Fall Though in Paradise Lost it may appear that "the Fall" is synonymous with the act of disobeying God, a closer reading shows a certain paradoxical duality to the act of falling -- namely, that what is called the Fall is a forced physical and psychic humiliation and prostration which God enacts on those who refuse to willingly prostrate themselves in worship to him. Two opposing categories of fallenness exist,

Sophocles & Milton Sophocles wrote his great works two and a half millennia ago, and yet today they are still fresh and powerful. This is because Sophocles deals with deep and important human situations and emotions. Even though we can no longer imagine what it would be like to live in the world which Sophocles inhabits, we can completely understand his characters because they are fully human and human nature does

The characters of God, Stan, and Jesus are also significant in this epic and because they are considered valuable in their roles in the poem, we can assume that Milton found similar value with these characters in life itself. Through these characters, Milton is presenting not only a hierarchy but also a way in which things should operate. God's supremacy is unquestionable in this realm and demonstrated early in

Her list includes the following: culture / Nature reason / Nature male/female mind/body ( Nature) master/slave reason/matter (physicality) rationality/animality ( Nature) human / Nature (non-human) civilised/primitive ( Nature) production/reproduction ( Nature) self/other At first glance, this list seems to capture the basic groupings and gender associations that are at work in Mary Shelley's novel. The Creature exemplifies animality, primitiveness, and physicality, whereas Victor represents the forces of civilization, rational production, and culture. Victor is part of a happy family

What Victor is saying is that in order to create a living being from the dead, he must haunt the graveyards like a human ghoul and experiment on live animals to "animate" "lifeless clay," being the deceased remains of human beings. From this admission, it is abundantly obvious that Victor, like Prometheus, sees "clay" as the foundation for creation, a substance which is part of the earth itself and

Old English poem Beowulf offers a number of contrasts in telling the story of the hero Beowulf and his fight to save a community not his own first from the monster Grendel and then from Grendel's mother. Later in the poem, Beowulf also fights a dragon. These monsters fight from different motives, from the relatively petty pique of Grendel to the desire for vengeance from Grendel's mother and the