Paradise Lost Satan Quotes

As a punishment for his sin, Satan must exchange the "happy fields" of Heaven for the "horrors" of Hell. As a result of their sins, both Adam and Eve and Satan must say "farewell" to their respective paradises, as if some notion of exile from one's "home" were intimately bound up with the idea of sin. Note also the alliteration in this line ("h" and "f" sounds), a sonorous effect that contrasts with the bleakness of the picture.

Satan is proud of his army, so proud that he's absolutely baffled that it was defeated. He thinks that a force as strong as his should never have known "repulse." His pride was so blinding that he didn't realize that God would easily "repulse" such a band, even though they "stood" like "gods."

Satan thinks so highly of his army that he has no doubts about their ability to "repossess their native seat." The pride he takes in his rebellion is evident as well in the fact that he grossly exaggerates ("emptied Heav'n") the number of angels who joined his rebellion (we learn later that only a third of the angels fell with Satan).

Pride is associated with a sense of superiority, and Satan – here disguised as the serpent – deceives Eve with the ridiculous idea that one can have a "more perfect" life. How can there be something beyond perfection? The very fact that "more perfect" occurs alongside the idea of attaining more than "fate/ Meant" suggests quite clearly both Satan's illogic and the dangers of pride.

Satan here appeals to Eve's pride, suggesting that she deserves to know good and evil; it's only natural ("proportion meet"). One should note the irony of using a phrase like "proportion meet." The world is already perfect, yet somehow Satan's rhetoric – maybe because of its own neat "proportions" – convinces Eve that things aren't fair, right, or in "proportion."

Even the hard-hearted Satan cannot help "melting" at the sight of pure, "harmless innocence." It seems that Satan is almost a figure for the reader, at least in the fact that he has a strong, emotional reaction to the sight of "harmless innocence." But he's still Satan; does that mean we shouldn't "melt" at the sight and that we should respond in some other way that is different from Satan's?

Satan's subservience to "public reason" – probably some sense of duty or responsibility to his legions – is what partly causes him to go through with his plans of revenge. He suggests that the only reason he's still going through with it is because he made a promise. He makes a distinction between a "public" and a more private self, crediting all his evil plans to the former and all the nicer ones (about abhorring what he's about to do, melting at the sight of Adam and Eve right before this, etc.).

Satan's words reveal a bitter irony; his revenge will quite literally "back on it self recoil" in the next book, when he and his companions are changed into serpents. The same is true of his remark about how one who "aspires must down as low." Satan tried to soar to the top (of God's throne) but ends up in Hell, a place at the bottom of the universe both literally and figuratively.