It is no small irony — to say nothing of discomfort and vexation to Christian readers in particular — that the Devil is the protagonist of John Milton’s epic poem “Paradise Lost” and has all the best lines.
He is the “hero,” as it were, or rather antihero of the work — although to at least one of the many equally celebrated writers who have written about the poem, the atheistic Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, Milton’s Lucifer is a heroic, Promethean figure, defying the heavens and taking one for the human team.
Even less lofty writers such as myself have noted the Devil’s top billing in “Paradise Lost.” (I once wrote an essay on this very subject for a college English class titled “Sympathy for the Devil,” playing on the great Rolling Stones song. Instead of my usual A or A+, I received only a B+, assuming I had the Devil himself to thank for my slight fall from academic grace.)
Why do you suppose Milton made him the primary figure in his masterpiece? Well, an obvious, pragmatic reason is that the poem is about Adam and Eve’s fall, and if the Devil isn’t a charismatic figure, then how are we to understand that fall? What’s the point?
Still, he isn’t just a charismatic figure. He’s the main character. There’s got to be something else going on. And that something else lies in the question of identity, for it’s not just that we understand Adam and Eve as the First Parents to be people like us, but that we understand the Devil — called Lucifer, meaning “light-bearer,” in the work before his fall and Satan thereafter — has much in common with us as well, with all the pride, jealousy, anger, hatred and revenge that implies.
This idea is explored in the essay “On Satan” by the great Christian writer C.S. Lewis, author of “The Chronicles of Narnia,” in which he argues that it’s easier for a writer to create an evil character than it is for him to imagine a good one. That’s because you have to imagine up to create a good character — and be careful not to make him or her too goody-goody — whereas to create an evil one you only have to consider the flaws in yourself.
Indeed, the Devil alludes to as much when he speaks of his “sense of injured merit” in rebelling against God: He in effect objects to being passed over for head of the angelic orders in favor of Jesus no less.
As Lewis writes of the sense of injured merit in one of the all-time great sentences, “This is a well-known state of mind which we can all study in domestic animals, children, film stars, politicians or minor poets and perhaps nearer home.”
Quite. We’ve all had a disproportionate reaction to some real or supposed rejection — the promotion that should’ve been ours, the boyfriend or girlfriend who got away, the chum who ghosted us. Our ghost/cancel culture — to say nothing of our narcissistic society — is but a world of perceived “injured merit.”
Consider President Donald J. Trump’s own “sense of injured merit.” He’s determined to have his name on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts or the center is in peril of demolition. (On Friday, Sept. 18, protestors formed a human chain around the building, with a judge issuing a 30-day moratorium on any demolition.) He brooks no criticism, so reporters from CNN, MS NOW and Politico are banned from the White House. He feels Canada and other countries of the world have injured our merit, so tariffs go up, and those are just the tip of the invasion iceberg.
There is a kind of Luciferean logic here: It’s not that he’s been disrespected or that the United States is being disrespected. It’s that he and we in his mind haven’t been loved enough. But whether or not someone loves you or loves you less than, say, a spouse or a child is not for you to say. It’s for others. Otherwise, you are trying to exert a kind of control that is not yours to exert, while at the same time expressing ingratitude for what you do have.
When the Devil famously observes in “Paradise Lost” that “the mind is its own place and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven,” he means his mind is its own place. Yours is for him to infiltrate and harm, as he does with Adam’s and Eve’s.
Trump can close monuments to slain presidents. He can ban certain news organizations or all of them. It’s not going to stop Americans from remembering slain presidents or the news from getting out.
If the mind truly is its own place, then we are all always free to think as we choose, however constrained our circumstances may be.
And remember: No circumstances are constrained forever.