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Pointing the Finger in Paradise Lost
After the fall in Milton’s Paradise Lost, Adam and Eve bicker and blame one another for their decent. First, Adam accuses Eve for her physical act of accepting the apple from Satan and eating it, thus defying God’s decree not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. In retaliation, Eve responds and attempts to not only justify her act, but also to place the blame on Adam. Eve’s reaction is typical of someone who does not like to admit he is wrong.
Eve begins by challenging Adam with an argument that he would have done the same thing had he been in her situation. "[Had’st] thou been there,/ Or here th’ attempt, thou couldst not have discern’d/ Fraud in the Serpent, speaking as he spake" (IX 1148-1150). She is trying to justify her action in Adam’s mind by making him realize he would have acted the same way, and in effect she also hopes to gain his sympathy. This tactic is often effective because we do not tend to choose to recognize faults in others when we realize we are susceptible to the same mistakes. Aristotle recognizes the relationship between eliciting sympathy and making the audience relate to the situation in his Poetics when he describes the ideal character as one who is "true to life" (81). An audience must be able to relate to a falling character, or else they will not pity his plight. In other words, if a speaker wants sympathy from his audience, he must make them "feel his pain."
Eve proceeds in her rebuttal with justification for her action based on the circumstances of the scenario. She argues, "No ground of enmity between us known,/ Why hee should me ill of seek to harm" (II 1151-1152). She seems to imply that a less trusting person would not have listened to the se...
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...ccusation that he did not try hard enough to keep her at his side when he asks, "What could I more?/ I warn’d thee, I admonish’d thee, foretold/ The danger, and the lurking Enemy/ That lay in wait" (IX 1170-1172). No matter how developed any one piece of Aristotle’s triangle seems, it is useless without the other two parts.
If you take a step back and observe this scene of Paradise Lost with your own experiences in mind, you realize how petty the "blame game" can be. Eve tries very hard to use persuasion as a "finger pointing" tool so she can alleviate any guilt of her own. However, she fails. We all must know what it feels like to fail in an argument, yet we still test situations like these sometimes when we do not want to accept full responsibility for something that has gone wrong.
Works Cited
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. New York: W.W. Norton, 1993.
When wisdom is mixed with disobedience it opens the door for evil to abound. Although Eve was the first to take of the fruit and Adam the second, both shared responsibility in the transgression as Arnold describes it. (62;67,
E.M. Gallaudet had very little choice but to instruct in the way that he did. It is true that it was ultimately his choice but I believe that nurture is much more powerful than nature. E.M.’s mother was taught sign and communicated in sign to her husband and child. Naturally E.M. would think this is the best method of instruction. To think other wisely would be to say that his mother was inadequate. In turn this would mean that his upbringing was inadequate which would lead to the conclusion that he himself was an inadequate person. For his own salvation and peace of mind E.M. was given his path at birth. For him to have strayed from this would have ended up being a long and lonely road cutting all ties with the past.
In Paradise Lost, one of the differences God is aware of the betrayal his creations unlike Frankenstein. There is a point where Adam desires a companion to share the world with, thus God creates Eve from one of Adam’s ribs. He is in a predicament now, due to there are now two beings to love now, but who deserves the more affection. He “can neither love himself adequately nor love Eve as himself unless have love God adequately – and so make his love for Eve, the unity of their shared self, an expression of that higher love” (Gross 95). This scene displays one of Adam’s limitations of his free will. Thus creating her in being the submissive which eventually became her downfall, Adam’s and the rest of humanity. Eve is flawed, she has the inclination of self-love, a quality she should not be capable of possessing or acting upon. The only love that she should be expressing is her love for Adam in a way also loving God. This becomes their weakness. Satan learns about this weakness and exploits it as his advantage to enact his scheme. He influences a susceptible Eve, by coercing her into eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge. He claims to Eve about the fruit “By the fruit? It gives you life To knowledge by the threat’ner? Look on me, Me, who have touched and tasted; yet both live” (Book 9 l. 686-688). Satan is able to persuade them to consume the fruit that provides them
In the poem we get the picture that Adam is lamenting for the mistake they have done and specially blames and insults Eve's female nature and wonders why do god ever created her. She begs his forgiveness, and pleads with him not to leave her. She reminds him that the snake tricked her, but she fully accepts the blame for sinning against both God and him. She argues that unity and love c...
...e in the relationship. Certainly Adam could speak wisdom to the animals in the Garden, but he speaks to Eve because she is his equal. She is the one to whom Adam prefers to relate his thoughts, simply because he is enchanted by her. In a sense, she is his “only listener”—the only listener for him. Eve has the choice of how she will receive wisdom, but “Her husband the relater she preferred/Before the angel, and of him to ask/Chose rather” (52-54). Not only does Adam choose Eve to relate his thoughts to, but she chooses him to relate wisdom to her. Though there are only two humans in Paradise, Milton presents the relationship of Adam and Eve as one of choice. Both partners could get what they need from other sources, but they choose to receive wisdom and respect from one another instead. The fulfillment of their needs is more enjoyable in the context of love.
There were a myriad of differences between Great Britain and her American colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but these differences can be divided into three basic categories: economic, social, and political. The original American settlers came to the colonies for varied reasons, but a common trait among these settlers was that they still considered themselves British subjects. However, as time passed, the colonists grew disenfranchised from England. Separated from the king by three thousand miles and living in a primitive environment where obtaining simple necessities was a struggle, pragmatism became the common thread throughout all daily life in the colonies. It was this pragmatism that led the colonists to create their own society with a unique culture and system of economics and politics.
In Paradise Lost, the consequences of the fall and the change in relations between man and nature can best be discussed when we look at Milton's pre-fall descriptions of Eden and its inhabitants. Believing that fallen humans could never fully understand what life was like in Eden and the relationships purely innocent beings shared, Milton begins his depiction of Paradise and Adam and Eve through the fallen eyes of Satan:
- Jeffrey Passel and D’Vera Cohn. “The Global Religious Landscape, 2012.” Pew Research Center, Washington, D.C. (December 18, 2012). http://www.pewforum.org/2012/12/18/global-religious-landscape-exec/, accessed on Monday 21, 2014.
Religion is an organized collection of beliefs and cultural systems that entail the worship of a supernatural and metaphysical being. “Religion just like other belief systems, when held onto so much, can stop one from making significant progress in life”. Together with religion come traditions that provide the people with ways to tackle life’s complexities. A subscription to the school of thought of great scholars
Eve is enamored by the Tree of Knowledge and how much more beautiful it looks in the dark, “That brought me on a sudden to the tree of interdicted knowledge: fair it seemed, much fairer to my fancy than by day (V.51-53).” The reference to the tree looking better at night than in the day tells the reader that Eve is already distant from God and does not have the ability to be in “God’s light” to see the faults in her situation. This is one of the main reasons why Eve falls to the temptation. Throughout lines 82-87, Milton describes in detail the temptation that Eve undergoes. He uses phrases like, “the pleasant savory smell,” and “so quickened appetite,” to relay to the reader on why she gave in to the urge. The use of imagery and diction helps the audience understand just how convincing Satan was and how her quick disobedience to God is a sign of
Is this an apology or blame? In the beginning, God tells Adam not to eat the forbidden fruit. Adam disobeys God by doing so, but most people put the blame on Eve. In the poem, “Eve’s Apology,” Eve expresses her feelings toward the entire situation and shows how she is not to blame. She blames Adam for the pain we endure today. Eve eats from the forbidden tree out of curiosity. She wants to share it with Adam, so he can feel like she feels. Eve gives the fruit to Adam out of love, but she does not force him to eat it. Adam has control of his mind, so he disobeys God on his own. “Do not the thing that goes against thy heart” (Lanyer 424). Aemilia Lanyer, the author of the poem, “Eve’s Apology,” lived in the mid 1500’s and 1600’s. Living in this time period, had much influence on her writing. She published her landmark book, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, the same year that the King James Bible and three of Shakespeare’s plays were published (Wilhelm 424). Lanyer brings out the life of this poem with the poetic devices, irony, and unusual language.
Knowledge is the cornerstone of Paradise Lost . Adam and Eve must not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Satan pinpoints Adam and Eve’s vulnerability in their ignorance of evil. Adam worries that he may seek knowledge that displeases God. Raphael praises Adam’s thirst for knowledge and warns him about obsessively seeking knowledge that is useless. Eve eats the fruit because she wants to know how ...
In Book IX of Milton’s Paradise Lost, Eve makes a very important and revealing speech to the tree of knowledge. In it, she demonstrates the effect that the forbidden fruit has had on her. Eve’s language becomes as shameful as the nakedness that Adam and Eve would later try to cover up with fig leaves. After eating the forbidden apple, Eve’s speech is riddled with blasphemy, self-exaltation, and egocentrism.
He knows that they are now doomed, but immediately decides that he cannot live without Eve. Eve wants him to suffer the same fate as she. Adam eats the fruit. Both the Bible and Paradise Lost hold Adam and Eve at fault. But, both accounts place one of them in a more negative account. In the Bible, Adam is held in a more negative light, whereas in Paradise Lost, Eve is put into a more negative light. Neither of these depictions is correct, neither source hold them both in contempt for their actions they both committed. It is always one person’s fault, which is not accurate when both partook in the fateful eating of the fruit.
In Book IV, Eve recalls awakening to consciousness but she is uncertain of her identity and of her place in the Garden of Eden. Eve's first thoughts are of “where and what [she] was, whence thither brought, and how” (Paradise Lost, IV.451-52), and it is this curiosity about her identity that leads Eve to disobey God eventually. From the moment of her conception, Eve is already distant from God because she awakens in the shade and not in God’s light. Throughout Paradise Lost, Eve is identified with reflections, shadows, and dreams. Representing the “otherness” of Eden, Eve is an outcast and she seeks to find meaning in her life. At the moment of her awakening, Eve is engrossed by her reflection in the water, which she thinks is another being. This watery, wavering image of Eve extends throughout Milton’s poem, and this further puts Eve in a weak position, for Eve is merely a ref...