Adam and Eve: Breaking the Social Construct With John Milton's Paradise Lost

    The seventeenth century poet, John Milton, takes the attitude common to the time period while portraying Eve in Paradise Lost.  This epic, telling of Adam and Eve's fall from Paradise and the story of creation, constantly describes Eve as a weak individual, while Adam is often compared with God.  The idea of women's inferiority has been fixed through time, making Milton's characterization of Eve not surprising, but rather expected and accepted.  However, Milton shows a suggestion of women's inner strength while describing the control Eve has over Adam.  Nevertheless, except for this instance, Eve is depicted as subordinate to Adam.  This is evident through Adam and Raphael's treatment

He blessed man and woman, although biologically different, with characteristics that were passed down onto future generations: "Not equal, as thir sex not equal seem'd;/ For contemplation hee and valor form'd,/ For softness shee and sweet attractive Grace" (Book IV, lines 295-297). Men were blessed with philosophical reasoning whereas women were blessed with intuitive reasoning. According to Roberta Martin's article, Milton and the" Intelligible Flame": "Sweet Converse" in the poetry and prose, Adam and Eve's conversation "is a creative act producing higher states of mind and spirit on the abstract level, and progeny on the physical, and while conversation leads to degrees of intellectual, spiritual, and bodily union, it allows each of the First Parents to retain individual identity." Unlike married couples of today that war with the social roles and complications in a domestic lifestyle, Adam and Eve were created to work in peace and harmony with each other and their charges- the animals and plants. They compliment each other, holding no authority over each other's actions, treating each other with the utmost respect, returning each other's loving declarations with an equal show of affection by both parties, and the match between beauty and intuition, strength and intellect is simply sublime. Moreover, they share the responsibility of tending the garden without

Eve felt strange. A dull, buzzing feeling in the pit of his stomach had started up, somewhere between the end of his last battle and waiting for someone to call his name for the next round. It ate away at the adrenaline that had consumed him in the heat of the moment and demanded that he acknowledge its existence, despite not having any idea what it was. He knew emotions. Wasn't an expert in the matters, or even very good at identifying them in others, but some part of Eve had always considered his knowledge of himself as a sort of given. After all, who was he to attempt to understand other people when he couldn't even understand everything about himself?

Of Things Invisible to Mortal SightThe Holy Bible is in many ways a story of origins. The history recounted both in the Old and New Testaments has at its base the perception of a fallen humanity; beginning with the fall from Eden and the nature of evil, to the means of regaining Gods grace and the discussion of free will, it emphasizes humanitys inability to fully comprehend the nature of God and of the universe. In writing his epic Paradise Lost, John Milton is fully aware of his limitations as a mortal man; however, in an attempt to transcend the finite to the infinite, to describe the indescribable and to understand the unknown, Milton bases his arguments on Biblical theology to show that mankind has fallen from immortality to mortality

John Milton sought to a very ambitious thing with his greatest work, Paradise Lost. He boldly asserted himself to the epic tradition, the most difficult genre. Further, the goal of his writing was perhaps the hardest topic a human being can engage with, the problem of evil. At the risk of being cliche, the old adage, “If you lose your faith over anything less than the problem of evil, you are simply not thinking.” seems fitting. Milton seems at least, whatever his faults, to understand the weight of the objection. He clearly describes this in the opening lines of his epic:

Select a novel, play, or epic in which a character experiences such a rift and becomes cut off from “home,” whether that home is the character’s birthplace, family, homeland, or other special place. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the character’s experience with exile is both alienating and enriching, and how this experience illuminates the meaning of the work as a whole. You may choose a work from the list below or one of comparable literary merit. Do not merely summarize the plot. (2010 AP Literature and Composition)

Analysis of Hope’s, “Paradise Saved (Another Version of the Fall)” In the poem “Paradise Saved (Another Version of the Fall)” by A.D Hope, Hope shows how an individual can attain community as well as what causes a depravity of community. A life of companionship is to be desired over a life in seeming paradise because without camaraderie the aspects of paradise are futile. In “Paradise Saved (Another Version of the Fall)”, A. D. Hope addresses this idea of community by reworking a familiar biblical story to clearly show, through the specific use of pronouns and by contrasting Adam’s pride with Eve’s humility, that pride leads to a life of solitude, but humility leads to community.

The portrayal of women in Milton’s Paradise Lost is very different from the other works. While women are often seen as being deceitful, devious, and smart, the depiction of Eve is different as she is seen as being dumber and more inferior to Adam in all areas besides beauty. This portrayal of Eve assisted in the progression of Paradise Lost as Eve ate the forbidden apple after being persuaded by Satan to eat the apple. While the incident caused Adam to also disobey God, it created a bond between Adam and Eve that was greater than before the incident when they were considered pure. The bond between Adam and Eve that is improved through the learning of new emotions, trying new things, and the

After we consider God as the king and the Satan as the revolutionary, we now focus on analyzing Adam and Eve. It is clear that Adam and Eve are normal people in Paradise Lost. Thus, Adam and Eve shares the same characteristic of being stupid as typical normal people. In other words, they do not have their own independent thought. That is, before eating the apple, Adam and Eve eat, work, sleep, have sex, and obey and eulogize the God without thinking about the fundamental ideas behind everything they did. As Milton writes in Book V and Book IV, the way that Adam and Eve are controlled by the God is exactly the same as the way that normal people are ruled by emperors. As long as Adam and Eve have food to eat and place to stay, they just simply

This paragraph is dedicated to comparing the character of Eve from “Paradise Lost” and the Lad from “Comus”, to better demonstrate that Milton’s perspective regarding women is anti-feminist. In both stories of “Paradise Lost” and “Comus”, Milton features a female whose virtue is tested. Eve in “Paradise Lost” is granted agency, but her freedom of choice leads to the fall of her virtue and all of mankind. The Lady within “Comus” succeeds where Eve failed, but is not granted the same amount of agency as Eve. The Lady power of virtue, which ultimately saves her is tainted by the female ideals of men. All women who do not meet the male created ideal for a proper woman’s virtue can be subjected to victim blaming. It ultimately does not matter if

    Critics have long argued over the power structure operating in the gender relations of Milton's Paradise Lost. However, to really understand Adam and Eve and the intricacies of their relationship, it is necessary to view them in terms of a union, not as separate people vying for power. Because they are a union of contraries, the power dilemma is a moot point even though a hierarchy exists; it is a hierarchy of knowledge, not of power, and it in no way implies that Adam needs Eve any less than she needs him. Actually, they both need each other equally as much because they each have strengths and weaknesses that are complemented by the other&emdash; this

freedom of choice, the wrong choice is the one that is made - such as

Even though the situation seems hopeless, Eve is persistent and she believes that Adam would eventually get lonely and seek her out. She thinks this way because that is what she feels when she is lonely. Adam eventually allows Eve be a constant companion and accepts Eve’s insistence in giving everything a name because he acknowledges that she is trying to be useful to him. Adam starts to use the word “we” instead of “I” because Eve has been using it meaning that although he doesn’t particularly like her, he is still being influenced by her. Despite her discovery of fire, Adam is still unappreciative of her findings because he still sees no practical use for any of it even though Eve notices that the fire cooked the apples and made them taste better. Adam believes he has authority over Eve and it is evident when Eve tries to stop his dangerous adventures with the waterfall. Instead of listening to reason Adam ignores the scolding and continues his dangerous practice and Eve becomes resentful. In Adam’s extract he finds that although Eve’s enthusiasm for the beauty in the world useless it still opens his own eyes to it “She is all girlish enthusiasm over the color of the sunset and similar phenomena, which he finds quite useless. But he is reduced to the prose-poem type of description she gives to the dawn and sunset in regard to her beauty.”(Derda) He realizes how beautiful Eve is in the sunset because her actions make him aware of trivial things such as

John Milton’s Paradise Lost is most known for being one of the last epics ever to be written in literature. Milton’s epic was also extremely known for having one of the most detailed descriptions of Hell since Dante’s Inferno, written in the 14th century. Milton’s 17th century work was centered on the fallen angels of heaven, especially Satan, who were sent to Hell by God. Originally chained to the lake of fire in Hell, the devils are released by God. Milton’s epic then describes the fallen angels’ next course of action. They collaborate at the Pandemonium, the ‘capital’ building of Hell, and discussed each different alternative moving forward. Various different devils gave their opinions but finally, Satan got his plan across in which he planned to seek revenge against God. Satan, alone, was to corrupt God’s creation, Earth and humanity. During Satan’s revenge on Earth he comes to the realization that Hell is no longer just a place but rather a state of mind which can never escape him. Milton’s description of Hell progresses throughout the epic, first becoming a concrete place that appears to be a polar opposite of Heaven, then having the devils each have their different opinions to how they see Hell, then finally revealing that Satan discovers Hell to be a state of mind. Milton wants the reader to understand that Hell is many different things rather than a place. Milton does this by making Hell’s description a paradox, having the devils disagree with

Everyone in the world falls victim to unfortunate events. One of the world’s greatest unanswered questions is: why do bad things happen? Or is it really an unanswered question? The great poet Milton decided to answer this question in his poem Paradise Lost. Milton wanted to create an epic to rival Homer and Virgil’s epics and he decided that there was no better way to do this than to answer mankind’s greatest question. Milton states that the reason why bad things happen in the world is because of man’s first disobedience to God and the consequences that came as retribution. He states that the main objective of his poem was to justify the ways of God to men. So does Milton’s theodicy really work? Milton’s theodicy does, in fact, work in the poem Paradise Lost, and it does so for many reasons.