The term “The Fall” is used to describe the fall from grace and the banishment from Eden that Adam and Eve suffer in the epic poem Paradise Lost by John Milton (1). Satan tempts Eve to eat the Forbidden Fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, and she in turn convinces Adam to do the same, even though God had specifically ordered them not to do just that. God, through Christ, punishes them by banishing them from Eden, and punishing them by bringing discord and suffering upon Adam and Eve and all of their descendants.
It is important to note that the narrator from Paradise Lost may not be the most reliable (See Unreliable Narrator) due to the inability to know anything other than from the perspective of after the Fall. Due to the tendency of history being rewritten by the victor in any outcome, it’s impossible to really know what Eden was like, and what happened in Eden, especially if the narrator seems to be partial to God.
The Fall may also be symbolic of a couple of different things. It can signify that an uneducated population cannot be expected to make good decisions and may fall to tragedy. It can also represent the vulnerability of the virtuous to temptation, or the idea that free thought is the enemy to tyranny. Even still, it may be somewhat symbolic of the process of growing up, the horrors and strifes of leaving ignorance and innocence of a utopian childhood. There are many viable interpretations of Paradise Lost, and therefore what exactly the Fall stands to mean, and what it means for humanity, free-will, and being virtuous.
Works Cited
- Milton, John. Paradise Lost: 1677. Scolar Press, 1968.
- Achinstein, Sharon. “Citizen Milton.” University of Oxford, 2007
