Genesis, Paradise Lost, And The Popol Vuh

When Eve took that bite of the Forbidden Fruit, she had no idea what she had gotten women-kind into. Whether or not you believe in the story of creation, the perception of women as corrupting and sinful had shaped women's social roles in Western Society for thousands of years. Augustine was one of the first to write about the wickedness of women, and the acceptance of this doctrine is evident in the Letters of Abelard and Heloise through their disdain toward marriage. Along with mass death of the Black Plague, came an opportunity for women to change the ways in which society viewed them. The great number of deaths in Europe often resulted in the situation where no male heirs remained which led to the legal ability of women to inherit

Popul Vuh shares a great many similarities with the creation story in Genesis from the Bible. Just as the Plumed Serpent created the earth by saying the word “Earth”, God of the Bible created the heavens and the earth in the world (Tedlock 524). When the humans became too powerful in Popul Vuh and threatened the gods in vision and in knowledge, the gods stupefied them, then took back the human’s advanced vision and replaced it with a fuzzier view. This parallels with the story in Genesis, by how God throws Adam and Eve out of the Garden lest they “become like one of us in knowing good and evil” (Genesis 4:22: ESV) The motivation of these tales is to rationalize the creation of the heaven and earth, and to have a god to serve or a reason to

Milton’s Paradise Lost has been praised as being the greatest English epic of all time, most stunningly in its author's depiction of the parents of humanity, Adam and Eve. How Milton chose to portray the original mother and father has been a focus of much criticism with contemporary readers. One of the main subjects of these comments is in reference to Eve, who, according to many, is a trivial character that is most definitely inferior to her mate. Nonetheless, many do not recognize that, after the fateful Fall, she becomes a much more evolved character. When Eve is introduced to the storyline of the epic, her character is shallow and extremely undeveloped, meant simply for display. She is quite firmly set as being inferior to her mate

Over the course of the “Earth on Turtle’s Back,” When Grizzlies Walked Upright,” and the Creation Story of Adam and Eve, females are depicted to be dependent characters; furthermore, due to their actions they have been characterized as ignorant beings that influence people to believe that their existence is based upon them being creators of life that happen from their faults and even though they did things that are beneficial to others and the world itself, they are often unappreciated or ignored by others. Throughout these stories, female characters are seemingly described to have mostly negative traits; while on the contrary male does not. For instance, female characters are portrayed to be dependent creatures like in the Onondaga

“...in the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie,...” (Titus 1:2). The Bible gives the exact account of the history of the world.  John Milton’s Paradise Lost is a play off of the account given in The Bible of the war in Heaven, the creation of the world, and the fall of mankind.  He used the Bible as his inspiration and altered the events told in Genesis.  Though The Bible and Paradise Lost tell different accounts of the same story, they have many things in common, such as: Satan’s fall from Heaven, Adam and Eve’s fall from Paradise, and Adam and Eve’s dismissal from the garden.

It is important to believe in something. There are many fascinating, mysterious aspects of life which cannot be revealed scientifically. Creation stories help us explain the unexplainable. There’s a big variety of them , different societies and different beliefs. Every culture provides its own narration of the creation of the world, each unique but containing themes that are universal to many civilizations. Genesis is the Hebrew people’s idea of how it all began, how humans came to be. Popol Vuh sums up the Mayan people’s theory of the Earth’s birth. Even though all that the gods in both of the stories want is obedience, their attitude toward the people contrasts one another, which leads to the idea that the Hebrew society values honesty

Women often undergo oppression and subjugation by the male dominated society. Women were merely slaves to the men as they would clean, sweep, work, while they have to maintain their obedience and sanity. Women were targets of oppression outside their work where men abused their wives as they were an entity for their sexual desires when they felt the need to. This exact relationship of “owner - possession” can be seen through the relationships between Rasheed and Mariam, also with Janie and her husbands. Both novels, A Thousand Splendid Suns and Their Eyes were Watching God, show that women have a lower social status, power, and legal rights when women had become property to eyes of men.

“To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.” (Roosevelt). Since the beginning of time societies have existed, thriving among mankind. Societies dictate norms and regulations for the people living within them by establishing a status quo. Since the status quo exists, a large majority of people alter their actions and words they do and say to fit the societal norm, the status quo in order to seem “normal”. As common as a status quo is to societies, so is the reality of a rebel: someone who goes against the status quo, such as Antigone. Societies also have people who overly conform, in turn suffering negative consequences, such as Eve. If a comparison of both works (Antigone and Paradise Lost) are taken, it will remain obvious that Antigone materializes as a stronger, more self-independent character who is against the societal norms, whereas Eve lacks enough inner strength and willpower to avoid conforming to the origin of the negativity of social norms.

Across all barriers, women have always brought pain, suffering, and aguish to the men as demonstrated in both Homer's Odyssey and the Bible. With their beauty and grace, temptresses like the Sirens and Delilah lure men into their grasps, only to later steer them to their ruin. Other times, they use their cunning abilities and deception, as Circe and Jezebel did, in order to entice men into doing things that they normally would never accede to do. Moreover, most tragedies, disasters, and misfortunes are essentially caused by women as demonstrated by Helen, who caused the Trojan War, and Eve, who caused the exile of all mankind from the Garden of Eden and is the mother of all

Obviously primary to the narrative of, Paradise Lost, as may be said, borrowing again from Shannon Miller, the Genesis accounts of Adam and Eve’s creation establishes that clear gender roles were a result of the Fall: husbands shall rule over their wives while men

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

First of all, a rather sexist view of women has emerged from the evolution of a variety fairy tales. In older versions of many fairy tales, on can see the female dominant, matriarchal societies through the strong female protagonists. For example, as Yolen reminds, “Cinderella until lately has never been a passive dreamer….The forerunners of the Ash-girl have been hardy, active heroines” (33). One of the earlier Cinderellas belonged to a hunting community where “most important is the function of a female. She was at the center of this society and maintained a nurturing element” (194). As time went by Zipes concludes, women lost their supremacy and “fairy tales…reinforced the patriarchal symbolic order based on rigid notions of sexuality and gender” (qtd. in Tatar 338). As Zipes explains, “the heroines in these fairy tales remain pathetic , passive, and pale in comparison to the more active characters”, usually the men, when compared to those of the first generation of fairy

The Bible is controversial on the matter of gender equality. There are numerous contradictions about the status of women in Christian society. Historically, the most prominent interpretation has been rather negative toward women. The Christian Church, with principally male authority, emphasizes the idea that women are inferior to man. They focus on Eve’s sin leading to a punishment that “her husband will have authority over her.” (Drury, 34)

Paradise Lost is a story of Genesis told as it normally would be, but with a protagonist focus on Satan. The story is told largely with Satan being favorably portrayed and God having little presence other than cursing things, which convinces the audience that Satan’s view of God as a tyrant may not be too far off. Still, Satan is portrayed as the villain of the story. However, he has characteristics of a classical hero; including flaws that make the audience relate to and feel sympathy for him. By using part of the black-and-white Genesis story which paints Satan as evil and juxtaposing a narrative which paints Satan as a sympathetic hero, Milton raises a question about morality that largely define the audience’s reaction to the story:

The world’s history has been a topic that has interested millions over the years. The desire to know and understand the cultures and events of the past has been a one that many societies in the past and present have had. An effective way to access the heart of a culture’s history, traditions, and beliefs is to look into the stories they tell, the legends and myths they pass down to their young. This is because storytelling has been a tradition of humanity since time immemorial, and has been the only way of passing culture on to future generations for millennia. From this tradition, the Epic arose, tales of mighty heroes, gods, and monsters, told in the form of poems to convey ideals, beliefs, and traditions. Hundreds of Epics have been written, and among them, many stand out, especially Virgil’s The Aeneid, Beowulf, and John Milton’s Paradise Lost, as they prove to be impactful and useful in the analysis of changes in the relationship between divinity, defined as of or relating to a god, celestial, religious, or sacred (dictionary.com), and mankind, as well as the idea of fate as it relates to mankind. The Aeneid, being a classical Greco-Roman Epic, shows an earlier age of humanity, one vastly different from the present one, showcases some of the roots of modern storytelling and the “hero’s quest.” Beowulf also shows some of these roots, but additionally tells of a shift in culture brought on by time and location. John Milton’s Paradise Lost, the most recent of these three