Essay on Pointing the Finger in John Milton’s Paradise Lost

Pointing the Finger in Paradise Lost subsequently the fall in Miltons Paradise Lost, Adam and Eve flurry and blame one a nonher for their decent. First, Adam accuses Eve for her physical telephone number of accepting the apple from Satan and eating it, thus defying Gods decree not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. In retaliation, Eve responds and attempts to not only justify her act, but also to place the blame on Adam. Eves reaction is typical of someone who does not uniform to admit he is wrong. Eve begins by challenging Adam with an bloodline that he would produce done the same thing had he been in her situation. Hadst thou been there,/ Or here th attempt, thou couldst not have discernd/ Fraud in the Serpent, speaking as he spake (IX 1148-1150). She is trying to justify her action in Adams bewargon by making him view he would have acted the same way, and in effect she also hopes to gain his sympathy. This tactic is often effective because we do not tend to choose to rec ognize faults in others when we realize we are susceptible to the same mistakes. Aristotle recognizes the relationship between eliciting sympathy and making the auditory modality relate to the situation in his Poetics when he describes the ideal character as one who is true to life (81). An audience moldiness be qualified to relate to a falling character, or else they will not mercy his plight. In other words, if a speaker wants sympathy from his audience, he must make them feel his pain. Eve proceeds in her rebuttal with vindication for her action based on the circumstances of the scenario. She argues, No ground of malevolence between us bopn,/ Why hee should me ill of seek to harm (II 1151-1152). She seems to think that a less trusting person would not have listened to the se... ...ccusation that he did not try unexpressed enough to keep her at his fount when he asks, What could I more?/ I warnd thee, I admonishd thee, foretold/ The danger, and the lurking Enemy/ That la y in wait (IX 1170-1172). No matter how developed any one piece of Aristotles triplicity seems, it is useless without the other two parts. If you take a step certify and observe this scene of Paradise Lost with your own experiences in mind, you realize how petty the blame game can be. Eve tries very hard to use persuasion as a finger pointing tool so she can alleviate any guilt of her own. However, she fails. We all must know what it feels handle to fail in an argument, yet we still test situations like these sometimes when we do not want to accept full state for something that has gone wrong. Works Cited Milton, John. Paradise Lost. New York W.W. Norton, 1993.