Freedom and Satan in Paradise LostSatan's main operational problem in Paradise Lost is his lack of obedience. The fundamental misunderstanding that leads to Satan's disobedience is the separation of free will from the hierarchical power of God. In the account of the angel Raphael, Satan says to his dominions: "Orders and degrees/Jarr not with freedom" (5.792-93) . As tempting as this differentiation may seem, Satan is wrong. Free will and hierarchical power are not mutually exclusive, as Satan suggests, but are overlapping concepts. Even though Satan was created with enough freedom to choose to disobey, he tacitly recognizes God's sovereignty when he exercises his choice. Satan is existentially limited, from the beginning, by having to make a specific choice whether or not to obey God. Satan, just like all angels, demons, and humans, can exercise his freedom as assent or dissent, for God created him. “Enough to stand, though free to fall./So I [God] created all the ethereal powers/And the spirits…/Freely those who stood stood up, and those who fell fell” (3.99 -102; see 5.549). If Satan chose neither to assent nor to dissent, thus refusing to exercise his free will, he would discard his free will. But this is impossible, as the demons determine in the advice of Book II; as long as he exists, Satan must make choices regarding his possible obedience to God. If Satan's first mistake was to completely separate his free will from God's power to give him that freedom, his second mistake occurs in his conception of what it means to exercise that freedom. God says that “Unfree, what evidence could [Satan and others] sincerely give/Of true faithfulness”? (3.103-04). But Satan has exactly…half the card…even if one may choose, as Satan does, to disagree and disobey, such supposedly self-creative acts are in reality simply a recognition of the hierarchical power of God. When pride and ambition to be like God prevent humans from listening to the “Arbitration Conscience” that God has placed within us (3.195; Likewise, Satan has been given enough conscience to remember the call to obedience , 4.23), we become like Satan, for the same reasons forced to listen only to the dissenting satanic voice in our ears. Works Cited Scott Elledge, ed., Paradise Lost, second ed. (NY: Norton, 1993).Millicent Bell, "The Fallacy of Paradise Lost," PMLA 68 (1953), 863-83; here page 878.Northrop Frye, The Return of Eden (Buffalo: Univ. of Toronto, 1965), 39-40, 43Barbara Lewalski, Paradise Lost and the Rhetoric of Literary Forms (Princeton: Princeton U. , 1985), 174.