Satan's Humanity // Abigale Bell

 What must it be like to see so much beauty in front of you and know that it wasn't created for you? What must is be like to see such beauty and realize that you gave up any chance you might have had to gain happiness like what is in front of you?

This is the state in which we find Satan in book four of Paradise Lost. 

"Aside the Devil turned/ For envy, yet with jealous leer malign/ Eyed them askance and to himself thus plained:/ Sight hateful! sight tormenting! Thus these two..." (501-505). 

Satan scales the wall of Eden and looks down on Adam and Eve in the garden. He sees their blissful beauty and is jealous. He looks around for a way to incite their destruction. He spies the "one fatal Tree" (514).

Knowledge is a big theme in this part of the story. For Satan, knowledge is everything. He wants to know everything. He is a captive to his desire for more knowledge. This is what lets him apart form Adam and Eve in the beginning. They have no desire for knowledge of the things of God. Adam and Eve were with God in the garden; they knew Him. They were content with what God allowed them to know. Satan was discontent with he knowledge he held. He wanted more. 

It is the desire for knowledge rather than the knowledge itself that set humanity apart from Satan in the beginning. But Satan sought to change that. He wanted to level the playing field so to speak. 

Satan seeks to make Adam and Eve like himself. He longs for power like God. "How can these humans be so happy in ignorance? Surely they cannot be content to live simply in faith and love of God." Satan temps them with the desire for more knowledge.

Here Satan shows human characteristics. He's jealous fo Adam and Eve so he tries to rationalize his situation. "Really I'm better off than them," Satan says. "I just have to show them what they're missing out on." So begins the fall of man. 

Really, Stan seems so lonely (yet another human characteristic). While Adam and Eve enjoy each other's company, Stan is doomed to Hell where he can't feel love or joy; only unfulfilled desire. 

Overall, in his desire to raise himself up to God-like status and pull Adam and Eve down to where he was, Satan became a prisoner to his own desire. He pushed himself lower and farther away from God all the while thinking he was climbing. 


Commented on Emily's and Brooke's posts. 

Comments

  1. Haylee LyndSeptember 13, 2021 at 6:09 PM

    He gives himself a false sense of hope. He realizes he'll never be with God again, so he has to tell himself that going against God will make him happy, that controlling God's people will make him happy. It's almost difficult to not feel sorry for him.

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  2. Emma LandrySeptember 13, 2021 at 10:28 PM

    I was struck by Satan's intense loneliness. In reading about his envy and attempts to make humanity just as discontent as he, I could not help but recall the saying that "misery loves company." His mindset is that if he cannot have Paradise, no one should be able to enjoy it. Satan knows that he will never be able to be like Adam and Eve, which is what I believe he truly craves deep down. Therefore, he decides to drag them down to his level.

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  3. Emily OttsSeptember 13, 2021 at 10:37 PM

    I think that Satan wanting to make Adam and Eve fallen like him goes back to something I heard a lot in the church. Everyone knows that he will lose to God. It's said in the scripture, and as we have seen with Jesus being tempted in the desert, Satan knows scripture, but uses it out of context and contorts it. So he should also know that he will be destroyed in Hell forever at the end of times. If you knew you were going to lose, what would you do about it? Satan decides to take as many with him. He's angry that he will be tortured for all eternity, and so he wants others to suffer that fate with him. He really is lonely and wants others to share his pain.

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