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> But in a certain sense, Satan is not absolutely evil and not having no good characters at all. For instance, as the example mentioned in the article, Satan is quite empathetic towards his fellow fallen angels -- and this empathy, would often invoke reader's empathy to a certain extent. Or he has the charisma of a sociopath. From the OP: >>> The point of all this mirroring is to show how closely evil resembles good. Poole writes in Milton and the Making of Paradise Lost that Milton “regards evil as disarmingly close in appearance to the good,” and it is only by careful moral reasoning that the two can be separated. Shortly after Milton returned from Italy in 1639, where he met Galileo and spent several months participating in various Florentine literary salons, he wrote in his commonplace book, “In moral evil much good may be mixed, and that with singular craft.” >>> .... >>> In short, Satan says all the rightly compassionate things only to the “right” people, who are, of course, his people, and only when his own interests are at stake. He is unflappable only in front of a crowd, courageous only when it is personally advantageous. He acts like a good leader, father, and husband—and even argues with nearly perfect reasoning that he is more morally upright than God himself—all while serving only himself. He is a god of unchecked liberty, and, therefore, in Milton’s view, a god of chaos and destruction. |