Dauntless virtue, whom the pain/Of death denounced

            This line uses the poetic device of alliteration to emphasize the “D” which works to soften up the words and make Death that might stick out otherwise flow with the whole sentence. This could be another tactic used by Satan to make Eve believe that disobeying God will not be as harsh as she thinks.  The author of The Poems of Milton  John Carey analyzes the above line and states, “Satan’s deceptions are here concentrated on a single word.  He renders the concept of virtue so uncertain that the word comes to mean no more than ‘courage, manliness’: a possible significance, but here a narrow and perverse one.”(John Carey)  Some say like Empson that Eve “feels the answer to this elaborate puzzle must be that God wants her to eat the apple, since what he is really testing is not her obedience but her courage.”(159)  Carey points out yet another significance that Satan continues to twist words around to fit his meanings and warp them into something they are not.

By:Sarah Bourgeois

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