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Michael is an Archangel who is defined by his military identity, which aligns with his depiction in the New Testament. He is a warrior for God’s cause and leads the battalion of Angels against Satan in the war that would lead to Satan’s fall. Michael’s defining feature is his flaming sword, which he uses to strike Satan, and to remove the fallen Adam and Eve from Eden at the end of the poem. Michael first appears in the narrative in Book VI, which covers the battle between Satan and God. He later becomes a major presence in the last two chapters of the poem when he is sent by God to show Adam a prophecy of the future of humanity and expel Adam and Eve from Paradise. Considering the classical influence on Milton’s writing, Paradise Lost was written in a style that harkened back to epic poems such as Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid. Milton’s imagery and characters often take on traits and descriptions reminiscent of Greco-Roman mythology. Michael, depicted as a larger-than-life, glorious, and awe-inspiring warrior wielding a fiery sword, may remind the reader of classical warriors, demi-gods, and gods from Greco-Roman narratives.
Michael symbolizes God’s might and omnipotence. While God Himself never appears as a physical presence in the poem, His will is done through His creations, such as Michael and Raphael. In this sense, we see that the Archangels all manifest as different facets of their Creator. While Michael employs God’s unyielding might and power, weighing the scales of justice without remorse, angels like Raphael employ God’s benevolent, loving spirit, sitting and conversing with humans about the beauty of God’s universe. Although Michael does show brief moments of compassion and pity, he is mainly characterized as fearsome, strong, and uncompromising. The last image of Michael in Paradise Lost is a powerful and frightening one – with his flaming sword, he sweeps Adam and Eve out of Eden and commands his ranks of terrible cherubim to take their place as Guards around Paradise, locking it away from humanity forever.
