![]() Milton, who had three wives himself, is saying some pretty strong things about women in this passage. Although he knows her to be a weaker creature by nature, Adam is sometimes fooled by her beauty in believing that she is ".wisest, virtuousest, discreetist, best." Adam tells Raphael of his concern for how he feels about Eve. The creation of Eve foreshadows what will ultimately become the cause of Adam's fall: following the guidance of his own baser, more animalistic elements that are convinced by Eve's beauty. Carnal love is what the beasts enjoy and God gave Adam a woman, not a beast, so he should practice a higher love. From it, God forms a woman, the most beautiful to Adam of all God's creatures.Īdam and Raphael have a discussion about love: how love must be pure, not a carnal or a passionate love. God finally relents, however, and tells Adam that he planned a mate for him all along.Īdam is put to sleep and God takes a rib from his side. God tells him that he, God, is alone and is doing fine. Adam notes that all the other animals were given consorts or mates. God tells Adam that all the rest of creation is his to own and name.Īdam tells God that he would like a companion, a mate. God warns him not to eat from the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. He has a dream and God answers him that it was he, God, that created him. (Raphael was guarding hell while Adam was being created so missed the whole thing.) Adam remembers only waking up in a beautiful place and wondering about his own existence. ![]() Such questions and curiosity may lead them astray of their function on earth.Īdam then tells Raphael what he remembers about when he was created. Raphael talks about heaven a bit, and even mentions creatures living on other planets, but ends by saying that Adam and Eve should not get too curious about other worlds or how heaven functions. In the meantime, Eve goes to take care of her garden. In this case, however, Milton is backing his greatness, and his authroity to write, with the element of the Chrisitan trinity that has inspired the writers of the scriptures.Īdam asks Raphael about the heavens. Milton has already admitted he believes he is tackling a much bigger subject than they did in their poems. In this Book, Milton actually calls on the Holy Spirit to be his inspiration, setting up a competition with Homer and Vergil who called on pagan muses to be theirs. ![]() Milton reminds us throughout the poem that he is writing an epic and tying himself to a grand tradition by calling for the muse before he begins writing many of the episodes. The opposites stand as a pre-Fall/post-Fall contrast of the nature of interaction between God's emissaries and man. Raphael comes with gentle advice, Michael comes with strict enforcement of orders. Raphael is soft to Michael's hardness, Raphael is amiable to Michael's firmness. ![]() Michael, on the other hand, traditionally a militant angel, comes in with full military regalia, as well as a squadron of angels behind him, to tell Adam the story as well as evict he and Eve from the Garden. He is a soft, kindly angel who serves as a warning friend to Adam. Raphael is a friend coming over for dinner. The contrast between the two histories starts with the messengers who are narrating them. Raphael story, and Adam's remembrances, will parallel with Michael's narration of the history of man after the Fall starting in book XI. Man is designed to work his way to an angelic state by keeping correct, rational order to his passions, as discussed in Book IV. Theologically, Raphael is giving God's reason for creating man, and man's universe, in the first place: in order to repopulate heaven. ![]() Here, Milton uses the order and, in some cases, word for word description used in the first and second chapter of Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Bible. With a direct Biblical allusion, Raphael relates the story of creation. God then creates darkness and light, the universe, earth and ocean, and plants and animals (in the same order as the Genesis story of the Hebrew Bible) in seven days. Not wanting Satan to claim even that victory, God decides to populate heaven with a creature who, given free will, would earn their way into his glory. Raphael tells him that after Satan's fall, God saw that heaven had lost half its population. Adam asks Raphael about how he, man, came to be, how the earth was created, and why? ![]()
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