Moment of Awesome: Gabriel facing down Satan in the garden, Michael cutting Satan's legs off, the angels responding to the rebels' war machine by dropping a mountain on it, Abdiel's " Kirk Summation" speech in Book 5, and finally, the Son smiting all of Satan's forces single-handedly, causing the demons to throw themselves into Hell.Misaimed Fandom: Satan has one of the most loyal.The ambiguity of the whole thing also doesn't help. Hard-to-Adapt Work: The story can be this, due to either the surrealistic premise (The War on Heaven) and perhaps an Audience-Alienating Premise (depicting Satan as the protagonist) for a (mostly) Christian audience.While Raphael answers any question Adam has about the War in Heaven and the universe, he gets very flustered when they get on the subject of how angels express their love for each other.Funny Moment: Following Adam's & Eve's celebratory sex after eating the fruit, Adam blames Eve for their current predicament, and they end up not speaking to each other for the rest of the day.It's shorter and not nearly as popular or critically acclaimed.
First Installment Wins: Paradise Regained, the sequel, is about the Devil's temptation of Christ.Evil Is Sexy: Lucifer is indeed the most beautiful of all the angels, and even as Satan possesses a great deal of charisma and a seductive, salacious tongue.Evil Is Cool: The poem's iteration of Satan is one of the most iconic examples in fiction due to his charisma and skill with words, to the point where many have argued Milton may have subconsciously been Rooting for the Empire.
William Blake was probably the first to suggest that Milton was subconsciously on his side, and Satan has developed one of the most loyal Alternative Character Interpretations in literature.
Draco in Leather Pants: Satan's conflicted, stirring speeches and soliloquies are some of the best writing in the book, causing him to have a legion of fans. He's a hypocritical, petty, vindictive, incestuous Villain Protagonist. While he is sympathetic at times, he's not depicted as a hero (at least, not intentionally). "Common Knowledge": There's a popular misconception (generally among people who haven't read the book or learned that much about it) that the epic depicts Satan as a good guy. The rebel angels are also portrayed as gullible, one-dimensional villains, as they barely need to be encouraged by Satan to rebel against God (except a single angel, Abdiel, who stays at God's side), in contrast to the opening chapters on the book where they are shown to have a realistically diverse mass of opinions. In his narration, it takes over a minute for Satan to switch from being politely discontent with God's politics (reasonably justified, to some degree, by God's favoritism towards the Son) to ferociously declaring open war with the goal to dethrone Him (a leap intuitive if one knows how the story ends, but abrupt and shocking as it is told), when nothing had evidenced this desire on him in the first place. It is entirely possible to believe Raphael is an Unreliable Narrator who is giving a slanted version of the facts, given that its portrayal of them is sometimes weird when it comes to their motivations and personalities. The preambles of Satan's revolt are not shown on page but narrated by Archangel Raphael to Adam. They could read the sequel but speculation is more fun. The multitude of different ways to read it are undoubtedly part of the appeal for scholars and literature buffs alike - it helps that this opens limitless doors for reasonable argument. William Blake famously wrote that, "The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet and of the Devils' party without knowing it." Most critics acknowledge that this was not Milton's intent, but some assert that his intent isn't the point. Many think the poem makes a better case for Satan than God. It's well-known as a source for mountains of literary criticism and a host of Alternative Character Interpretations.
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