Milton’s Satan

A student points out a weakness in Stanley Fish ‘s reader-response treatment of Milton’s Satan, the notion that Milton deliberately makes Satan attractive and powerful not because Milton is of the devil’s party but because he is trying to run the reader through the same experience of temptation that Adam and Eve go through. Yet, this student suggests, Satan remains a powerful character, and his ultimate defeat and failure does not make him less attractive, any more than Hector’s defeat makes him a villain. Even if he ends catastrophically, Satan can end as a tragic HERO.