Eve's Dream

In the fifth book of "Paradise Lost", Adam attempts to console Eve after she has had a disturbing dream that she eats fruit from the tree, the only thing that God told Adam and Eve not to do and would result in the greatest form of disobedience against God. He says to her,

 " Yet be not 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.

Be not disheartened then nor cloud those looks 

That wont to be more cheerful and serene 

Than when fair morning first smiles on the world!" (5.116-124)

Here Adam is telling Eve not to worry about her dream that she had because dreams are not reality. He more or less tells her that just because she dreams something does not mean that she will act upon it. Dreams and inner thoughts do not depict the future, Adam reassures Eve. We briefly talked about this topic in class and the question was asked, "Does society believe that it is possible to have thoughts that do not lead to action?" Everyone has heard of the idea that there is a consequence for everything and that to every cause there is an affect. However, I find this notion interesting in the context to which I personally believe that society views someone's thoughts and their correlation to action. I think that people in society have the capacity to have thoughts which detail them doing horrible things without then following through and acting upon them but it seems to me that society does not always tend to believe this.  

 The idea of a school shooter came up during our discussion and I found that to be really interesting because we discussed the idea that a shooting in that sense is usually premeditated and there now seems to be a typical profile of a school shooter. This conversation reminded me of the book that I read called 19 Minutes by Jodi Picoult. This book examines the aftermath of a school shooting and unlike many other depictions of a massacre such as this one, this novel exposes both sides of the story through telling about the victims lives as well as the life of the shooter. Picoult explains about the shooter's childhood, how he grew up, what his everyday life was like, what drove him to shoot all those people. By doing this, Picoult becomes like Milton in the sense that she is humanizing the "demon" of the story and taking a character that most people see as pure evil and drawing parallels to the reader's life which makes it so that the readers can see themselves in the "demon" character; something that would make most people uncomfortable. However in the end you realize that this kid was someone like you or me but after being beaten so many times by society he finally had enough and fought back in the only way that he knew how. Now I am not saying that that in anyways justifies what Peter, the shooter in the story did or that I believe Satan's disobedience towards God was right but in both cases as you hear the justification from this so-called monster then it makes its easier to understand their view point and to see how they viewed this solution to be the best or in come cases the only solution that would provide relief. 

Especially in the book 19 Minutes, other school shootings, and other events in history that have resulted in tragedy and have been at the fault of one person, such as Satan's fall from heaven it seems that people try to go through and make sense in the aftermath of these tragedies. No one wants to believe that sometimes a person can just snap and cause so much harm or upset so they try to link it back to a person's inner thoughts; they look for clues in their art or their writing or behavior. It seems to me that people have become so sensitive to this ever-looming threat that whenever there is a possible danger they overreact and try to fix a situation that may never escalate. This seems ironic because most people overlook a cry for help such as what happened with Peter in 19 Minutes and what is happening with Eve in "Paradise Lost" and it seems that that is when you get catastrophic events like a loss of paradise.  

I think that it is interesting that Adam tells Eve that she still has "reason as chief" (5.102). He tells her that she still has reason and logic in reality that will prevent her from committing this horrible sin of eating from the tree yet we all know that Eve does in fact eat from the tree and I wonder what causes her to do this. What is it that steps in the way of her reason? Is it the same thing that cause Satan and other people who have committed great sins do what they did? 

In my opinion it is people like Satan and Eve that have caused people in our society to be so cautious of the danger of another's thoughts but it would be unfair to say that all people who say there are going to do something drastic or have a premonition that they are going to do something drastic are going to act on that. There are many people who probably have dreams similar to Eve's they are just never heard of because they don't ever pan out.