The Temptation of Eve in Milton’s Paradise Lost Essay

In John Milton’s Paradise Lost, the parallelism between Satan and Eve’s fall is strong in that they were once both the highest before pure perfection. Lucifer is associated with evil, which stems from his free will leading to his rebellion against God and, ultimately, his great fall. He is known as the one who introduces sin to Adam and Eve – the first humans to ever exist. His plan to go against God is the beginning of a whole new world to the universe and a whole new significance of himself as the one known for human error and evil. Eve, “the mother of human race,” is Satan’s target to pull her down to his world of sin because she also wishes to become independent of Adam making her susceptible to anything that can separate her from

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

    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

Viewed as inferior women, Blood Moon and Eve never receive knowledge directly; rather their male counterparts reinterpret and provide them with knowledge after reinterpreting it. The narrator of Paradise Lost establishes Eve as “Not equal” (Milton IV.296) to Adam, her male complement. Blood Moon, too, dwells in a world where male lords gather, “[share] their thoughts” (Popol Vuh 99), and decide her fate—as a powerless woman, she has no say in her future. In both stories, men govern their world and their word is law. Due to the nature of these patriarchal worlds, the men dole knowledge out piece meal to the women—the knowledge is never available. For example, Adam explains to Eve the rules of the universe. He claims God to “Be infinitely good” and that “[he] rais’d us from the dust…/ In all this happiness” (Milton IV. 412, 416-417). Eve does not decide her own emotions; even something so personal is told to her by Adam. She owns nothing, not even herself. Similarly, Blood Moon’s father “retold” the “account of the fruit of the tree” (Popol Vuh 98). The storyteller opts to enlighten her father—the male—over Blood Moon.

From the story, “Flowers for Algernon” Fanny Girden said, ‘’’It was evil when Eve listened to the snake and ate from the tree of knowledge. It was evil when she saw that she was naked. If not for that none of us would grow old and die ‘’’(329).

Eve has been a powerful female figure throughout history and provoked so many female authors because she is depicted as the first woman, made from the rib of the first man, Adam. Since Eve was the first, and mother to all women, she was preserved to have passed on an evil nature to all women after tasting the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge and asking Adam to as well. Women have invested their time in Eve’s defense by arguing that it was not the fault of Eve alone, and that if Adam was supposed the be a symbol of strength, and wisdom, then he should been able to see through Eve’s fruit and the trickery of the serpent. The story bible has been used as a symbol of oppression for women by the word of God being law in the Christian

A. “The allusion to pagan fable that most haunts views of Milton's Eve is her Narcissus-like behavior when, fresh from her Creator's hand, she pauses at the verge of the mirror lake attracted by her own reflection and has to be called twice: first by God, who leads her to Adam, and then, as she starts back toward the softer beauty of the face in the lake, by Adam himself.” (McColley 63).

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

In the ninth book of Paradise Lost by John Milton, Adam and Eve fall, leaving the reader wondering who caused the fall between Adam and Eve. I blame Adam and Eve each for his or her own fall; I argue how Eve causes her own fall, how Adam causes his own fall, they did not cause each other’s falls, they fell by themselves.

We can see the poem deals with the entire story of man's fall from grace, including background for Satan's motives. In Paradise Lost, Eve was tricked by Satan, who assumed the form of a serpent, into eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Satan had whispered into her ear when she was asleep, and when he spoke to her later, he used his cunning to mislead her:

Adam and Eve are tall and erect like the trees, pure and nude, uncovered like the rural landscape. Adam's hair cut short, almost as if the pair had pruned it. Eve's body seems to be supported by the garden, but her hair is described as wild, unadorned and wanton, not unlike the landscape outside of Eden: "Steep wilderness, whose hairy sides/ With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild..." (IV, 135-36).

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

As Book VIII of John Milton’s Paradise Lost begins, the “new-waked” human Adam ponders the nature of the universe and the motion of the stars (ll. 4-38). When Adam has finished his speech, Milton takes the opportunity to describe Eve, who is listening nearby. We find Eve reclining in the Garden, but with grace, not laziness: “she sat retired in sight,/With lowliness majestic from her seat” (41-42). This “lowliness majestic” is the central phrase to understanding Eve’s character—she is both humble and glorious. Everything that beholds her is captivated by her “grace that won who saw to wish her stay” (43). Even in this paradise, every other beautiful creation is drawn to Eve. She walks

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-