Paradise Lost Quotes Flashcards
(27 cards)
“I now must change Those notes to tragic” - 9.4
Shift in tone from the previous books
“Now improved in meditated fraud and malice, bent on man’s destruction” - 9.54
Sole motivation is to destroy humanity, using trickery
“Of all opportune might serve his wiles” - 9.85
Satan is paranoid and acting on it through antagonist intent
“The subtlest beast of all the field” - 9.86
Sibilance shows seductiveness, superlative shifts blame
“Fit vessel, fittest imp of fraud” - 9.89
Fricative alliteration, anaphora, creates chaos and takes delight in it
“dark” “wily” “suspicious” “subtlety” “diabolical power”
Semantic field of evil
“But in none of these I find place or refuge” - 9.118
Doesn’t belong nor feel safe, outsider
“The more I see pleasures about me, so much more I feel torment within me” - 9.119
Fronting of abstract nouns and in binary opposition
“All good to me becomes bane” - 9.121
Sees goodness and feels terrible
“Hope to be myself less miserable by what I seek, but others to make such as I” - 9.126
Satan luxuriating in his misery, wants others to be as miserable as him
“For only in destroying I find ease” - 9.129
Schadenfreude (pleasure derived by others misfortunes), contrast. “only” shows intenseness, it’s a last resort
“Or won to what may work his utter loss” - 9.131
Competition between God and Satan, binary opposition
“In one day to have marred what he Almighty styled” - 9.136
Arrogance, easier to destroy than create
“In one night freed…half the angelic name” - 9.140
Presents himself as a saviour, liberating angles from tyranny
“O indignity! Subjected to his service angel wings” - 9.154
Interjection evokes sympathy, thinks he is more deserving of the privilege that humans have been given whilst he has nothing
“To hide me, and the dark intent I bring” - 9.162
Foreshadowing
“Contended with gods to sit the highest, am now constrained into a beast and mixed with bestial slime” - 9.163
Devolution of Satan’s position, his choice to transform is evidence of his free will
“But what will not ambition and revenge descend to?” - 9.168
Willing to debase himself for later rewards, temporary position, will rise higher, furthers him from God
“Whom us the more to spite his Maker raised from dust: spite then spite is best repaid” - 9.177
Poetic justice ,mostly monosyllabic, half rhyme, sibilance is seductive, foreshadows snake
“Looks intervene and smiles” - 9.222
Suggesting he is too distracting, form of flattery
“Yet not so strictly hath our Lord imposed labour” - 9.235
They don’t have a strict schedule so are allowed to take breaks, God is not a tyrant
“No bliss enjoyed by us excites his envy more” - 9.263
Adam has an accurate understanding of the threats (9.119)
“His fraud is then thy fear” - 9.285
Satan can only create fear
“Immortal Eve, for such thou art, from sin and blame entire” - 9.293
Foreshadowing their punishment
