Compare how Satan is presented compared to Medusa

Satan and Medusa are both presented as iconic figures of evil with hidden depths, with both Milton and Duffy exploring their motivations and emotions.

Both authors explore the human side to famously evil characters, allowing their readers to relate to them. Satan, especially to Milton’s contemporary audience, is famous as the epitome of all evil, and yet Milton imbues him with the characteristics of pastoral poetry, as he is able to appreciate the beauty of ‘Earth’ with all its ‘creatures’ and ‘plants’, far more in fact that either Adam or Eve do. Emerging from the hellish city Bedlam from which he was confined in Book 1, Satan calls earth ‘magnificent’, much as Medusa admires the ‘buzzing bee’, ‘singing bird’ and ‘ginger cat’. The word ‘ginger’  perhaps connotes the intense but simple beauty of the world, and much as Satan could ‘walked round’ enjoying Earth’s beauty Medusa wishes to look upon earth’s varied beauties. Medusa however, is almost a subversion of the pastoral, with everything she ‘looks’ at becoming ‘dusty’, and ‘grey’ like a city. The simple wish to enjoy nature is common throughout human kind, but Medusa is perhaps a more sympathetic character than Satan who turns away from this to focus on being evil. However, Milton’s depiction of Satan as a courtly lover also humanizes him, with her ethereal beauty being understanding beguiling, with Milton’s audience, primarily male, understanding the allure of Eve’s ‘heavenly form’ with the ‘veil of fragrance’ and the fact she is ‘half spied’ serving to reinforce the fact she is aloof and unattainable. The structure echoes Satan’s distraction, with the explanation of Satan’s behaviour broken up by four lines of adulation, and that Satan is struck ‘stupidly good’ could perhaps indicate that he is not innately evil but his overthinking has lead him away from the ‘good(ness)’ that God initially created him with. Similarly, Medusa is humanized by her loneliness and desire for a ‘man’ to be her ‘own’, and yet whilst Medusa was once mortal Satan is an ex-angel in a snake’s body, with this perversion of the typical fighting fit and handsome knight as a courtly lover perhaps indicating how unnatural Satan and his evil is, or creating sympathy for Satan who doesn’t seem to be able to ask forgiveness and return to his natural form. Hence, both Medusa and Satan are transformed into sympathetic characters by Milton and Duffy, allowing readers a new insight into pre-concieved truths.

They also both explore their evil character’s motivations, with Milton both Milton and Duffy exploring jealousy and desire. Satan is motivated by the urge to ‘master heaven supreme’  and to have ‘sole glory’, with his lust for power driving him away from goodness, and seeing ‘serving’ God as ‘inglorious’. The act of submissal or ‘servitude’ seems repugnant to Satan and yet he feigns servitude to Eve, ‘fawning’ over her and calling her his ‘mistress’ and ‘empress’ and ‘telling’ what she ‘commandst’. This however, is part of his manipulation, illustrating how Satan is only really self-serving,  and while he uses the plural of ‘gods’ which is perhaps suggestive of democratising heaven’s rule, he still wishes to have ‘glory sole among’st the infernal powers, dethroning one autocrat and putting himself in its place. The word ‘glory’ connotes that Satan will be the one with the ‘throng of adorers’ and that he will sit higher than everyone else, suggesting Satan is motivated by pride but also jealousy of what God has. Duffy suggests that Medusa was similarly motivated by ‘jealousy’, with both their predicaments growing out of their ‘mind(s)’, but not containing their poisonous and sinful thoughts. Medusa though, was traditionally seen as being motivated by ‘Love’, the antithesis to Satan’s anger and hatred, with Satan deliberately dampening any love for beauty within himself in order to focus on ‘envy (and) revenge’. His envy of being infrerior can be seen in his boast that he can ‘marr’ in ‘one day’ what it took God ‘six days and nights’ to create, showing his destructive power, but also that he is unable to create in the way God does, with Milton showing that Satan’s only power is in destructive evil, with this being perhaps where Satan’s envy stems from. Satan is not only jealous of God however, but of God’s ‘new favourite’ who are made in God’s image, and ‘raised’ out of the ‘dust’ to be rulers of Earth. Through this, Milton seems to show that jealousy is at the heart of sin, issuing a warning to his readers about wanting more than you deserve, but Duffy explores how jealousy can arise out of even the purest of emotions which Milton absolutely refutes.

Both writers present their characters as being punished, with their physical form changed as well as people’s attitudes to them. Both Medusa and Satan are hated figures, as Adam and Eve are warned of and fear him whilst Medusa is attacked by young men with ‘shields’ and ‘swords’. Both are also being punished by Gods, with Greek mythology telling how Medusa was punished by Athena for defiling the sacred temple with Poseidon, whilst Satan is thrown from heaven for his rebellion. Hence, both characters are breaking rules set in place by the define who are unquestionable and traditionally seen as ‘just’, and yet at the time the ‘divine right’ of Kings to lay down the law had been refuted by Parliament, refusing to accept Charles I’s taxes and rebelling against him, much like Satan and his angels. This is reconciled by the fact that God as a perfect and omnipotent being would not put in place any unjust laws, with Milton indicating that the fault lies with Satan’s jealousy, though Duffy is less clear who Medusa is ‘jealous’ of, though for both this leads to their bodies becoming ‘snakes’.  The snake has connotations of slipperyness and cunning which seems to suit Satan, and yet being a ‘beast’ is a coming down in status and the opposite to his aspirations to be seated amongst the ‘Gods’, with the snake’s body becoming his prison, and yet he chooses to ‘enter’ it. In ‘Medusa’ Duffy seems to paint Medusa as a victim who suffers unwarranted abuse and whose body bears the brunt of her pain. Medusa’s ‘bullet tears’ emphasizes her loneliness and her eyes power to bring death, but this for her is controllable, whilst Satan chooses to inflict ‘death’ upon Adam and Eve.