Key textual quotes

Question 1

Invocation - Milton’s moral standpoint

Answer 1

‘I now must change
Those notes to tragic; foul distrust, and breach
Disloyal, on the part of Man’

Question 2

Satan’s insubstantiality

Answer 2

‘…and with it rose
Satan involved in rising mist’

Question 3

Satan’s choice of animal

Answer 3

‘subtlest beast’

Question 4

Satan’s appreciation of the beauty of Eden

Answer 4

‘With what delight could I have walked thee round
If I could joy in aught, sweet interchange
Of hill and valley, rivers, woods and plains’

Question 5

Satan’s ‘siege of contraries’

Answer 5

‘[…] and the more I see
Pleasures about me, so much more I feel
Torment within me’

Question 6

Satan’s inability to repent

Answer 6

‘…all good to me becomes
Bane, and in Heaven much worse would be my state.’

Question 7

Satan’s fixation on destruction, but perhaps also sympathy

Answer 7

‘For only in destroying I find ease
To my relentless thoughts’

Question 8

Satan’s resentment of man

Answer 8

‘Exalted from so base original,
With heavenly spoils, our spoils’

Question 9

Satan’s physical concealment

Answer 9

‘…in whose mazy folds
To hide me, and the dark intent I bring’

Question 10

Satan’s self-loathing but stupidity in trying to defeat God once again

Answer 10

‘O foul descent! That I who erst contended
With gods to sit the highest, am now constrained
Into a beast’

Question 11

Satan’s rebelliousness and ambition as kind of admirable

Answer 11

‘But what will not ambition and revenge
Descend to? who aspires must down as low
As high he soared’

Question 12

Satan childishly misreading God’s intention

Answer 12

‘Spite then with spite is best repaid’

Question 13

Adam and Eve as initially united

Answer 13

‘the human pair’

Question 14

Eve’s proposition to work alone and justification (x2)

Answer 14

‘Let us divide our labours’

‘Looks intervene and smiles, or objects new
Casual discourse draw on’

Question 15

Milton’s presentation of Adam’s response (1st time)

Answer 15

‘mild answer’

Question 16

Adam’s assertion of Eve’s subordinate position

Answer 16

‘for nothing lovelier can be found
In woman, than to study household good’

Question 17

Adam indulging Eve’s flawed argument, showing timidity

Answer 17

‘For solitude sometimes is best society’

Question 18

Adam asserting that Eve should be grateful for him, and that they are stronger together

Answer 18

‘…leave not the faithful side
That gave thee being, still shades thee and protects’

Question 19

Eve accusing Adam of not having faith in her moral judgement

Answer 19

‘Thy equal fear that my firm faith and love
Can by his fraud be shaken or seduced’

Question 20

Milton’s presentation of Adam’s response (2nd time)

Answer 20

‘So spake Adam in his care
And matrimonial love’

Question 21

Eve’s unhappiness with her restricted position

Answer 21

‘If this be our condition, thus to dwell
In narrow circuit straightened by a foe’

Question 22

Adam telling Eve to leave him (fatal error as blame is later placed directly on him)

Answer 22

‘Go; for thy stay, not free, absents thee more’

Question 23

Adam’s inability to assert patriarchal control as he watched Eve leave him

Answer 23

‘Her long with ardent look his eye pursued
Delighted, but desiring more her stay’

Question 24

Epic simile describing Satan standing in awe of Eve’s charm (x2)

Answer 24

‘As one in who long in populous city pent,
Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air’

‘the smell of grain, or tedded grass…’

Question 25

Eve's charm and femininity overpowering Satan's evilness (x2)

Answer 25

‘Her graceful innocence, her every air Of gesture or least action overawed His malice’ ‘That space the evil one abstracted stood From his own evil’

Question 26

Satan ultimately having to go forward with his plan because of his internal suffering

Answer 26

‘But the hot Hell that always in him burns’

Question 27

Satan's guile and intention to deceive/flatter

Answer 27

‘Under show of well feigned The way which to her ruin now I tend’

Question 28

Satan's submission to Eve through physical action

Answer 28

‘Fawning, and licked the ground whereon she trod’

Question 29

The serpent's ability to speak

Answer 29

‘With serpent tongue Organic’

Question 30

Satan's opening introduction to Eve (flattery plus imperative)

Answer 30

‘Wonder not, sovereign mistress’

Question 31

Epic simile showing the power of Satan's rhetoric in persuasion

Answer 31

‘As when of old some orator renowned In Athens or free Rome, where eloquence Flourished’

Question 32

Satan reassuring Eve that she can't be hurt by God

Answer 32

‘God therefore cannot hurt ye and be just Not just, not God’

Question 33

Satan undermining Eve's perception of the world and tempting her with the prospect of enlightened moral understanding

Answer 33

‘…your eyes that seem so clear Yet are but dim, shall perfectly be then Opened and cleared, and ye shall be as gods’

Question 34

Satan giving Eve the allusion of power, yet really controlling her

Answer 34

‘Goddess humane, reach then and freely taste’

Question 35

Eve's susceptibility to Satan's argument and consumption of his language/explanation

Answer 35

‘Yet rung of his persuasive words, impregned With reason’

Question 36

Eve's misnaming of the tree

Answer 36

'best of fruits'

Question 37

Eve gullibly believing Satan's argument that her courage will be admired by God

Answer 37

‘but his forbidding commends thee more’

Question 38

Eve believing Satan's physical disguise and argument of proportional ascent (and childish phrasing)

Answer 38

‘How dies the serpent? He hath eaten and lives, And knows, and speaks, and reasons, and discerns’

Question 39

Eve's gluttony

Answer 39

‘Greedily she engorged without restraint’

Question 40

Eve inheriting Satan's character trait of duality

Answer 40

‘But to Adam in what sort Shall I appear?’

Question 41

Eve wanting to invert the hierarchy of gender and power

Answer 41

‘...sometime Superior; for inferior who is free?’

Question 42

Eve's selfishness in sharing the fruit with Adam - taking him down with her

Answer 42

‘Adam shall share with me in bliss or woe’

Question 43

Eve reflecting Satan's symbolic language of seeing

Answer 43

'...but of divine effect To open eyes, and make them gods who taste'

Question 44

Eve returning to language of unity, but for selfish reasons really

Answer 44

‘…that equal lot May join us, equal joy, as equal love’

Question 45

Adam's physical reaction to Eve's Fall

Answer 45

'...while horror chill Ran through his veins'

Question 46

Adam's condemnation of Eve's actions in his inward speech

Answer 46

‘Rather how hast thou yielded to transgress The strict forbiddance’

Question 47

Adam being unable to live without Eve (x2)

Answer 47

'Certain my resolution is to die' ‘…flesh of flesh Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe’

Question 48

Adam pretending to somewhat buy Eve's argument to validate her behaviour (and perhaps convince himself too)

Answer 48

‘perhaps the fact Is not so heinous now’

Question 49

Eve's reframing of The Fall as a courtly love trial

Answer 49

‘O glorious trial of exceeding love’

Question 50

Eve echoing Satan's language as she instructs Adam to eat

Answer 50

‘freely taste’

Question 51

Adam being emasculated, and falling through uxoriousness

Answer 51

‘…not deceived But fondly overcome with female charm’

Question 52

Adam and Eve's lust (x2)

Answer 52

'Carnal desire inflaming' 'In lust they burn'

Question 53

loss of innocence

Answer 53

'innocence, that as a veil Had shadowed them from knowing ill, was gone’

Question 54

Adam and Eve being imbrued through their promiscuous behaviour

Answer 54

‘as strucken mute’

Question 55

Adam's new epithet (lost compassion as well as loyalty to God - nothing for the reader to admire now)

Answer 55

‘Adam severe’

Question 56

Eve speculating about what her state would've been if she hadn't eaten the apple

Answer 56

'...still a lifeless rib'

Question 57

Eve accusing Adam of being weak-willed

Answer 57

'too facile'

Question 58

Eve's new epithet, revealing her selfishness

Answer 58

'ingrateful Eve'

Question 59

Adam's recognition of his own flaw, but also subtle dig at Eve

Answer 59

‘I also erred in overmuch admiring What seemed in thee so perfect’

Question 60

Adam and Eve in a state of squabbling by the end (x2)

Answer 60

‘mutual accusation’ ‘…but neither self-condemning And of their vain contest appeared no end’