Love Sets as the Sun Rises

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Recommended: The white man's burden

In Book IX of Paradise Lost by John Milton, Satan astutely tempts Eve into eating the fruit of the Tree of Life. In this passage, Milton reveals multiple characteristics of Satan implied by Satan’s actions and his speech. Eve also has her characteristics revealed by Milton through Satan’s method of temptation and her response in this passage.

Satan’s temptation of Eve reveals the eloquence of Satan’s rhetorical aptitude and cunning. Satan sets up a solid rhetorical speech using a claim, giving evidence, and providing reason backup his claim. Satan claims, “Queen of this Universe, do not believe/Those rigid threats of Death; ye shall not Die” (IX.684-685). To support this claim, he provides the evidence by stating, “Look on mee,/Mee who have touch’d and tasted, yet both live,/And life more perfect have attain’d than Fate/Meant mee, by vent’ring higher than my Lot” (IX.687-690). This supports his claim by presenting an example of the fruit not causing death. Satan proceeds to reason that God forbid Adam and Eve to eat of the fruit so that they may remain inferior and subservient to him (IX.703-704). Satan makes a solid claim by providing strong evidence and reasoning that Eve in her vanity can believe. To add credibility to his claim, Satan describes the fruits saying, “When from the boughs a savoury odour blown,/Grateful to appetite, more pleas’d my sense/Than smell of sweetest Fennel, or the Teats/Of Ewe or Goat dropping with Milk at Ev’n,/Unsuckt of Lamb or Kid, that tend their play” (IX.579-583). Satan uses this imagery to entice Eve by appealing to her desires.

Another element of Satan’s temptation is his shrewdness and cunning. Satan takes his time, “And with inspection deep/Consider’d every Creature, which of all/Most opp...

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...loom” (Conrad 83). Conrad uses this morbidly ominous tone to verify his theme by illustrating the cruelty, evil, and barbarism exhibited by the white men upon the natives. After the white men treat the natives cruelly, they let the natives leave to the forest to die.

Many commonalities exist between Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and “The White Man’s Burden” by Rudyard Kipling. However, Conrad uses these commonalities to illustrate a very different and contradictory theme than the theme of “The White Man’s Burden”. The symbolism and tone help to identify and support the themes of each work. Kipling explains in his poem the burdens that exist in white men’s duty of civilizing and ruling the other races in the world. Conrad, however, describes Kipling’s belief as a surface truth that he undermines in his novella to illustrate the reality of the situation.

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