이종우, "가라": 아담의 역할과 감성적 해석의 짐


Jong-Woo Lee, “Go”: Adam’s Part and the Burden of Emotional Interpretation

Abstract

This essay examines how proper the interpretation of Adam is and how complicated the interpretative contexts are that he has confronted in the separation scene of Paradise Lost Book 9. In this scene Adam debates with Eve over whether they work in different places of Eden. While Eve suggests separation to raise work efficiency, Adam attempts to persuade Eve to work together in terms of the purpose of the work and the prevention of Satan's temptation. After a relatively long debate, Adam reluctantly and curiously consents to find a way in which Eve can labour separately from Adam in favor of her own independence. Allowing Eve to leave at the end of the conversation, Adam says, “For God towards thee hath done his part, do thine.” Here Adam emphasizes that Eve should carry out the work with her own virtue and implies that the potential or actual Fall lies in her responsibility.

However, an important issue remains: “where Adam’s part is.” In fact, Adam has been given gifts, though incomplete, to lead Eve and thus should do his part in a proper way, especially in dealing with the matters of greatly influencing their life in Eden, where Satan is desperately looking for a chance to destroy their happiness. Nevertheless, Adam fails to lead Eve to be together and accordingly lets her be exposed to the circumstances leading to the Fall. This is because Adam makes passionate responses to Eve and drags emotional interpretations into very decisive moments after his persuasive arguments towards her. He tends to miss the point of what he is actually to do by jumbling up rational arguments and emotional interpretations. In Adam’s case, the emotional interpretations are not desirable because they are associated with being dominated by Eve’s process of feeling rather than with understanding her state of mind. Due to the introduction of emotional responses, he suddenly abandons his on-going argument and poses an entirely new issue, which leads to losing the thread of his logic. Conversely Eve proceeds to advocate the necessity and sufficiency of her independence, being epitomized as working alone, taking advantage of Adam’s incorrect emotional interpretation. In the end Adam permits Eve to get her own way and his concession of this results in bringing about the Fall. Adam should have done his part but he fails because of his excessive emotional approaches. For this reason Adam cannot be an embodiment of “heroic martyrdom,” an epic hero proposed in the invocation of Book 9, even though he can be reborn as a great hero of moral warrior by articulating his problems and bearing obviously his responsibilities.


Key Words
John Milton. Paradise Lost, Adam’s part, burden of emotional interpretation, separation scene, process of choice, moral warrior, rhetoric of persuasion