Eagleton, Terry - How to Read Literature

H o w t o R e a d L i t e r a t u r e

9 8

group of frightened schoolchildren failing to evolve the equivalent
of the United Nations.
There may be discrepancies between what a narrative shows
and what it says. A particularly blatant example of this can be found
in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, when Adam decides to share Eve’s
fate by sharing the death- dealing apple. From the way the poem
presents the event, there is no doubt that he makes his decision out
of love for his partner:

no. no! I feel

The link of nature draw me: flesh of flesh,

Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state

Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.

Adam is ready to risk his own life out of loyalty to Eve. Yet when he
himself comes to eat the apple, the tone of the verse changes
sharply:

he scrupled not to eat,

Against his better knowledge, not deceived,

But fondly overcome with female charm.

‘Fondly overcome with female charm’ is a flagrant distortion of
Adam’s state of mind, as the poem itself has just portrayed it.
(‘Fondly’ here means ‘foolishly’.) It reduces his courageous self-
sacrifice to the lure of a pretty face. As Adam takes the apple, ready
to lay down his life alongside his lover, the poem abruptly aban-
dons all sympathy for him. Instead, it adopts a severely juridical
tone. It insists that he is performing this action freely, without
self- deception, in full knowledge of its catastrophic consequences.