Write about Paradise Lost Book IX?

                                   Essay about Paradise Lost Book IX

                          

Book IX of Paradise Lost is the most crucial one for understanding Milton’s presentation of the disobedience  and fall of man.  Even though he refers to man’s disobedience in the first line of the epic itself he deals with it only in Book IX.  In the preface to this book, Milton says that he has to perform a ‘sad task’ and change the ‘notes to tragic’ .  Yet he feels that his ‘argument’ is more heroic than the themes presented by Homer and Virgil in their epics.  The militant valour and glorification of man fighting on the battlefield does not appear as heroic to Milton.  Nor does Milton have much respect for the chivalrous type of heroism as presented in the romances of Ariosto and Spenser.  His concept of heroism is totally different from that of the martial spirit of the old epics and the chivalry of the medieval romances.  His ‘unpremeditated verse’ presents

                “The better fortitude

                Of patience and heroic martyrdom

                Unsung”

And to him fighting the battle of life with faith in oneself and in God is heroism.

                Having  clearly stated his own concept of heroism Milton proceeds to describe the human predicament with sympathy and understanding.  Adam and Eve look like every man and every woman in Book IX.  The prelapsarian Adam and Eve with their ‘naked majesty’ move about like lords supreme in Book IX.  We feel reverential awe for these august personalities.  But Adam and Eve become human and to that extent loveable only when they are rid of their pristine glory. 

                Book IX opens with a dramatic situation of Eve developing a novel idea of working all by herself.  Adam and Eve work together in the garden but she thinks that thereby

                “Looks intervene and smiles, or object new

                Casual discourse draw on”

And their day’s work is interrupted.  Adam feels terribly  unhappy partly because he cannot be separated from Eve and partly because of the lurking enemy in the vicinity bent on ruining them both.  But Eve has different ideas and Adam’s unwillingness to be separated from her is misconstrued by her  as lack of confidence in her.  Finally, almost questioningly, she says,

                “Frail is our happiness, if this be so;

                And Eden were no Eden, thus exposed”.

Adam is a little annoyed with her for she is finding fault with God’s ways.  He also realises that Eve’s stay ‘not free’ is as good as being absent.  So he permits to go.

                Milton describes Eve in the most glorious words.  As Eve leaves Adam she is fairer that the mountain nymphs, wood nymphs and the nymphs in the company of Diana.  She is like Diana herself in her gait though she may not be armed with ‘bow and quiver.  She is like Pales, Pamona or Ceres, all in the prime of youth.  Adam looks at Eve with longing and she repeatedly assures him that she will be back with him y noontide.  This is the last time we see Eve in her glory for the much deceived Eve will never find ‘sweet repast’ or ‘sound repose’ from that time onwards.  All this dramatised scene of the human pair is based on Milton’s own creative imagination.  The farewell is touching. 

                As Eve works in the garden of roses, she herself being the ‘fairest unsupported  flower’ Satan in the shape of the Serpent tries to seduce her.  This scene of seduction is presented with artistic excellence.  Milton is at his best in showing credulous Eve overpowered by the oratorical sonority of the Devil.  The speeches put in the mouth of the Devil are full of specious argumentation, the process whereby apparently the arguments  seem to be convincing.  In this seduction scene Milton is presenting Eve as a typical human being susceptible to flattery and inclined to curiosity.  When Eve listens to the Serpent’s flamboyant and colourful expressions ‘Empress of this fair world, resplendent Eve!’  she is moved.  She is also curious to know how the Serpent has attained this state.  The Serpent tells her of the fruit, and reveals how, by eating it, the gradational process of growth has taken place.  The Serpent therefore argues that Eve argues that Eve will become divine by eating the fruit.  If an animal becomes human, a human being naturally has to become divine.  Through such intricate arguments the Serpent leads Eve to the Tree of Knowledge.  Eve still retaining her wisdom tells the Serpent that she cannot eat the fruit for God has ordained, ‘ye shall not eat/ Thereof, nor shall ye touch it, lest ye die’. 

                The Serpent takes upon itself a new role.  It waxes eloquent over the injustices of God and tries to give sophisticated explanations.  Eve cannot understand the subtlety in the arguments of the Serpent.  Very cleverly the Devil argues that death only means a transformation from the human state to the divine.  If God is not just, then one need not fear God and obey Him.  All these complex rhetorical arguments leave  Eve puzzled and perplexed.  Very soon the hour of noon comes and Eve feels hungry.  Even otherwise the fruit is alluring and tempting.  It becomes more desirable as Eve’s physical need grows.  Milton tries to show Eve as a human being registering thereby the sympathies of the reader.  For the moment the theological aspect of Eve’s transgression is forgotten.  It is an extremely human situation that Milton presents and he brings in the relationship of nature with man as he sums up the fall,

                “Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat,

                Sighing through all the works, gave signs of woe

                That all was lost”.

Earth feels thw wound and Nature moans.  The glory is departed but we do not condemn Eve.  We only pity her.  The way Milton constructs the scene makes it difficult for the reader to censure Eve.  The place, the time, the diabolical pleas of the Serpent all make a travesty of her life.  She forgets her obligation and eats the forbidden fruit. 

                Adam waits for Eve but to no purpose.  So he moves in the opposite direction to meet Eve and happens to see her near the Tree of Knowledge.  This is the central scene in the epic.  The moment of Adam sees Eve he understands that Eve has sinned.  In her face her excuses form a prologue; the garland wreathed for Eve falls, the roses fade away, but Adam says,

                “With thee

                Certain my resolution is to die”

For she is ‘flesh of flesh’ and he does not want to be parted from her, bliss or woe.

                Milton thus presents Adam as a steadfast lover who is prepared to lose everything for the sake of Eve.  Adam says emphatically,

                “Our state cannot be severed; we are one

                One flesh; to lose thee were to lose myself”.

Eve takes the whole affair as ‘a glorious trial of exceeding love’ as an ‘illustrious evidence, example high’ of unbounded love.  In the hour of need when Eve is exposed to God’s ire Adam feels that he should be with her.  Love for Eve takes precedence over his duty to God.  Primary obligation becomes secondary and his reason is obscured.  Topsy-turvydom  leads to obscuration of reason.  But in the world of love what he chooses to do for Eve is praiseworthy though in the realm of duty his action is unforgivable.  Finally Adam overcome with ‘female charm’ eats the fruit.  Earth trembles from her entrails.  Nature groans a second time and the mortal sin is total. 

                Against the background of ‘exceeding love’ Adam’s transgression of God’s command seems to be a venial sin.  Milton shows the association of man with nature once again when Adam’s fall is echoed by the objects of nature.  Adam and Eve in Book IX look human and their sentiments have an appeal to the reader.  They do not forfeit our sympathies even after the fall.  The temptation scene in Book IX is presented with artistic skill.  Nowhere does Milton expose Adam  and Eve to censure.  As lovers Adam and Eve reign supreme in Book IX.

                But the eating of the forbidden fruit has its own deleterious effects, first exhilarating and late saddening.  Adam and Eve acquire knowledge of the discerning type but it also brings them inconveniences.  They realise for the frst time that they are naked and it is wrong to move  about in that state.  Adam has lost his glorious innocence.  Now he in a mood to find fault with Eve, who according to him, could have stayed with him instead of exposing herself to the lures of the enemy.  Eve is annoyed and asks him why he allowed her to go.  He , being the head, should have commanded her not to go.  To that Adam replies,

                “I warned thee, I admonished thee, foretold

                The danger, and the lurking enemy

                That lay in wait; beyond this had been force.

                And force upon free-will hath here no place”.

Adam justifies his action as much as God would.  God sends Raphael to wan him of the enemy.  Raphael advises Adam not to yield to temptation but instead to govern Eve also from falling prey to foul play.  But Adam has to exercise his free will in the right direction, of worshipping God.  Adam chooses to violate God’s command.  Force upon free will has no place in heaven.  Adam’s relationship with God, Eve’s relationship with Adam, all these are governed by free will being used properly.  The obscuring of reason leads to the fall. 

                The heated arguments of Adam and Eve each justifying  his own stand again remind us of human beings.  So Adam and Eve establish an identity with human situations and thereby become lovable.  In Book IV, in the prelapsarian state, one looks at them with wonder and a certain aloofness.  But in Book IX, the postlapsarian Adam and Eve being true to life evoke sympathy and understanding.

                Paradise Lost is dramatic in form like all other Renaissance epics.  One is inclined to think that ‘Milton goes beyond all previous epics in his approximation to dramatic form’.  Especially Book IX with its rich tragic content could have been a tragedy by itself; it reads quite like a play.  Typical dramatic devices  like irony, suspense and climax are used by Milton in Book IX.  Eve’s expectation  of divinity, Adam’s fond hope of meeting Eve at noontide and both hoping against hope that God may not punish them are ironical.  The dramatic conflict is created when Eve debates within herself whether she will reveal herself or keep the eating of the forbidden fruit to herself.  Finally she chooses  to be with Adam in bliss or woe.  Similarly when Adam sees Eve near the Tree of Knowledge he knows she has transgressed God’s command.  There is a terrible conflict in him and he wonders whether he should be true to god or loyal to Eve.  His resolution is to die with her for he cannot be separated from her.

                More than these dramatic devices, the speeches in Book IX have a grandeur of their own.  The domestic scene of Adam and Eve has an irresistible fascination for the readers.  Milton’s Eve is a grand figure.  Contrasted with her spirited arguments for working all by herself Adam’s rejoinders seem to be tame.  In a challenging tone she says,

                “Frail is our happiness, if this be so,

                And Eden were  no Eden thus exposed”.

Again the persuasive eloquence of the Devil perplexes Eve.  He addresses her,

                “A goddess among Gods adored and served

                By angles numberless, the daily train”.

And reassuringly tells her,

                “Queen of this universe, do not believe

                Those rigid threats of death, ye shall not die”.

The diction in Book IX has an approximation to the spoken language.  The verse here is simple and direct  with its ‘peculiar range of sensibility’.  It has a ‘rhythm close to contemporary speech’.  Milton in Book IX of Paradise Lost seems to have achieved the dramatic verse suited to poetic drama.  Even though Eliot says that Milton’s style is a ‘a personal style not based on common speech’ and that his ‘poetry is at the fartheset possible remove from prose in Book IX Milton achieves a happy  medium of verse  suited to poetic  drama’.