• And now . . . whither should I bend my steps?

    The reference is to the famous last lines of Paradise Lost in which Adam and Eve forever
    depart Eden (XII.646-49). That the Creature speaks in these elegiac tones suggests
    that, for him, this is the moment in which he can no longer define himself, as he
    did in his appeal to the elder De Lacey (II:7:26), as a being of innocent and benevolent
    disposition. A second Adam, he has experienced his fall.