Paradise Lost:Book 5 (Group Project)

Paradise Lost: Book 5

Summary

            In Book five of Paradise Lost Adam and Eve are joined for a meal by Archangel Raphael after a troublesome night due to Eve’s dream about the forbidden tree. IN the morning Adam wakes up to find that Eve seems troubled in her sleep. When she wakes up she tells Adam she is glad to see his perfection because her dream was unsettling. She says she heard a voice call her name, which she though it to be Adam’s. She is led to the forbidden tree and finds an angel-like figure like they had often seen. This “angel” speaks abut the plant and questions why its fruit should be forbidden and then takes a bite from it. He states that the fruit can make gods of men and tempts Eve to take a bite by telling her that if she bit it she, too, could go to Heaven as a goddess and see what life was like up there. As he held it up to her mouth she could not resist the sweet smell and bit into it. As soon as she did she started ascend with the “angel” but then the angel was gone and as she fell she woke up. Adam is concerned about her dream and consoles her by saying that it was just an act of imagination.

            They continue with their morning starting by praying to God. God calls upon Raphael to tell him to look down at the “human pair” that is being tempted by Satan. He tells Raphael to go down to have a little talk with Adam and remind him about love, obedience and the free will God created them with. Raphael is also sent to warn Adam about the raucous that Satan is causing in Paradise and to beware of the fall of man that is planning. The archangel arrives after Adam and Eve have done their work for the day. Adam invites Raphael to stay to eat and they sit down to eat fruits they have picked. Adam, interested in Heaven, asks Raphael how the food is compared to Heaven’s. He replies by saying that it is not that different, that Heaven’s food is just a different combination because it’s more spiritual as opposed to Earth where everything is more bodily.  He also goes on to explain that maybe one day he and Eve will become spirits and join Heaven.

            Interested in Heaven even more, Adam seizes the opportunity to ask more about the world above them. Raphael explains that God created all this for him and that it is his job to take care of it, he continues to say that God created everybody “free” and they are not “overruled by fate.” If they continue to abide and worship God soon their bodies will become like angels and if they do not abide they will lose heaven and end up in hell. Raphael continues by saying that he and all of the other angels praise and serve God because it makes them happy. He reveals to Adam who the enemy is and how he came to be. This is the story about the first revolt in heaven and how Satan drew his legions after him and enticed them to rebel.

            One day, before the Earth was created, God called upon all of the angels and announced his son as his right hand and equivalent in power. God claims that whosoever disobeys his son will in turn be disobeying him and shall end up in hell. After, there is a big celebration with a banquet and harmonious angels in music and dance. Satan, however, is not too pleased to hear the news and gathers about one third of the angels to meet later on. At their meeting, Satan says it is blasphemous to announce the son of God and that their free will is being threatened. All of the angels cheer him on and accept to follow his plan to rebel against God. Abidiel is an exception, he is one who does not rebel but persuades that Satan should apologize before it is too late. He reminds Satan that God loves them and always has their happiness and best interest in mind. Satan is amused and challenges God’s creation while Abidiel turns his back on him and remains loyal to God.

 Quotes

1. “Awake
 My fairest, my espoused, my latest found, / Heav'ns last best gift, my ever new delight /Awake, the morning shines, and the fresh field / Calls us, we lose the prime, to mark how spring/Our tended Plants, how blows the Citron Grove,/ What drops the myrrh, and what the balmy Reed,/ How Nature paints her colors, how the Bee / Sits on the Bloom extracting liquid sweet. (17-25)

·        This is a song in a variation from the Bible book Song of Songs; this specific book from the bible gives proper perspective on love between a man and a woman. It shows the beauty of love in a marriage, and it also represents God’s love for his people. Adam has a strong love for Eve his wife; he compares her as heavens last gift, his only delight in the world. He wants to share the morning with her before it is gone.

2. “With gentle voice I thought it thine; it said / Why slepst thou Eve” (37-38). “I rose as at thy call but found thee not/ And on, me thought, alone I passed through ways / that brought me to a sudden tree/ of interdicted knowledge” (48-52)

·        Eve has been sleeping restless has a dream. In her dream she is woken by a voice that sounds like her husband Adam. She wonders to find him, but she is not alone. Eve, as it seems to be played out through book five is very innocent and pure and virtuous, which plays into the bigger picture of God’s goodness. She easily falls for this voice and is not suspicious because she is in paradise where deceiving actions and other sins don’t yet exist. She is lead to the tree of knowledge and there is an “angelic” like figure waiting for her. This is foreshadowing what may happen later on in Paradise Lost.

3. “Nor God, nor man? Is knowledge so despise? / Or envy, or what reserve forbids to taste?” (60-1)

·      This questions whether God and man’s knowledge is worthless or jealous enough to keep others from doing what they should. This angelic like figure in Eve’s dream is attempting to trick her into thinking that this fruit from this tree is what gave God his knowledge and that his jealousy is forbidding them to taste it.

4. “Fruit Divine, Sweet of thyself, but much more sweet thus cropped, / Forbidd'n here, it seems, as only fit / For God's, yet able to make Gods of Men: / And why not Gods of Men, since good, the more / Communicated, more abundant grows, / The Author not impaired, but honored more? / Here, happy Creature, fair Angelic Eve, / Partake thou also”

    This “angelic” figure is tempting Eve that this sweet fruit that is made for God, can make men gods. He allures to her senses claiming that this fruit is sweet, sweeter than any she may have had. If it makes all men like God, shouldn’t God feel honored by having men walking around like him? The angelic figure hands it to here, telling her she should take a bite so she to can be a goddess and know what it is like in Heaven. This could also be a parallel of the ideas Satan was exploring when he rebelled against God and his equivalent, the Son. He essentially rebelled because he wanted more power. This may go back to Milton’s assimilation of Satan to men. If Satan rebelled because he wanted more power then men could easily be lured into the same concept.

5. “Of our last evenings talk, in this thy dream, / But with addition strange; yet be not sad. / Evil into the mind of God or Man / May come and go, so unapproved, and leave / No spot or blame behind” (115-119)

    Adam reminds Eve that their previous conversation was about this tree of knowledge and how they must not eat from it. If they do, God will punish them with death. Adam is saying that a state of the mind is the result of temptation and not the uprising of their own nature because it is not coming from them and that they cannot be blamed.

6. “Raphael, said he, thou hear'st what stir on Earth / Satan from Hell escaped through the darksome Gulf / Hath raised in Paradise, and how disturbed / This night the human pair, how he designs / In them at once to ruin all mankind.” (224-28)

    God and the Angel Raphael are looking downward on Earth from heaven. Satan who escaped the dark bits of hell now walks along the earth in paradise. God emanates pity for the humans in paradise because Satan is going to try and tempt them at any cost. This is when he sends Raphael to paradise to speak with Adam and remind him of his free will but also warn him about the plotting of the fall of mankind.

7. “Stood to entertain her guest from Heav’n; no veil […] On whom the Angel […] Bestowed, the holy salutation[…] Hail Mother of Mankind, whose fruitful Womb / Shall fill the World more numerous with thy Sons / Then with these various fruits the Trees of God / Have heaped this Table” (383-91)

    Eve and Adam are having the Archangel Raphael as a guest in their paradise. Eve is with “no veil” meaning that she is naked, yet, she is still virtuous. Since this is before she and Adam have sinned they are pure and find no “sinful” or taboo attachment to nudity. Raphael’s salute bears a resemblance toward the Hail Mary prayer “Hail Mary, full of grace, our Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women, 
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus…” which is considered to be a sign of holiness and of great honor. In Eve’s case Raphael is talking about bearing more children “to fill the world” in honor of God. In the bible his children/ people are his “fruits” and God is the provider the tree.

8. “Then had the Sons of God excuse t’ have been / Enamored at that sight, but in those hearts / Love unlibidinous reigned, nor jealousy / Was understood, the injured Lovers Hell” (447-50)

    This quote again ties into how pure God’s creation of men was at first. Their love was pure. Their love was not over sexually driven, malicious, or jealous, as is the hell of many lovers’ after God’s sons (mankind) sinned. Parallel to the bible the Sons of God were righteous descendents of Seth, who happened to be the third son of Adam and eve and the third brother after Cain and Abel. The sons of god were angels who have sinned because of jealousy and lust.

9. “Time may come when men with angels may participate […] Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit […] If ye be found obedient, and retain/ Unalterably firm his love entire,” (493-502).    

    Adam is very interested in the world above and has many questions for Raphael. In this specific quote Adam has just asked how their Earthly food compares to Heaven’s. Raphael tell him that they are different yet the same because they were created by God. Raphael sees how interested Adam is in Heaven and tell him that if he is obedient and remains true to God and His love he may experience the Heavenly world. He will become a spirit and join all of the other angels. This falls back to a big theme of the book as whole about obedience. God wants the couple to be unlike Satan, who disobeyed and rebelled against Him.

10. “To love or not; in this we stand or fall: / And some are fall'n, to disobedience fall'n, / And so from Heav'n to deepest Hell; O fall / From what high state of bliss into what woe! (540-43)

    Raphael reminds Adam that God has given humans free will and eventually they will need to be purer than angels. He also reminds them that they need to remain obedient to God so that they do not fall like “some are fall’n” (referring to Satan).  Adam and Eve need to yield to Satan’s temptation if they want to continue in the “high state of bliss” which God has created for them. Either they can resist Satan’s power or they will use their free will and give in.

11. “ Satan, so call him now, his former name/ Is heard of no more in Heave’n; he of the first/ If not the first Archangel, great in power/In favor of preminence, yet fraught/ With envy against the Son of God, that day,” (658-652)

            Before Satan became Satan he was one of the highest in heaven. He had great power, yet, when God announce His son, he became envious of him. On “that day” Satan rebelled and became the angel of sin because he was envious, prideful, and wanted higher power. He did not want to serve God and His son; he wanted to be served instead.

12. “Shalt thou give law to God, shalt though dispute/With him the points of liberty, who made/ Thee what thou art, and formed the powr’s of Heav’n,” (822-824)

            Here the angel Abdiel is defending God after Satan’s speech of wanting to rebel against God. He reminds Satan that he cannot rebel against the being that made him and gave him all this power. His concepts of liberty are to minor to God’s concepts because he has more power, so Satan’s attempts are useless. If God created the “powers of heaven” and created Satan then God’s power is far grander and therefore should not be disputed.

13. “So spake the Seraph Abdiel faithful found/ Among the faithless, faithful only he/ Among innumerable false, unmoved/ Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified/ His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal,” (896-900).

            Of all of the angels that followed Satan, which apparently was about one third of them, Abdiel was the only one who returned to God. He was the only one who remained loyal and faithful in God. All of the other angels were easily persuaded, which means they were “false” servers of God because they turned their backs to Him. Raphael was able to finish his story with Abdiel probably to get the point across that Adam and Eve, too, should remain loyal to “his love.” By remaining loyal to God they are simultaneously being obedient. Just as Abdiel, their free will should lead them to resist Satan’s seduction and terror and turn their back’s on sin and continue with God. 

Article

Summary

            Stephen A. Raynie’s article “Francis Hayman Reading ‘Paradise Lost’ in the 1740’s” talks about Hayman’s visual interpretation of Milton’s book Paradise Lost and Raynie’s interpretation of symbols and meaning of the illustrations. He begins by stating that an artist did not simply draw or paint from thin air without reference of intellectual thought or purpose behind their illustrations. Hayman’s illustrations, according to Raynie, were an example of just that. His many illustrations of of the books within Paradise Lost draw on many undertones of Milton’s story. Although, there are no records of Hayman’s exact intentions behind his drawings, Raynie attempts to give a plethora of possibilities for each drawing she talks about and the flow from one drawing to the next, as well as the connection to the actual text.

            A major aspect of Hayman’s illustrations was the dynamic of Adam and Eve’s relationship through what Hayman read into the text and then portrayed through symbolism in his pictures. One of the themes that are seen throughout the series of pictures is the gradual separation of Adam and Eve as they are led to temptation. One of the interpretations Raynie mentions through most of the pictures is the possibility of Adam’s possessiveness being drawn through certain characteristics and symbolisms. For example, the position of Adam’s hand on top of Eve’s hands in certain pictures could be indicative of Adam’s possessiveness. Yet, as the illustrations continue their separation is more apparent. This assumed sign of possessiveness gradually fades from the illustrations from the earlier books to the later ones. Eve’s hand is over Adam’s and after book 5 the illustrations don’t show them together holding hands again. Furthermore, the way Eve doesn’t look Adam in the eyes is another way Hayman brought to live aspects of Adam and Eve’s relationship that he read into. In the book something that might have suggested Adam’s possible feelings of overpowering Eve is how he, as Raynie discusses, always goes back to mentioning Eve and part of him because they make “one flesh.” Having been made from Adam’s rib, Eve is always somehow attached to Adam and therefore he becomes her “guide.” Another way Hayman brings Adam’s possible possessiveness into his drawings is by placing Eve below Adam. Eve’s position doesn’t only emphasize Adam over powering Eve but also Eve being governed by “higher faculties”, which could be others aside from Adam, such as, God (as is illustrated in book 10), Satan, temptation, etc.

            Throughout the illustrations Raynie continues to address Hayman’s possible interpretation of Eve’s status in her relationship with Adam by showing her as a secondary character in the illustrations once they have distanced themselves. For example, he points out the illustrations of book seven and eight, in which the archangel Raphael has been sent to speak to Adam. While Adam and Raphael are in the forefront of the picture, Eve is seen in the background by some rosebushes. Appearing hand-in-hand with the debate of Eve’s status within the relationship is the debate of her “moral agency.” A characteristic that is slightly difficult to portray in a painting but is discussed heavily in Raynie’s article because it does tie into some of the illustrations is whether Eve was capable of judging her actions of what was essentially the temptation scene as an action full of consequences. In short, was Eve truly aware of what her actions would bring upon her and her mate especially since she had basically been attached to Adam and turned to him as a “guide?” This also brought up the question of Eve’s “dream efficacy” and God’s intentions with asking Raphael to further warn Adam and allowing Satan to be involved in the series of events, in the first place. According to Raynie, Hayman depicts the steady separation of Adam and Eve in his illustrations as a symbol of foreshadowing the temptation as well as Eve’s growing independence. However, her independence seems to be purely physical because she does not grow as an individual “moral agent” as she is physically separated from Adam. Adam, shown in the illustration of book twelve has his head down on his hand which could be a sign of shame for what he has done, but also failing his duty as Eve’s moral “guide.” Furthermore, there are many other symbols surrounding Adam and Eve that are used to hint out future event. Peripheral subjects like, rosebushes, animals, symmetry, different leaves and plants wrapped around all signify slightly different thing that ultimately pull together the concepts mentioned in the paragraphs prior.

Quotes

1. “To paint a history, a man ought to have the main qualities of a good historian, and something more: he must go higher , and have the talents requisite to a good poet: the rules for the conduct of a picture being much the same with those to be observed in writing a poem…he must be furnished with a vast stock of poetical, as well as historical learning”

·        In order to paint history one must know the history and go beyond what is expected. The painting has to capture all knowledge of the poem so that it may be alluring to those who have not given their attention to the subject. The poet has the mere mechanics and the diction to compromise such works, while the painter has the task to conceive an equivalent piece that mirrors its poem as a character itself.

2. “Eve’s position suggests that her will is governed by higher facilities…”all inclination to blame Eve more than Adam for the fall” English bible illustrations either place blame squarely on Adam-a practice that is androcentric, perhaps but not ant feminine – or else represent an entirely mutual fall.”

·        Throughout the art that was shown Eve seems to distance herself from Adam. It may seem that Eve was alienated from her husband or ‘governed by higher facilities’ that were caused by her dream to withdrawal from the sanctity that was their “one flesh” with her husband. Illustrations show that Adam did nothing after his wife had the dream. This plays into pointing the blame and focusing that the fall of man is all Adams fault because he is a man.  Unless it was due to both Eve’s alienation due to her dream and Adam not doing anything about. It can be configured back to both instead of just one individual person.

3. “The tree serves as a correlative to the one in the dream, it still anticipates the sin that will distance Eve from Adam…. he does not emphasize harmony. Although still holding hands as in the earlier designs, the couple are farther apart than in the artists design for book.”

·        The tree of interdicted knowledge is a symbol of what caused the distancing between Adam and Eve. It is the living sin that is with them in paradise that caused them into temptation. Even in paradise this tree did not ‘emphasize harmony’ it did the complete opposite. It drew on Eve’s nature, causing her to be distant and leading her to be her own moral agent. As Adam still wants to be one with Eve, she finds herself wanting to pull away from the “one flesh” to be her own person.

4. “Eve, of course, will consent to eat the forbidden fruit, as will Adam, raising the legitimate question of the dream’s efficacy if it is a warning to avoid separation allowed by God the Father and not simply an aggressive intrusion by Satan.”

·        Now that Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge, the question at hand is “Was this their desire to eat the forbidden fruit?” or “Did the dream lead them to eating from the forbidden fruit?” When they ate the fruit Satan was in no way represented or felt, so it draws on God, who let them separate out of their free will.

5. “To be successfully warned implies some understanding of the link between action and consequence.”

·        In book 5 of Paradise Lost, God sends Raphael to Adam and Eve in Eden. There he tells Adam that they have to power to make their own choices in their lives. God gave them the knowledge to know between right and wrong. Should they eat from the tree of knowledge they will go to hell and if they do not eat from this tree, they will be like angels when it is their time to enter heaven. This warning is telling them their choices and what they do is their own accord not God or Raphael’s choice for them.