• the apple had already been eaten Victor here construes himself in terms of the fallen Adam, by his transgressive actions
    forever barred from Paradise. The angel whose "arm [is] bared" is the figure Blake
    called "the Covering Cherub," assigned to make certain that no return was possible:
    it is to be assumed that by this figure Victor identifies his Creature as an instrument
    of divine destiny.

    See also Milton's description of this banishment in Paradise Lost, XII.632-44.