Adam in Milton's Paradise Lost Essay

Using his freedom of choice, Adam chooses to be loyal to his brother and chooses good over evil. Years later, after Adam has served in the army and been discharged twice, he wandered around, not wanting to go home yet. He was picked up by sheriff's men who judged him vagrant and he was put on a road gang to serve six months. After his six months were over, two days later he was picked up again and given another six month sentence. However, this time Adam would run away and escape: "It took him five days to cross the short distance into Georgia. He took no chances, held back his impatience with an iron control." (Steinbeck) This passage shows that Adam is still a representation of good at this point because later on Adam explains how he felt like he owed the first six months. He the need to stay and complete those six months of hard labour because he was feeling guilty about not going home where Charles was eagerly awaiting his arrival. The last and best example of Adam utilizing his free will is when he is dying. At the end of East of Eden when Adam is on his deathbed Lee implores him to open his eyes and look at the only son he had left and forgive him. Lee begs Adam to forgive Cal and give him his blessing before he dies so that his son may live. Adam uses his last breath to bless Cal with the realization that he had the gift of free will too: "His whispered word seemed to hang in the air:

    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

The novel East of Eden by John Steinbeck is an allegory to the biblical story of Cain and Abel, and many of its characters become embodiments of both good and evil. As they struggle to overcome what has been decided for them they are taught they hold the power to overcome and rise above their destiny’s. When the Hebrew idea of “timshel” is introduced to the allegory of Cain and Abel, it become apparent that whether life is predestined or not; mankind holds the ultimate ability of deciding what will become of himself. Adam’s choice to move on from Cathy, Cal’s decision to

The book of Genesis records the creation of the world and everything in it, as well the early relationship between God and humanity. God creates man, Adam, “from the dust of the ground” (Genesis 2:7) and places him in a paradise on Earth called the garden of Eden, where he also places the tree of knowledge of good and evil. From the man, God creates a woman and tells them that they “may freely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil [they] shall not eat, for in the day that [they] eat of it [they] shall die (Genesis 2:16). Despite this warning, the woman, Eve, is eventually tempted to eat the fruit of the treat and convinces Adam to do the same, causing them to be cast out of the garden. Although Adam and Eve do have free will to do what they

Eve was so fond of Adam; her attachment to Adam blinded her from subservience. Adam knew he was in charge, and he liked that Eve was his companion. This provided him

The gap created because of original sin between God and man is rightly depicted in the pose and expression of Adam. The elements of light and shadow have many sharp projections. There are deep cavities with dark shadows that greatly effect the realism of the surface of the figure. Being unable to stay longer in paradise, Adam portrays intense guilt and seems to look like he is just about to

He believes that you almost have to force yourself to take risks and make changes in your life in order to better yourself. Even if you try and take risks and fail you are still learning and you will be better for it. The more often you try something new the more you will end up achieving and experiencing. If you don’t, you are only limiting yourself. There is a choice each person has to make; whether to take the risk or not. Adam decides that he is willing to continue taking risks, so that he can reach his

However, it is Paradise Lost that has a most interesting effect on the monster 's understanding of self. The monster at first identifies with Adam, "I was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence." The monster, armed only with his limited education, thought that he would introduce himself to the cottagers and depend on their virtue and benevolence; traits he believed from his readings that all humans possessed. However, soon after his first encounter with the cottagers, he is beaten and chased off because his ugliness frightens people. The monster is overwrought by a feeling of perplexity by this

Cole begins by talking about the different interpretations of the Creation of the universe and earth. He talks about how some people view this story as a physical interpretation of what actually happened on those six days. When on the other hand, some people believe that it is a metaphorical interpretation of things that happen in life. Ultimately, we are all created in God's image. We are all fallen sinners who can not become anything without the salvation and eternal life that God provided for us through the death, burial and resurrection of his son, Jesus Christ. He then goes on to say that when Adam and Eve are put in the garden, their first word was not of prohibition, but permission. (Cole 9) They are given very simple instruction

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)

Man above woman, or woman above man? For the entirety of human civilization, this question of gender hierarchy has been divisive issue. Regardless, Milton does not hesitate to join the heat of the battle, and project his thoughts to the world. Since the publication of Paradise Lost, many of Milton’s readers have detected in his illustration of the prelapsarian couple, particularly of Adam, a powerful patriarchal sentiment: “he for God only, and she for God in him” (Milton, IV.299). In essence, this idea declares that Adam and Eve possess unequal roles – Adam is better than Eve, as men are better than women, in accordance to the deeply conventional reading of the relations between the sexes. Eve’s purpose for Adam makes her less

Since, as an occasionalist philosopher, Adam undoubtedly knew that he could know nothing unless God enlightened him, and sense nothing unless God modified his mind, the fact that what he knew was never what he sensed, and vice versa, must have, in his eyes, reflected a certain contradiction in God's conduct: First, since what Adam knew was that God was acting upon him, and since what he sensed was that bodies were acting upon him, it must have been God Himself who wanted Adam's sensible experience to be contrary to his knowledge of God's causal efficacy, that is, to that which God Himself was making Adam

In his epic poem titled Paradise Lost, John Milton describes his work as a process to justify “the ways of God to men”. In terms of the personal and individual, Milton’s main concern was between a man’s relationship and God. With this, comes the very idea of free will itself. One can define free will as the ability and freedom to choose between different possible courses of action. Not only is free will portrayed in Adam and Eve, but is also associated with God, Christ, Satan and the fallen angels. Milton enables these characters to make their own choices and have their own consequences based on their own decisions and free will. Throughout the poem, John Milton supports this concept of acting freely under God, he shows the reader that choosing ones own actions freely and independently is way more substantial and becomes more meaningful to ones self. Each characters free will in this poem helps explain why having this freedom of choice is so important and crucial in expressing and becoming ones self.

Eve’s “lowliness majestic” is perhaps what enchants Adam the most. He is captivated and totally mystified by Eve’s very nature. Adam seems to understand the nature of humanity based on the qualities that he sees in himself, which at first seems safe, as he is the first man. However, he is perplexed by Eve’s completeness—perhaps because the qualities that Eve lacks are the ones that Adam values most in himself! Beholding his wife, he remarks that by design and intention she is his “inferior” (541): her “inward faculties” (542) are not as useful as his own, and she does not as closely resemble the Maker as he does (543-44). She is not designed, as Adam is, with the desire or capacity to rule over the other creatures (544-46). These things are not true of Eve, so Adam finds it difficult to understand why she seems “in herself complete” (548). He marvels that even as she lacks the qualities that resemble the Maker, she seems “so absolute,” not lacking anything (547). Eve is complete, she is a “guard angelic placed” to Adam—one sent as a helper and a protector (559). He is captivated by how “what she wills to do or say,/Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best,” even though the man was intended to be the wisdom-giver (549-550). Adam’s attitude can be

Through his work of Paradise Lost, Milton exposes his view that God allows suffering in order for a greater good of the human race to exist. Milton uses the Fall- both Satan’s and Adam and Eve’s- as a device to demonstrate human corruption, as each fall is “a step down from a higher being to a lower being”. Both the Fall of Satan and the Fall of Adam & Eve are falls away from a position of divine power to a position of chaos and disorder- something Milton illustrates as an undesirable event. Milton introduces Satan as a selfish, power-hungry character; similar to an individual of today’s society who believes they are the greatest- nobody can ‘one-up’ them. He inherently denies of the existence of a greater God, as that would discredit his own belief that he is the utmost being. Instead of blind denial, Satan instead builds up a power against God himself, in an effort to “contest the throne of Heaven” (slide). However, this in of itself is a hypocrisy on his own beliefs, as he cannot be autonomous in a search for autonomy, since he is unable to defeat God on his own. This is Satan’s first fall, because he has now relinquished his stance on denying a being greater than himself, and must maintain his uprising unless he wants to face what Milton would consider a second Fall. Milton uses Satan as a representation of disobedience within the human race; he is the ‘wrong direction’ in the two paths of moral decisions. He uses Satan to show that rebellion that stems from self-