Religious motifs : Overview. Search. About religious motifs
See also Cherub
Keywords:
Origin, God, paradise, piece, Adam and Eve, innocense, immortality, eternity
Description of this motif: When Adam and Eve broke God's law in the Garden of Eden and ate the forbidden fruit from the tree of Knowledge, they were abandoned from the Garden. The Fall is a myth, that offers an explaination to some of the facts of life: the suffering in order to stay alive and to give birth and that you will eventually die. These facts are, according to the myth, regarded as a divine punishment for man's obedience. It is interesting, that the myth also shows that curiousity and striving, in short desire, is a fundamental human charateristic, and that man actually won something by the violation, which may also be regarded as a necessary sacrifice, of the law, that is knowledge, the ability to distinguish. Cf. Genesis, 3.
Example :
The romance of the earth is truly the most fascinating of all romances. It's a shame we can't read the first parts of it; but they're written in a language we haven't learned yet; we have to dig away among strata and rocks, puzzling out bits here and there from the early acts of earth's drama. The acting persons of the drama, old Mr. Adam and Mrs. Eve, don't make their entrance before the sixth act; that's far too late for many impatient readers, who want them to come on stage right away, but it's all the same to me.
Comment on this quote: The divergence of the Bible's Genesis and modern, secular science is the theme here. Andersen and protagonists in his works often voted for faith and feeling against cold rationality, but not in this case.
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