Despair of overwhelming depth is expected, inherent even, in these two texts by William Shakespeare and John Milton. Upon reading King Lear one notes the harrowing grief of the spurned King, that his heartache is what propels the play forward and manifests in his debilitating madness and a rough storm. As we take a broader glance we see that all the characters are in peril, all suffering from feelings of loss and abandonment. Lear’s story is mirrored in that of Gloucester and his sons. One son in particular, Edmund, allows the pain of being born a bastard and the rejection of his father to skew his view of the world and the intentions of his ambition. In his unyielding fight to take his father’s title and the wealth and reputation of his brother Edgar, he becomes a closer resemblance to Satan of Milton’s Paradise Lost than a pitiful but harmless illegitimate son. Satan’s obsession is also for power. He is defiant of God and seeks to overthrow his control of heaven to become, in a sense, “king”.
Though critics have argued over the true protagonist of the work, Paradise Lost is widely considered the story of Lucifer and his struggle for control. To examine the connection between ambition and despair in both of these works, one must see the misguided ways of each character. Edmund is driven by selfish ambition because of the rejection by his family and the prevailing popular opinion that bastards were, more or less, a worthless product of sin. The despair that comes from this drives him to commit acts that bring devastation on all characters, and ultimately, more despair to himself. In Paradise Lost Satan’s despair is spawned from rejection as well—after a failed uprising against God, Satan has been banished in disgrace to the underworld. This despair leads to perhaps the most famous ambition in English literature, which comes in the form of a desire to organize another uprising and ultimately his ascent to earth to tempt Adam and Eve away from their paradise. In the attempt to pursue their ambitions to ease despair, Satan and Edmund both succeed and fail. Though they wreak havoc on the characters they resent, they are never able to fix whatever caused them their initial despair and are thusly just as low as the characters they seek to destroy.
Like Satan in Paradise Lost, Edmund’s story is presented as a secondary plot line that becomes as relevant and telling as that of the main characters. In the beginning, when asked for a lavish display of fatherly love, Cordelia tells her father, “I love your majesty/ According to my bond; no more nor less” (I.i.93-95). This sets the tone for the play and emphasizes the theme for which Edmund and his father are a foil: the role of a child and father. We are first introduced to Edmund’s father Gloucester, a loyal follower of the King, who is described as an adulterer with two sons; the first, legitimate Edgar, eventually leaves because of Edmund’s scheming, only to return disguised at his father’s weakest moments. It is at this moment, blinded and turned out by the illegitimate son he though he trusted that Gloucester sees the truth. He says to Edgar, who he thinks is Tom of Bedlam, “I stumbled when I saw” (IV.i.18-19). This emphasizes the theme that people are not what they seem, an essential one for dissecting the character of Edmund.
At first we see Edmund and his father growing close; Gloucester is coming to trust Edmund and turn away from Edgar. Here is our first glimpse into the true character of Edmund. He is resentful and bitter over Edgar’s place in society and has already begun to work out the ambition that has been driven by the despair he feels over the inferiority of his birth and the love he feels from his father. He convinces Gloucester that Edgar is trying to kill him, involves himself with both Goneril and Regan, and ultimately leads the English army that conquers Cordelia. The dominant forces present in Edmund’s society would have made a life like his understandably difficult. The royal leadership is in shambles. The prevailing attitude of the time is that illegitimate children were rejected and forgotten about, even by their own parents. This dominating presence of social opinion, neglect by his father, and the general chaos of the world in this play are what drive Edmund to behave as he does.
The methods with which he aspires to power mostly involve deception and manipulation. He lies to his father about Edgar’s intentions in an attempt to rid his brother as an obstacle to power. With his lies he manages to get in his father’s good graces. Another method he uses is to become romantically involved with Regan and Goneril. This not only provides him a comfortable place with either of the daughters seeking their inheritance. But by allowing them to turn against each other it seems that Edmund’s desire to grasp the power that the women are fighting for is secondary to his ambition to simply make everything as chaotic and miserable as he feels inside. His final ambitious attempt at power is his leadership of the makeshift army that wars against Cordelia’s troops. He captures them and ultimately sends Cordelia to her unnecessary death.
Edmund’s final response of despair is his death. In his final moments he becomes remorseful of all the death and suffering he has caused. This despair comes as he is dying by the hand of his brother, an occurrence representative of the futility of Edmund’s life in general, and his failed goals in specific. Still, as Shakespeare states, “Yet Edmund was beloved” (V.iii.239). But before he dies he has many despairing responses to the futility of his goals and his life. In the beginning we see him lost in his despair over his place in the world. Even though he is introduced by his father as a son whom he loves dearly, the language with which Gloucester expresses the sentiment is rather chiding in itself. “Though this knave came something saucily to the world before he was sent for,/ yet was his mother fair, there was good sport at his making,/ and the whoreson must be acknowledged” (I.i.19-22). There is an innate sense that, even if his father loves him, Edmund is lesser than his brother who is of noble birth. The moments before Edmund’s death are the pinnacle of a character’s despair in futility. He ponders whether he did have the true love of Goneril, Regan, even his father, and that perhaps he was consumed with the wrong ambitions.
Milton’s character Lucifer in Paradise Lost experiences the same feeling of rejection that propelled Edmund. He has been shunned from heaven and denied the chance to lead. He endures what most Christians at the time would have believed to be the worst of fates: he is rejected by God. The story begins en media res, or in the middle of things, just after Satan’s failed attempt to when the control of the heavens. Satan and his followers are on a lake of fire when Satan begins to devise another plan to bring himself and his angels to earth to introduce sin and suffering to the world. As we know, Milton’s stated purpose of his epic is to “justify the ways of God to men” (Milton 4:26). God is the one that must be justified, according to Milton, not Satan. Thus, we know as readers to approach the character of Satan, not as the typical devil, whose every whim is evil and whose determination is only to bring down the human race, but as a multi-faceted character who, just as man, wrestles with his relationship with God. Milton’s stated purpose also tells us that the dominating force of this story is God. God’s acceptance, love, and commands are all what move the plot forward, and what drives Satan’s ambition to overthrow him and win influence over man. Another dominating force is temptation.
This is evident in the struggle endured by Adam and Eve, as well as Satan’s inability to resist his desire for power, even when he’s been so badly burned by it just before. The inherent injustices in even the pure and moral world of this poem are also noteworthy. When considering the importance of Eve and Adam it is deemed that “Not equal, as thir sex not equal seem’d; / For contemplation hee and valor form’d,/ For softness shee and sweet attractive Grace,/ Hee for God only, shee for God in him” (Milton 4.34). There is a seemingly black and white interplay of God representing morality and righteousness, and Satan representing evil and injustice. But, as this quote explains, Eve is considered lesser than Adam, an inequality we are faced with even in our own time. Though Milton and his contemporaries probably agreed with the Bible and the narrator here, this inferiority of Eve is an interesting injustice to explore because it isn’t the doing of Satan, but rather the commandment of God.
Satan employs various methods to his aspiration for power that ultimately fail him. He uses trickery and disguise to make his way to Earth and the garden of Eden, paradise. When he is there he feels his reaction of pain and hatred and feels a resolve to once again try and bring down the paradise that God has created. He inhabits the body of a bird, then a toad to reach Eve. He is caught by Gabriel who he prepares to fight, but is eventually sent back to the underworld by God. But in his second attempt to utilize the method of manipulation and disguise he returns, tempts Eve, and sets into motion the events that lead to Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the garden of Paradise, into the real world of suffering, hardship and death. After this, Satan returns successfully, to the cheers of his devilish followers. These methods and the actions Satan takes seem like the reaction of a spurned or punished child against a strict parent. Perhaps if Lucifer had in him the capacity to ask forgiveness of God, he would not have felt the resolve to fight against all that is good and pure.
Satan’s resignation and despair at the futility of his quest, become most apparent in the end, while at Mount Niphates, where Satan at last questions his desire to bring God and his human race down. He understands his innate sense of evil, and that he can not truly waver from his past. But Satan’s doubt is an important detail of Paradise Lost. It shows us that there is an inkling of good in everyone and everything, even Lucifer. It also shows us the true power of sin and evil. Though Satan may feel a slight desire to cease and desist, he knows that his true self must continue on his path to destroy paradise. This is the influence of Satan’s own creations—sins of pride and vengeance—which even he does not have the power to resist.
Perhaps this is Milton’s way of telling us that hell is not a place but a state of mind. We trap ourselves there when we resign ourselves to sin, futility, and suffering. Another way Satan despairs is in the sense that his relevance undermined and his presence misunderstood among men. In the opening passage Milton outlines the plot of his epic without mention of Satan. “Of Man’s First Disobedience, and the Fruit/ Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste/ Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,/ With loss of Eden” (Milton 1-4). In his failed attempt at supremacy, Satan finds himself an invisible presence that perpetuates evil, not the revered deity that the humans see God as. Even further futility that Satan faces is the confirmation that good will win over evil. God forgives Adam and Eve, his son offers himself for their redemption, and the human race continues to repent for this original sin; it is clear to Satan that he has not won and his despair can be seen as the perpetuating existence of evil, pain, and death.
The works of canonical authors William Shakespeare and John Milton are essential when examining the nature of ambition and despair in English literature. While both authors deal with larger than life characters—kings and deities—there is an overwhelmingly powerful connection they both make to the human spirit. We learn from Edmund that the smothering attitude of society can be a pain all itself, and that how we are perceived equates to how we perceive ourselves. Satan teaches us the true power of sin, and that even when our hearts move us to overcome it, we can still fall prey to the influence of evil.
Works Cited
Milton, John. Paradise Lost (1667). Second Edition, Blackwell Publishing: London. 351 pages.
Shakespeare, William. King Lear (1603). Courier Dover Publications: London. 118 pages.