So they’ve been kicked out of the garden.

God curses them to live in hardship (and have to go through menstruation and horribly painful childbirth). So of course Eve is tempted by a snake to eat the fruit and then Adam eats it as well. The two are allowed to eat anything they could ever want in the garden EXCEPT for the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (also, I think it’s funny that they’re forbidden from consuming knowledge- implies that tenets involve blindness). Adam is all lonely and none of the animals can satisfy his … “needs” (?!!), so God makes a woman person out of Adam’s rib (I find it interesting that the order is man, animals, woman). In pretty much any work of literature that our AP Literature class has read this year, from Winesburg, Ohio to Frankenstein to Hamlet to Invisible Man, the “original” man and woman have surfaced to make our class question meaning of the work in relation to this biblical story.Īs we have learned from various allusion presentations, the story is told in Genesis, beginning with the creation of Adam, the first man, from the dust (which if anyone is interested, is very visually fascinating in a claymation version of Mark Twain’s life- I can’t remember the name of the movie but it is really really interesting) and giving him life.

It is one of the most basic stories in the bible and also, of course, one of the most prevalent allusions in literature. The story of Adam and Eve is one that almost everyone hears about in childhood, regardless of religion or culture.

Eve of illusion