Icon - ResearchSpace@Auckland - The University of Auckland

of Calvinism: as Ray Stevens notes, Japhet struggles to understand his election, 543 andit is his sympathy which causes that struggle. The feeling of conflict is exacerbatedby the jeering of the evil spirits, who demand,And art thou not ashamedThus to survive,And eat, and drink, and wive? (1.3.135-7).They reiterate the virtue of sympathy, reinforcing the ideology of collectiveresponsibility. When Japhet seeks to rescue Anah, she replies with a similar thought:could I dare to pray in his dread hourOf universal vengeance (if such should be),It would not be to live, alone exemptOf all my house. (1.3.430-3).The desire to avoid living alone is, obviously, motivated in large part by a desire toavoid the guilt of being the lone survivor, but that includes within it the desire to be apart of the group and to share in the collective fate. 544 This appears to have been asentiment of the poet himself: Kennedy records Byron as having said that “If thewhole world were going to hell, he would prefer going with them, than go alone toheaven.” 545 Like the drama’s, the poet’s comment privileges sociality aboveobedience.The result of all of the conflicting group loyalties is, of course, to throw the wholeconcept of group affiliation into doubt. Why choose one, when so many areavailable? In the immediate context of the drama, this points to the reasonability notonly of Japhet being concerned for the myriads who will die in the Flood, but also thereasonability of the angels or God being concerned for their fellow beings, renderingconspicuous the absence of divine mercy from the narrative. The value of group543 Stevens, ‘Scripture and the Literary Imagination: Biblical Allusions in Byron’s Heaven and Earth’,in Byron, the Bible, and Religion, 118-35 (p.121).544 Q.v. Stevens, p.127.545 Kennedy, p.45.345