In the opening section of Book IV, Satan talks to himself, and for the first time, the reader is allowed to hear the inner workings of the demon's mind. This opening passage is very similar to a soliloquy in a Shakespearean drama, and Milton uses it for the same effect. Traditionally, the soliloquy was a speech given by a character alone on the stage in which his innermost thoughts are revealed. Thoughts expressed in a soliloquy were accepted as true because the speaker has no motive to lie to himself. The soliloquy then provided the dramatist a means to explain the precise motivations and mental processes of a character. Milton uses Satan's opening soliloquy in Book IV for the same purpose.
In his soliloquy, Satan reveals himself as a complex and conflicted individual. He literally argues with himself, attempting first to blame his misery on God but then admitting that his own free will caused him to rebel. He finally concludes that wherever he is, Hell is there also; in fact, he himself is Hell. In this conclusion, Satan develops a new definition of Hell as a spiritual state of estrangement from God. Yet even as he reaches this conclusion, Satan refuses the idea of reconcilement with God, instead declaring that evil will become his good and through evil he will continue to war with God. The self-portrait that Satan creates in this soliloquy is very close to the modern notion of the anti-hero — a character estranged and alienated who nonetheless will not alter his own attitudes or actions to achieve redemption from or reintegration with society at large.
