I simply cannot bear to be without her.
I really shouldn’t have let her leave my sight when she wanted to go alone to tend the Garden, but she so forcefully insisted that we divide the work between us. What could I say? Though now, I face the consequences. To be alone like this, away from my beautiful Eve, is some kind of a death sentence.
I cannot stand to be without her.
God must have made us to be together. That must be true, for without me by her side, she could not resist the temptation to eat the apple, and without her,…well, I am a terrible mess. Tell me, is this love? I had this strong desire to keep her safe-- to protect her from the dangers of letting her wander through Eden alone-- even though she thought I was over-protective. I know she believes she can do everything by herself and that I don’t need to stand by her 24/7, but the truth is, neither of us can stand without the other. I had a feeling she wouldn’t be able to resist, though a small part of me wanted to give her some space. I regret it now.
I don’t know what to do, but I know that she is the only Eve I want to be with.
God could create a different Eve from my rib. He could mold her with my flesh and construct her with my bones, but our hearts, our souls, would never match. My heart will forever be with Eve, and hers with mine.
These feelings must be love, for I cannot find another term to explain it. We support each other, and right now, I need to be with her. I must leave this world of paradise to be with her.
I must.
-Adam
Analysis:
In writing Adam’s diary entry, I wanted to encapsulate both the obvious and less obvious aspects of his character. I used the lead-up to Adam’s Fall as my starting point for his diary entry, specifically, the lines where Adam states, “How can I live without thee, how forgoe / Thy sweet Converse and Love so dearly joyn’d, / To live again in these wilde Woods forlorn? / Should God create another Eve, and I / Another Rib afford, yet loss of thee / Would never from my heart; no no, I feel / The Link of Nature draw me: Flesh of Flesh, / Bone of my Bone thou art, and from they State / Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe" (9.908-9.916). I found these lines particularly interesting for how they represent Adam’s feelings for Eve. I tried to translate this to Adam’s diary entry, focusing on his deep attachment to Eve on both an anatomical and soulful level. I also drew inspiration from earlier lines in Book 9 (lines 205 through 269), where Eve shows her love for work and desire to be independent while Adam argues that they should stay together to tend the Garden, revealing his value for love (and potentially his feeling of superiority over Eve).
My piece takes fragments of what I gained from the interaction/argument between Adam and Eve and Adam’s deliberation over whether he should eat the apple, utilizing love as the glue which binds these together. Through this, I realized that Adam does seem to value love, specifically, romantic love, for if he didn’t, he probably would have been fine living in paradise and letting God create another Eve for him. I portrayed Adam as being less condescending towards Eve than what he may have seemed when he said, “The Wife, where danger or dishonour lurks, / Safest and seemliest by her Husband stairs, / Who guards her, or with her the worst endures" (267-269). Compared to Adam’s diary entry, where he claims to truly care about Eve’s safety and believes that neither of them can stand without the other, the lines I drew partial inspiration could be read as Adam stating that Eve isn’t sufficient to stand and that she needs Adam to be strong enough. Still, I attempted to portray the side of Adam which feels that Eve was more susceptible to Falling. I want to give readers room to interpret Adam’s comments in his diary entry as they see fit, but I feel that in my piece, the subtleties of Adam’s character are more apparent. For instance, while he does exhibit controlling qualities and instances of condescending statements in his interactions with Eve, he is also a character that loves Eve deeply (at a soulful level). He would do just about anything to stay with her. He also appears quite vulnerable in this diary entry, an aspect of his character that may not have been as clear in Paradise Lost but is more easily seen in his diary entry, where his thoughts would supposedly remain private.