Evil
In Book 5, something that stood out to me was Eve telling her about her dream of being tempted. It was not her actual dream that I found interesting, but something that Adam tried to explain to her after he heard it. He tells her in lines 115-121:
"Of our last evening's talk in this thy dream but with addition strange. Yet not be sad: Evil into the mind of god or man may come and go, so unapproved, and leave no spot or blame behind. Which gives me hope that what in sleep thou didst abhor to dream waking thou never wilt consent to do."
This is just ironic to me and has a sense of foreshadowing about it. Adam talks about evil, without even knowing what evil is but that it will come and go and leave no trace when it leaves. Which is entirely untrue because now all of humanity is condemned to the curse that followed the evil that tempted them. And I also feel as though if we do something in a dream then we may be just as likely to do it in real life because we have already done it and felt the reward in the dream. I think Adam is just trying to pull some wisdom here to make Eve feel better about what she thought she had done.
I commented on Will and Zelda's!
"Of our last evening's talk in this thy dream but with addition strange. Yet not be sad: Evil into the mind of god or man may come and go, so unapproved, and leave no spot or blame behind. Which gives me hope that what in sleep thou didst abhor to dream waking thou never wilt consent to do."
This is just ironic to me and has a sense of foreshadowing about it. Adam talks about evil, without even knowing what evil is but that it will come and go and leave no trace when it leaves. Which is entirely untrue because now all of humanity is condemned to the curse that followed the evil that tempted them. And I also feel as though if we do something in a dream then we may be just as likely to do it in real life because we have already done it and felt the reward in the dream. I think Adam is just trying to pull some wisdom here to make Eve feel better about what she thought she had done.
I commented on Will and Zelda's!
I find Adam's statement to bear some truth, actually… He said that evil can enter the mind, but UNAPPROVED it leaves no spot or blame. The message here is that being tempted (having an evil thought enter your mind) is not sin in itself; only by consenting to and carrying out that thought are we guilty. The way I see it, Adam was trying to comfort Eve that dreaming of sinning didn't make her a sinner.
ReplyDeleteI also found it interesting that Adam speaks to something that he has never encountered before. I think either he is just trying to offer some solace to Eve, or God gave him a hint about how temptation vs sinning works. Also, in Eve's dream, she did eat the fruit. Does that mean that she sinned subconsciously? Do subconscious sins count against us?
ReplyDeleteSophia, philosophers and theologians alike have been asking that question for years. The Bible doesn't specifically say anything about sinning in our dreams, but Jesus does speak on sinning in our thoughts.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the foreshadowing is quite interesting and humorous, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that if you dream something you are capable or even more likely of doing it. For example I often have dreams of falling from extreme heights, which I am hoping does not make me more likely of falling. I guess my opinion on dreams would be that they are uncontrolled, random fears or thoughts mashed together by the mind. Now in the case of Milton's epic, I think he is just using Eve to give us a taste of whats to come.
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