7 Matching Annotations
  1. Oct 2018
    1. ease would recant Vows made in pain

      Even at his lowest, Satan is extremely self-perceptive.

    1. Self-tempted, self-deprav'd

      Compare to the earlier "self-rais'd" description offered by the fallen angels in Hell for their eventual future triumph. God has so recently championed the need to autonomy in his worshippers and yet scathingly rejects the fallen angels for self-determining.

    2. Reason also is choice)

      CS Lewis suggested that Satan rejects rationality and reason along with goodness through his rebellion.

    1. This place our dungeon, not our safe retreat

      A parallel can be drawn here to the way marginalised groups sometimes seek to reclaim their marginalisation, trying to make a point of pride out of surviving their oppression, sometimes to the point of ceasing to acknowledge the extent and cruelty of the oppression.

  2. Sep 2018
    1. what hope

      I noted this in the last book as well -- we're given an assertion that Hell is a wholly hopeless place, and yet the fallen angels are all such driven, dynamic personalities that the word appears again and again even so.

    2. with that care lost Went all his fear

      The variety of ways that the different fallen angels experience misery does more to mark them out as memorable than any of their other offered features.

    1. hope

      We've been told that this new place they've been cast is utterly without help, yet their will seems to sustain them in much the same way that hope might.