Mustafa Ali ENGL-2210 (Bates) Essay 2 December 6, 2004 Thematic Issues - PDF document

Mustafa Ali ENGL-2210 (Bates) Essay 2 December 6, 2004 Thematic Issues Revealed in a Key Passage from Milton’s “Paradise Lost” John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” holds its place in English literature as a great epic that narrates, in over ten thousand lines of blank verse, the cosmic fall of Adam and Eve. Although the epic spans several other religious traditions as well, including Satan’s rebellion against God that provides motive for his grudge against Man, it is clear from the title itself that the story of Adam and Eve’s fall forms the core of “Paradise Lost.” Given this storyline, there are several themes and issues that appear consistently throughout the epic. The idea of knowledge, sin, and the loss of innocence, for instance, is central to the storyline. The clash between order and chaos also permeates throughout the text. One example of Milton’s order is the Great Chain of Beings, or the stratified niche of all living beings in the cosmos. This hierarchical order of all life works at an even deeper level in the interaction between Adam and Eve, which provides us with a glimpse of Milton’s perspective on gender relations. An excerpt from “Paradise Lost,” where Adam is explaining to Eve the gravity of committing the “original sin,” is a key passage that exemplifies Milton’s use of all these thematic issues. This excerpt comes from Book IX of “Paradise Lost.” The serpentine Satan deceives Eve into eating from the forbidden tree by insisting she will attain godlike knowledge. Eve loses her immortality, and after short deliberation, brings the fruits to Adam as well. Adam scorns Eve for her misjudgment but eats the forbidden fruit because his love for Eve is so great that he’d rather die with her than to let go. Having committed the original sin, Adam and Eve discover intense carnal desire. After the two recover from their exhaustive escapade, Adam admonishes Eve so she may realize the severity of their sin. He says: Mustafa Ali Page 2 06/08/2005 (1067) O Eve, in evil hour thou didst give ear (1068) To that false worm, of whomsoever taught (1069) To counterfeit man’s voice, true in our fall, (1070) False in our promised rising; since our eyes (1071) Opened we find indeed, and find we know (1072) Both good and evil, good lost, and evil got, (1073) Bad fruit of knowledge, if this be to know, (1074) Which leaves us naked thus, of honour void, (1075) Of innocence, of faith, of purity, (1076) Our wonted ornaments now soiled and stained, (1077) And in our faces evident the signs (1078) Of foul concupiscence; whence evil store; (IX.1067-1078) This excerpt is Adam’s reflection on his and Eve’s deed and what it means for their future. It is an important moment in the epic because Adam and Eve have attained knowledge that was previous hidden from them, and with this knowledge they have lost innocence and immortality. The above passage is key to understanding the themes at work within “Paradise Lost” because it is the pivotal moment when virtually all aspects of Adam and Eve’s life are about to change. The passage clearly addresses the many themes of the epic and how they relate to Adam and Eve. One of major themes that Milton addresses in this key passage is the philosophical issue of knowledge. The word “knowledge,” in its essence, means, “to know.” Through this key passage, however, Milton questions this simplistic definition of knowledge, and insists upon an understanding of knowledge through all its philosophical implications. When Adam talks about Mustafa Ali Page 3 06/08/2005 knowledge during his address to Eve, he adds parenthetically, “if this be to know,” inviting the possibility that knowledge is perhaps more than just knowing (IX.1073). Adam continues to elaborate: “Bad fruit of knowledge […] leaves us naked thus, of honour void,/Of innocence, of faith, of purity,/Our wonted ornaments now soiled and stained” (IX.1073-1076). Hence, Milton encourages his audience to consider the consequences of knowledge, for in the case of Adam and Eve, the “bad fruit of knowledge” – or taking the figurative meaning of fruit – the “bad consequence of knowledge” is the loss of their prized goodness: innocence, faith and purity. As Adam puts it, “since our eyes / Opened we find […] we know / Both good and evil” but he continues on to say, “good lost, and evil got” (IX.1071-1072). Pointing out that the consequences of increased knowledge can be both goodness and evil, Milton argues that closeness to God is not determined by the wealth of indiscriminate knowledge but by the virtue of goodness. It is this very goodness that Adam and Eve were bestowed upon Creation, goodness that they lost as a consequence of eating from the tree of knowledge forbidden to them by God (IX.1076). The chosen passage is also key to “Paradise Lost” for its treatment of innocence and loss thereof as a contrast between connubial bliss and unrestrained lust. After Adam tells Eve about all the goodness they have lost as a result of their original sin, he elucidates the evil they have gained: “And in our faces evident the signs / Of foul concupiscence, whence evil store” (IX.1077-1078). In these lines Milton simply calls lust a store of evil, and a contrast between Adam and Eve’s relationship before and after the original sin underscores this view. Before committing the sin, Adam and Eve share a blissful and innocent sexual relationship. Milton even refers to Eve as “the virgin majesty” because he considers such connubial love is what “God declares Pure” (IV.745-746, IX.270). Immediately after both Adam and Eve eat the fruit of knowledge, however, they eye each other in lust and cannot think but to fulfill their newfound Mustafa Ali Page 4 06/08/2005 carnal desire until they collapse with exhaustion. In Milton’s view, such “adulterous lust was driven from men among the bestial herds to range” (IV.753-754), and only came back into the dominion of mankind after the original sin. From this perspective, when Milton refers to the “bad fruit of knowledge” in the key passage, it is an allusion to carnal knowledge as having “soiled and stained” the innocent sexuality that God ordained Pure (IX.1077). In its larger context, we can view connubial bliss versus unrestrained lust as a clash between order and chaos, a dominant theme that recurs in various other forms throughout the text. A second major recurrence of the order versus chaos theme is the idea of the Great Chain of Beings. The Great Chain of Beings is a hierarchical view of all living entities in the cosmos, God being at the top of this Chain. In Milton’s view, it is this Great Chain of Beings that keeps stability in the world, and any action that tries to disrupt this balance has grave consequences. Lucifer, for example, tries to beset himself above Adam, upon which God banish him to hell where he rules over his allegiance as Satan. Man, likewise, holds dominion “over all other creatures that possess Earth, air, and sea” (IV.431). In fact, it is this very fact that puzzles Eve when one day she sees a serpent, a lowly creature within her dominion, speak to her in human language. Intrigued by the serpent that extols her, Eve asks the creature how it received the gift of language. The serpent, which in fact is Satan in disguise, replies that it rose to the ranks of man by eating from the tree of knowledge; the serpentine Satan then seduces Eve into eating from the tree, saying that she – already being a human – would rise to even higher ranks of the gods. Eve’s attempt to break from the Great Chain of Beings causes a cosmic earthquake: “Earth felt the wound, and nature from her seat / Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe, / That all was lost” (IX.780). Referring back to this incident, Adam admonishes Eve in the key passage, “O Eve, in evil hour thou didst give ear / To that false worm, of whomsoever taught / Mustafa Ali Page 5 06/08/2005 To counterfeit man’s voice” (IX.1067-1068). Adam’s disapproval and the personified nature’s great sigh indicate that Milton considers the Great Chain of Beings essential to maintain stability. Adam’s admonishment of Eve in this key passage, as well as their general relationship throughout the text, suggests that Milton’s view of a Great Chain of Beings also works at a more local level: as gender issues between Adam and Eve. Adam’s mild rebuke of Eve for a sin that he himself has committed shows a patriarchal scenario where the man, capable of more sound reasoning, is gently yet firmly explaining to the woman the gravity of the situation. This attitude is reflected throughout the text, and the only major point where Eve stands up for herself is when she insists she is capable of day laboring without Adam’s constant vigilance. Even here, Adam replies, “leave not the faithful side / That gave thee being, still shades thee and protects. / The wife, where danger or dishonour lurks, / Safest and seemliest by her husband stays, / Who guards her, or with her the worst endures” (IX.265-270). Eve manages to convince Adam to let them split and, of course, this is the very day when Eve finds herself seduced by Satan into eating from the tree of knowledge. Milton’s view of a patriarchal world may simply be a reflection of the society in which he wrote “Paradise Lost,” but his own feelings definitely make way into the epic. Eve is fooled into eating the forbidden fruit, whereupon her emotions cycle from pride of more knowledge than Adam, to jealousy of a second Eve once she herself dies for this sin, to selfish love that Adam should join her in her death (IX.817). Adam, on the other hand, eats the forbidden fruit for Eve’s sake, critically analyzes the consequences of their action, and explains its gravity to Eve (IX.1067-1078). By repeatedly reinforcing these scenarios for much of the ten thousand lines of poetry, Milton essentially stereotypes that the Adams are strong-willed and well-reasoned, while the Eves are weaker and “blithe” (IX.886). Mustafa Ali Page 6 06/08/2005 Gender issues are just one of the thematic elements in Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” Milton’s view of the Great Chain of Beings; the conflict between Chaos and Order; and the role of knowledge in innocence, sin, and lust; are all dominant themes of the epic. The key passage selected for this essay, where Adam admonishes Eve for committing the original sin, exemplifies Milton’s use of all these themes consistently throughout the text. It is the successful employment of these themes in a long cosmic narrative, using a well-executed blank verse, which earns this work its place as a great epic of English literature. ork Cited Milton, John. “Paradise Lost.” The Bedford Anthology of World Literature, Book 3. Eds. Paul Davis et al. Boston: Bedford, 2004. 575-660.