'd no such return/From me, whom he created what I was/In that bright eminence, and with his good/Upbraided none; nor was his service hard./What could be less than to afford him praise" (Milton 4.42-46), and then blaming himself for his choice: "Nay curs'd be thou; since against his thy will/Chose freely what now it so justly rues" (Milton 4.72-73), and then accepting his fate of belonging to eternal Hell: "Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;/And in the lowest deep a lower deep/Still threat'ning to devour me opens wide/To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven" (Milton 4.75-78).
Satan's seductive side came out especially when he was tempting Eve - the temptation of Eve was in many ways a seduction, be it a sinister one. When Satan comes upon Eve in the form of the Serpent, her beauty and innocence overcomes him for a moment: "Her graceful innocence, her every Air/Of gesture or least action overaw'd/His malice, and with rapine sweet bereav'd/His fierceness of the fierce intent it brought" (Milton 9.459-462). The Serpent is immensely charming to Eve, winning her over by speaking to her vain side, calling her "A Goddess among Gods", "Empress of this fair world", "Sovran of creatures, universal Dame" (Milton 10). Satan seems to have figured out the key to making a girl listen to you, by making her feel empowered: "He ended, and his words replete with guile/Into her heart too easy entrance won" (Milton 9.732-34).
And, in the end, Satan ultimately accomplishes his goal of corrupting mankind, introducing Sin and Death in to Eden, effectively ruining Paradise. However, he goes back to Hell to brag about his success, expecting the fruits of victory: "Ye have th'account/Of my performance: What remains ye Gods,/But up and enter now into full bliss" (Milton 10.502-503), but then is turned into a snake along with the rest of the rebel angels. This to me represents the essential embodiment of a Byronic hero - the eventual defeat of the once-hero because of flaws - in Satan's case, vengeance and greed - that the character cannot overcome. This is also what makes it impossible for Satan to be considered a true hero of Paradise Lost, because instead of championing over others because of enlightened morals (as a true hero is supposed to), the opposite happens - Satan is defeated by forces of superior morals because of his "wrong" morals. So I guess Satan may not have been able to turned into a real hero because of his fundamentally evil nature, but he is nonetheless given a more complex hero form - a dark hero, but in many ways a hero nonetheless, and to me it was this alternate view of a hero that made Paradise Lost a surprisingly thought-provoking read.

Here's a link to a chart that shows the basic pattern of the traditional hero's journey monomyth in case anyone is interested:
http://mormonmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/monomyth.jpg

Works Cited:

"Byronic Hero". Wikipedia. 30 Sep 2013. 04 Oct 2013. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byronic_hero>.

"The Satanic and Byronic Hero". Norton Topics Online. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 04 Oct 2013. <http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/romantic/topic_5/>.

Milton, John. Paradise Lost. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1968.