Professor Eric C. Brown judges the climax, in which Milton attempts to persuade Lomax to have sex with his half-sister to conceive the Antichrist, to be the most "Miltonic", as the sculptures become animated in carnal activities evoking "Paradise Lost"s "Downfall of the Rebel Angels". The tirade Milton gives in this sequence is at times also reminiscent of Satan's lines in "Paradise Lost" Books I and II. In U.S. literary education, Milton's temptation of Lomax in the climax, in which he rationalizes rebellion against God for a "Look, but don't touch" model, has been compared to Satan urging Eve to eat forbidden fruit in "Paradise Lost", Book IX, lines 720–730: