Sara Read, an English lecturer based at Loughborough University, provides a detailed summary and analysis of John Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost, book 9.

The story which John Milton relays in Paradise Lose is one that many of us will be familiar with, after all it is the biblical tale of Adam and Eve and their fall from grace. But unlike Genesis, Milton re-imagination of this biblical tale is done in such a way that readers are faced with a number of questions.

Sara draws upon the historical context and pre-biblical allusions within the text to identify what these questions are and the impact which these questions have on the reader.

For more information on Paradise Lost, take a look at our useful study guide here;
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Video transcript:

By the time we get to book 9 of John Milton's epic poem, Paradise Lost events are moving to their inevitable climax. I say inevitable, because what happens isn't meant to be a surprise the poem is a dramatic re-imagining of the biblical tale of Adam and Eve and their fall from grace. As the poems opening lines make clear it is the story of man's first disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree.

In Genesis the story of the fall is told in a rather matter-of-fact way, Satan who has adopted the form of a serpent, the subtlest beast in all the land, persuades Eve that eating fruit from the tree of knowledge will bring her wisdom and not bring her death. Eve happily eats the fruit before passing it over for Adam to taste.
Milton's retelling of this story is the first time it's been unpacked in this way and the intimate relationship between the first couple fleshed out. The anonymous fruit from the Bible becomes the Devil’s luscious fair apples. The poem’s asking us to consider Adam and Eve motivations, why when they're given everything will they choose to go against God?

Although published in 1667 when its author was nearly 60, work on the poem had begun many years earlier interrupted by the social and political upheavals of the mid-seventeenth century. Milton's religious views changed throughout his life and the poem was his attempt to justify the ways of God to men and indeed in book 9 although tempted by the serpent, first Eve and later Adam both exercise their free will in their choice to eat the fruit.

Unsurprisingly given Milton's classical education Paradise Lost is packed with allusions to pre-biblical mythology as well as to the biblical characters themselves when Eve persuades Adam that they should split up to work more efficiently the narrator described how she lets go of Adam's guiding hand and disappears into the thicket, like a wood nymph or dryad, deporting herself like Diana goddess of the hunt. But a huntress with rudimentary gardening tools not Diana's bow and arrow, a huntress who will soon be hunted by the devil himself.

The poem asks us to consider whether Eve was weak and vain in succumbing to the Serpent's temptation, was her decision to eat those fair apples down to her being a woman or down to human frailty. Adam is appalled when he learns what she's done, her fatal transgression leaves him amazed, his emotions quickly turned to anger and yet in the end he decides that he too will taste the fruit since to lose her would be to lose himself. However the innocent dynamic between the couple has changed forever they will go on to spend many hours in fruitless arguing, little did they know worse was to come.

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