 Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
| Table of Contents LINES 795-999. ADAM'S FALL The first thing Eve does after she has fallen to temptation is to worship the tree and the "sapience" (wisdom) it has given her. Instead of worshipping God in the morning, now she will care for the tree, praise it, and pick its fruit. Next she thanks experience for leading her to wisdom. In doing these things she is intensifying her sin because she is making the tree into her god instead of the true God. She now calls him the "great forbidder, safe with all his spies / About him." Eve decides to share her gift with Adam, but her motive is impure, like all her thinking now. If she must die, having eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, and if Adam doesn't die but remains immortal, he will get another Eve. Much better to have Adam die too.
Adam has made her a garland of flowers for her hair, but he's worried. He goes to meet her and finds her coming from the Tree of Knowledge with a branch in her hand. We can only imagine his face as he sees that sight. Eve spills out the whole story to him and urges him to eat so that they will be equal. If he doesn't, a difference in degree will divide them, for she does not want to renounce her newfound deity. Adam drops the garland, transfixed with horror. He realizes who the serpent really is. In an internal soliloquy, he decides to join her because of his love. When he speaks aloud to Eve, he is surprisingly mild, for he recognizes that the deed cannot be undone. Perhaps God will not destroy us, he reasons, for to do so would give God a poor reputation in the eyes of Satan. In any case, Adam cannot be divided from Eve, for they are one flesh. Eve's answer includes the first time her action is named "guilt" and "crime." She too believes that Death will not come, for she feels full of life, "new hopes, new joys." So he takes the fruit from her hand and eats. Again the earth trembles. Milton says that Adam ate the fruit Against his better knowledge, not deceived But fondly overcome with female charm. His crime is different from Eve's: he did not succumb directly to the tempter but instead put Eve's love ahead of his duty to God. Both Adam and Eve have now pushed God away from his rightful place in their thoughts. In Eve's case, she worships a tree; in Adam's, he worships Eve.
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