In Paradise Lost (Book IX, 348-350), Milton’s Adam describes the human condition to Eve: Secure from outward force: within himself. The danger lies; yet lies within his power; Against his will, he can receive no harm. How, if at all, does Eve exemplify this description? If she does, how is it that she comes to disobey God? The question, “Why did Eve eat the apple?” is a topic of conflict throughout John Milton’s Paradise Lost; in fact, Milton wrote the Christian epic as an attempt to answer this question.
Throughout the poem, by means of Adam and Eve’s conversations, and interactions, as well as the commentary of the omniscient and omnipotent God, Milton portrayed a state of being that many readers have categorized as the “human condition”. This “condition” has been characterized as one of natural presence that exists without man’s control and one that dwells within him in a state of prideful, vain desire. Milton defines the danger of an inner condition through Adam as he stated, “…within himself / the danger lies; yet lies within his power…” (348-349; bk. IX).
Based upon this inner danger and its application throughout the story, many have argued that the “human condition” is the answer to this question — that it was Eve’s inner pride and desire, natural of all humans, that caused her to choose the apple. Yet, even while I agree that Eve highly exemplifies this said “human condition” and that she shows a deep desire to be equal to Adam, I argue that the evil is greater than just humans and that it shouldn’t be deemed as simply a “human condition”.
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I argue that Eve is a mirrored example of a greater evil and a broader condition. I argue that Satan first exemplified this condition and that the humans follow his pattern only because the condition is shared between man, angels, and all beings below God in the spiritual hierarchy. Rather than saying that Eve chooses the apple because of the “human condition”, I propose that Eve eats the apple for the same reason that Satan rebels from God. Both Satan and Eve act in forms of disobedience; they do so because they falsely see themselves as greater than the all-perfect God.
Consequently, they believe they deserve certain honorable privileges – knowledge, power, etc. – and they act in forms of disobedience to attain them. It is by means of the combination of their false beliefs and their lesser, flawed state of being that they face the “condition of imperfection”. The danger of the condition of imperfection is centralized on inner pride and desire. For Satan, this was shown in his belief that he was of equal power to God and that he deserved to be equally honored.
While this desire can be seen in the midst of Satan’s internal self-monologues, it is blatantly defined by God in Book V as he recalls, “…he of the first, / If not the first Arch-Angel, great in Power, / In favour and preeminence, yet fraught / with envy against the Son of God, that day / Honour’d by his great Father, and proclaim’d / Messiah King anointed, could not bear / Through pride that sight, and thought himself impair’d. / Deep malice thence conceiving and disdain, …. he resolv’d / With all his Legions to dislodge, and leave Unworshipt, unobey’d the Throne supreme…” (660; bk. V).
God notes from the beginning that Satan’s desire was uncalled for. It was not that he was put in an unfair situation, and it was not that he was unrecognized or unvalued. In fact, it was the exact opposite; he was highly honored and favored. He was one of the Lord’s highest Archangels. Yet, he still believed he deserved to have more prestige and honor. He was inflamed with rage when God’s son took a place higher than himself, and through this rage, readers can see that Satan’s desires — the inner dangers of the condition — were deep and internal, but not newly found. He had always vainly prioritized his position and saw his preeminence as power.
Milton begins the epic by describing Satan’s fall and elaborates on the fact that it was his preexisting pride that caused his vain attempt to overthrow God and hence his fall to hell. Throughout the poem, Satan continuously exemplified these beliefs in his interactions with other angels. In Book IV Satan encounters an angel sent by God. When the angel did not recognize him, Satan scornfully rebuked the angel, “….not to know mee argues yourselves unknown….” (830; bk. IV).
Satan believed he deserved such glory that he boasted in his own reputation. He felt he was of such importance that anyone who did not recognize him was a fool in their own right. He felt this way from the beginning and it was this natural belief which caused his choices and his fall. The anointment of Jesus was merely an event that spurred the danger of Satan’s internal desires to become actions of revolt. As God claimed, it was not Jesus himself that caused Satan’s fall, it was his own pride that impaired him.
When Satan’s prideful nature and desire for hierarchy was established, it began to far overcome any sense of reason. Rather than using reason to decide his will, Satan used his desires to decide his reason. He talked through his prideful reasoning in an attempt to inspire support from the angels who revolted alongside him, “Will ye submit your necks, and choose to bend / The supple knee? Ye will not if I trust to know ye right… Who can in reason then or right assume / Monarchy over such as live by right / his equals, if not in power and splendor less, / In freedom equal?” (787-789, 794-797; bk. V).
Through his deliverance, Satan spitefully framed God as a tyrant with minimal reasonable evidence. All of his reasoning was based on the claim that God was oppressing the angel’s freedom, and Satan claimed this solely because God chose Jesus to sit at his right hand. If Satan were to retract this belief from the picture, his argument would have no solidity. The concept of a tyrant has three key points: a tyrant must rule for his own interest, not be required to account for himself, and must rule over people of equal or higher state.
Satan’s argument stemmed solely from the belief that because of the power and splendor of his freewill he was of equal hierarchy to God. Based on this belief, he questioned how God could be anything but a tyrant as he suppressed the angels — his equals. Herein lies the fault of Satan’s argument. He is not equal to God by his free will, because God is the perfect creator of all things including free will. Satan based his view of God as a tyrant on the idea that God was suppressing his equals, and he based the belief that he was equal to God on the power and splendor of his freedom.
Yet because God was the bestower of that freedom, Satan was not of equal hierarchy, and therefore, God was not necessarily a tyrant. Overall, the lack of validity in his argument proves that Satan’s reasoning is based solely on his desire to be equal to God — a symptom of the condition of imperfection. His freedom of will simply served as a method by which to act; It was his “condition of imperfection” and its symptoms of pride and desire that held the power to overcome reason and that in the end lead to Satan’s fall. In a similar way, a foundation was set for Eve’s condition in the display of her self-focused and prideful vanity; the “condition of imperfection” was made evident in Eve’s character from the beginning of her creation.
In Book IV as Eve reflected on the first moments after her creation she recalls how she was captivated by her own reflection. “Bending to look on me, I started back, / it started back, but pleas’d it returned / as soon with answering looks / of sympathy and love, there I had fixt / mine eyes till now, and pin’d with vain desire…” (462-466; bk. IV). The diction of Eve’s recollection creates a tone of amazement and self-admiration. Seemingly hypnotized by her own reflection, Eve found pleasure in vanity. Whether she truly meant to be vain or not is its own argument, but this recollection stands as an example of her natural tendency to be prideful in herself and focused on her own glory. Furthermore, this event occurs just after her creation.
With little time at all to gain experience or to be influenced by outside forces, it supports the fact that the danger of Eve’s condition lied naturally within. It was not eating the apple that caused the condition, but rather, the self-focus on her reflection was evidence of the vanity, preset long before she ate the apple. However, it was not simply Eve’s vanity that caused her to choose the apple, in the end, it is also vital to look at how her pride and desire to be equal to Adam influenced her free willed choices. Eve displayed her internal desire to be equal to Adam as she tried to split off from him in her daily work. Claiming it was for efficiency rather than pride, Eve lied attempting to cover up her true desire for independence and power – a power which she had no evidence of deserving.
“… Our pleasant task enjoyn’d, but till more hands / Aid us, the work under our labour grows, / Luxurious by restraint… Let us divide our labours, thou where choice / Leads thee, or where most needs…” (207-209, 214-215; bk IX). She further displayed her desire as she contemplated whether or not to tell Adam about the knowledge she supposedly had gained from the apple. She contemplated, “But keep the odds of Knowledge in my power / Without Copartner? … and render me more equal, and perhaps, / A thing not undesirable, sometimes / Superior; for inferior who is free?” (820-821, 823-825; bk. IX).
One can tell that Eve was attempting to provide an explanation for her choices, but part of her proposal is conflicting. One major influence on Eve’s decision to eat the apple was the desire to gain knowledge, as she hoped it would suffice her desire to be equal to Adam; yet here, she was contemplating whether or not to share the same apple and knowledge with him. While the serpent did not die, Eve knew that God claimed the apple would bring death upon the eater.
Selfishly she contemplated what would happen if she were to die and whether or not her desires to avenge Adam for equality would truly be fulfilled. So Eve’s debacle was being torn in deciding which of two ways was best to meet her prideful desire. One of the choices was to keep the knowledge from Adam, and the other was to share the knowledge with him, and therefore, cause him to possibly suffer the same punishment. Overall, as she went through the decision process she let her pride overcome any reason.
The entirety of Eve’s reasoning was based on desire and none of it was based on God’s boundaries or Adam’s precautionary advice. It all stemmed from the inner danger that is the “condition of imperfection”, and in this way Eve perfectly mirrors Satan. Looking at both Satan and Eve, the inner found symptoms they displayed and the way that the symptoms overcame any reason, it is easy to see that one mirrors the other. Although displayed accordingly to their position in the spiritual hierarchy, they were both fixed on pride. Satan believed he deserved to be equal to God and Eve believed she deserved to be equal to Adam.
Further exemplifying their similarities, both were fixed on these beliefs long before they, so to say, ate the fruit of sin. For neither character did their act of disobedience – eating the apple, or starting a civil war of heaven – cause their condition; instead, for both, it was caused by an inner power. Furthermore still, Satan and Eve reflect one another in the way that they, by free will, allowed their desire to overcome any just reason. They became infatuated in the beliefs that their pride had instilled, and so they were able to convince themselves they had enough reason to turn from God; with this, both utilized free will enabling their beliefs to become actions.
It is in analyzing the repeated similarities between Eve and Satan by which I come to the conclusion that the “human condition” is too simplified to describe the “inner danger” Milton portrayed. Because of the nearly identically parallel structure of the fall of Satan to the fall of Man, I concluded that they must share a common cause. This cause could not be the “human condition” as some claim it to be for Eve, merely because Satan was not human. It needed to be broader and so I looked to the most prominent similarity between the two — the power of their imperfection. Satan, although an Archangel was in the same state of power as Eve — he was less than perfect: less than God. For both Satan and Eve, imperfection was the “inner danger”; it is what caused their pride, vanity, and desire.
All of which, when combined with their free will, held unruly power, a power that had always existed within them even if it was not always held under such a dangerous connotation. God, creator of all things, had designed them as flawed, and designed them with the power to choose. It was when they choose to use this power for their own self interest, pride and desires instead of by the rules and purpose of God, that the powers inner danger “came out”, and ultimately lead to their fall from God.
Works Cited
- Milton, John, et al. Paradise Lost ; and Paradise Regained. Signet Classics, 2010.
