Eve in the Garden of Eden
The most important characters in the epic poem, “Paradise Lost”, are Satan and Eve. These two characters are most responsible for the development and progression of events within the poem. Satan is the main figure throughout the vast majority of the plot. “Paradise Lost” follows Satan’s ultimately successful attempt to destroy God’s perfect creation, humanity, by forcing Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden. In creating humanity, God set expectations and put in place boundaries for Adam and Eve, yet they were not particularly restrictive.
Adam and Eve had free reign within the boundaries of the Garden, and free will to make their own decisions, though there were few necessary. Milton writes in Book 3, “I made him just and right/Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall” (3.97-99). Adam and Eve were able to make their own future together. All that was required of them was to take care of the land in Eden, which would not be harsh labor, as fruit was produced easily. In both the Bible story of the Garden of Eden and the expounded version by John Milton, Satan tricks Eve into eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Just as is true today, Milton’s audience in the eighteenth century would have been familiar with the story of Adam and Eve’s downfall. Readers know that Eve will ultimately be tricked by Satan and convince Adam to eat the fruit. Given that, the audience waits in anticipation for the moment when Eve is manipulated. Greenblatt et al. (2008) write of Adam and Eve, “Their relationship exhibits gender hierarchy, but Milton’s early readers may have been surprised by the fullness and complexity of Eve’s character and the centrality of her role”. This statement accuratel...
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...cide to take the Fall together. This continues through the remaining books of the poem. After hearing God’s punishment, the two “...hand in hand with wandering steps and slow/Through Eden took their solitary way” (12.648-49). Adam and Eve would never return to Eden, but they retained their free will.
Milton does not make it clear throughout the early books that the story will include Eve and Adam eating of the Tree of Knowledge, or even include the Fall. God mentions on multiple occasions that the two humans have free will to make their own decisions and determine their own futures. The two humans ultimately do have the freedom to Fall, and succumb to the power of Satan and curiosity.
Works Cited
Greenblatt, Stephen, and Meyer Howard Abrams. The Norton anthology of English literature. Stephen Greenblatt & Meyer Howard Abrams. WW Norton &
Company, 2012.
...to mankind in Paradise Lost - one of the fundamental concepts in Christianity and vital to Milton's objective to "justify the ways of God to men" (1, 26) - the gods in the Aeneid are continually reminding Aeneas that he cannot afford to be distractive by the temptresses that are women because the future of Rome lays in his hands. Milton's God, on the other hand, allows Eve to fall and her blatant transgression caused the loss of paradise and all of creation has to experience the consequences of original sin. In Paradise Lost Eve was expected to submit to her ultimate authority, Adam. Rather, it is Adam in Book IX who submits to Eve's unreasonable discourse on separation. Indeed, the implication of a man (as a superior being) succumbing to feminine wiles and passion is an intense concept which - for both Virgil and Milton - threatened the very basis of their society.
The theological aspects that arise in the excerpt are original sin, grace, atonement, and the resurrection of Christ. Lines 203 through 209 speak about man’s wrong doing to God. “But yet all is not done; Man disobeying, Disloyal breaks his fealty, and sins Against the high Supremacy of Heav’n,…” Milton puts emphasis on the fact that all men must die “He with his whole posterity must die.” These lines introduce the concept of original sin in the excerpt. The doctrine of original sin is that because of Adam’s fall in the garden and their disobedience to God in eating the forbidden fruit, men are held accountable for their sin because of Adam’s disobedience men take on a sin nature.
The “Fall of Man” story in The Bible, better known as the “Garden of Eden “story or “Adam and Eve”, is the story of how sin entered the perfect world that God had created.According to the Genesis 3, the book and the chapter in which the story is located, God gave Adam and Eve, the only two humans ever to be created at the time, a perfect place to dwell, a paradise called the Garden of Eden . This garden contained everything they needed and it was good. They had only one condition, they could not eat from the tree that was in the center of the garden, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, because God said that if they ate it the would “ surely die”. Well one day a snake came along, or should I say Satan disguised as a snake, to tal...
Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost is a complex character meant to be the evil figure in the epic poem. Whenever possible Satan attempts to undermine God and the Son of God who is the true hero of the story. Throughout the story Milton tells the readers that Satan is an evil character, he is meant not to have any redeeming qualities, and to be shown completely as an unsympathetic figure. Satan’s greatest sins are pride and vanity in thinking he can overthrow God, and in the early part of the poem he is portrayed as selfish while in Heaven where all of God’s angels are loved and happy. Satan’s journey starts out as a fallen angel with great stature, has the ability to reason and argue, but by Book X the anguish and pain he goes through is more reason for him to follow an evil path instead. Even so, Milton uses literal and figurative imagery in the description of Satan’s character to manipulate the reader’s response to the possibility that Satan may actually be a heroic figure. As the plot of the story unfolds there are moments where the reader can identify with Satan’s desires and relate to his disappointments.
...nces for straying from God and it is because of this that his mind further and further spirals downward. On the other hand, Adam and Eve manage to realize the scope of God’s power and thus rewarded by God’s grace.
In order for John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost to fulfill its promise to “justify the ways of God to man,” Milton must prove that man is responsible for his fall from Eden. Throughout the epic, God argues against his culpability in the fall of humanity and insists that Adam and Eve both possess absolute free will. Essentially, the evidence for this idea that his creations held free will concentrates on a connection between reason and the freedom to make informed, correct decisions. This Arminian notion that Man must be responsible for his decision to either accept or refuse to follow God’s instruction because Adam possesses reason and, by extension from this, free will, fails to recognize other factors at play which detract from his ability to exercise his supposedly free will. As an omnipotent being, God would be fully aware of the limitations, desires, and flaws of humanity. Therefore, God’s structuring his creations with potent failings such as
As the story shows, Adam and Eve while in the Garden had everything they would ever need. When Eve let the serpent talk her out of listening to God, we see the punishment sequence take place. They both were banished from the Garden, in which Adam had to work on cursed land, where it would be hard to grow food and take care of the family. Eve was punished my having the pains of child birth and the role of the mother. The punishments that God gives both Adam and Eve are equal and because they did not obey God’s command they would have to suffer outside of the Garden and therefore have a harder life. This part of the story explains why it is important to do the right thing, so in the end things do not get harder for
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.
In episode IX of Paradise Lost by John Milton, Milton begins Adam and Eve’s act of disobedience towards God. The story begins with Satan’s return to the Garden of Eden the night after Raphael’s departure. Satan considers what disguise he should take on, and chooses to become a snake. Satan thinks that Earth is more beautiful than Heaven ever was, and becomes jealous of Adam and Eve. The next morning, Adam and Eve are preparing for their usual work load. Eve suggests that they work separately, Adam does not necessarily like the idea. He fears that if they are alone they can be more easily tested by Satan. Eve, however, wants to have her strength tested. Adam finally agrees. Satan, finds Eve alone and begins flattering her. Eve is amazed that
Helen Gardner addresses this notion, claiming how “Satan is, of course, a character in an epic, and he is in no sense the hero of the epic as a whole. But he is a figure of heroic magnitude and heroic energy, and he is developed by Milton with dramatic emphasis and dramatic intensity” (Baker/Helen, 208). Satan is without a doubt the antichrist, or “villain” in the biblical scriptures, however one must take into consideration his alternative and more ambiguous portrayal in Paradise Lost. In this paper, I will analyze Satan’s actions, physical portrayal and speeches in Book I of Paradise Lost, and argue that from the textual evidence, these aspects of Satan are ultimately ambivalent, thus Satan cannot be categorized as either the extreme hero or the extreme villain, but rather as a dramatic figure with both heroic and villainous characteristics. The preliminary depiction of Satan’s actions in Paradise Lost appears after Milton describes God, his kingdom of heaven, and his children Adam and Eve.... ...
John Milton lived from 1608 to 1674 and was therefore a major part of the Neoclassical Period. Paradise Lost by John Milton was and still is an extremely controversial piece of literature. I have found that the more controversial and disputed a subject is, the more interesting it is to read about. Christianity is a notoriously touchy subject, so naturally I was pulled towards Paradise Lost. When I began my research on this “lost” treasure, I discovered that the recently blinded Milton focused on the tragedy of Adam and Eve. Milton intended to show men the righteous path that God took by rewriting and explaining the original sin (Luxon, “Milton Reading Room”). John Milton contemplated publishing Paradise Lost for a long time due to the controversial nature of the epic. Milton knew that releasing his work into the public would most likely cause an uproar or two, but in the end decided to do it anyway. Little did Milton know that Paradise Lost would be known as "the greatest epic poem in the English language” (Paradise Lost: A Brief Overview).
“Dream not of other worlds,” the angel Raphael warns Adam in Miltons’s Paradise Lost (VIII.175). Eve, however, dreams of another world in which she will gain knowledge and power, a wish that is superficially fulfilled when she succumbs to Satan’s temptation and eats from the Tree of Knowledge. Awakening in the Garden of Eden as though from a dream, Eve searches for her identity and her place in Paradise. Satan provides Eve with a chance to gain knowledge and to become god-like. As Eve is not an equal companion for Adam, she seeks independence from her husband. Shifting her loyalty away from God and Adam and towards Satan and the Tree of Knowledge, Eve strives to find her identity in the Garden of Eden, gain knowledge and godliness, and obtain independence from her unequal partnership with Adam.
...nowing (Satan is just hunk of mass with no free will) and that Satan is our epic hero (Satan is head the rebel angels). Satan also loses because of the fact that due to his trickery he would be a snake forever, and that The Son was going to come down to earth and die to save Adam & Eve, so that Satan’s action would be eliminated. Break down Paradise Lost to it bare essentials, removing all religious overtones, and all that remains is an epic poem. The hero of this poem is a man named Satan who is banished for challenging the leadership of the clan. This man Satan makes a vow to destroy or corrupt anything created by the clan. This Satan was resourceful, making the best of what he had, very little, and accomplishing his goal. Satan may just be the nonconformist who could not abide by what was considered normal. In any case, one must show their admiration for Satan in his unwillingness to serve in Heaven, and then in the way he accepted his resulting role in Hell.
Paradise Lost is one of the finest examples of the epic tradition in all of literature. In composing this extraordinary work, John Milton was, for the most part, following in the manner of epic poets of past centuries: Barbara Lewalski notes that Paradise Lost is an "epic whose closest structural affinities are to Virgil's Aeneid . . . "; she continues, however, to state that we now recognize as well the influence of epic traditions and the presence of epic features other than Virgilian. Among the poem's Homeric elements are its Iliadic subject, the death and woe resulting from an act of disobedience; the portrayal of Satan as an Archillean hero motivated by a sense of injured merit and also as an Odyssean hero of wiles and craft; the description of Satan's perilous Odyssey to find a new homeland; and the battle scenes in heaven. . . . The poem also incorporates a Hesiodic gigantomachy; numerous Ovidian metamorphoses; an Ariostan Paradise of Fools; [and] Spenserian allegorical figures (Sin and Death) . . . . (3)
A central theme of Paradise Lost is that of the deep and true love between Adam and Eve. This follows both traditonal Christianity and conventional epic style. Adam and Eve are created and placed on earth as "our first two parents, yet the only two of mankind, in the happy garden placed, reaping immortal fruits of joy and love, uninterrupted joy, unrivaled love, in blissful solitude."(...