Man and Nature After the Fall
No more of talk where God or Angel Guest With Man, as with his Friend, familiar us'd To sit indulgent and with him partake Rural repast permitting him the while Venial discourse unblam'd: I now must change Those Notes to Tragic; foul distrust and breach Disloyal on the part of Man, revolt, And disobedience: on the part of Heav'n Now alienated, distance and distaste... (PL. IX, 1-9)In Paradise Lost, the consequences of the fall and the change in relations between man and nature can best be discussedwhen we look at Milton's pre-fall descriptions of Eden and its inhabitants. Believing that fallen humans could never fullyunderstand what life was like in Eden and the relationships purely innocent beings shared, Milton begins his depiction ofParadise and Adam and Eve through the fallen eyes of Satan: Any, but God alone, to value right The good before him, but perverts best things To worse abuse, or to thir meanest use. Beneath him with new wonder now he views To all delight of human sense expos'd In narrow room Nature's whole wealth, yea more, A Heaven on Earth: for blissful Parad
Hughs notes that "like all his contemporaries Miltoninterpreted Genesis iii, 17, as meaning that after the Fall nature became subject to mortality and a curse on account of man"(CD I, xiii; C. Adam is the first to notice these changes, and the animals inhabiting the earth who once "About them frisking play'd/ AllBeasts of th' Earth" (IV, 340-41) are now being preyed upon by Death, who "introduc'd through fierce antipathy: Beastnow with Beast gan war, and Fowl with Fowl,/ And Fish with Fish; to graze the Herb all leaving,/ Devour'd each other. The earth felt and shared the consequences of thefall, and eventually knew that God had decided that the pair were not to live in Eden. (IX, 780-84)The effects of the fall are felt immediately, first by the earth, and then by Eve who suddenly realizes how far Heaven seemsfrom Eden: "And I perhaps am secret; Heav'n is high,/ High and remote to see from thence distinct/ Each thing onEarth. When Eve leaves Adam, she is tempted by the Serpent and decides to eat the forbidden fruit. Eden is fertile, and"All Trees ofnoblest kind for sight, smell taste" (IV, 217) grow in abundance blooming with fruit. (XI, 171-80) Eve believed that she and Adam would be able to live in Eden after the fall. Though he isdriven out of Eden, from the dust from which he was made, Adam, upon his death, is to return his origins. After the fall Eden does not reject Adam and Eve immediately, they hide themselves "among/ The thickest Trees" (X,100-01), and as the legend goes, they cover their nakedness with sewn fig-leaves.
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Acceptance Essays
