The character of Satan in John Milton’s Paradise Lost is a subject of heavy debate among Milton scholars. Some, like C.S. Lewis, believe that Satan is a villain through and through, and any sympathy towards him shows the reader to be an atheist, or at the very least, not firmly Christian. Others, like William Blake, claim that Milton was “of the devil’s party without knowing it,” and consider Satan to be a tragic hero rather than a villain (Blake 88).