Issue #1 Article#15
Beyond Eden by James Clauss
I am currently writing a paper for
publication in a collection of articles that deal with ancient Mythology and
thought that, in lieu of the usual book review, you might find work in progress
an interesting change. One of the many things I have discovered while working
with ARC is that aspects of my chosen academic discipline connect with issues
central to ARC in fascinating ways. What you will encounter in the following is
not only a part of this on-going project, but also a central point I like to
make in my introduction to the various myth courses I teach: how folktales
work. I shall conclude with what I imagine might be a challenging question to
those of us in search of a return to consciousness.
The
ancient Greek word "mythos," from which we get the English
"myth" means, among other things, "story." Greek
storytellers as far back at least as the second millennium BC handed down many
myths that employed only a limited number of narrative formulas. Comparison
between Greek myths and the traditional tales of other peoples-elated and
unrelated, separated by time, space, and culture--reveals the universality of
these formulas. Among these formulas, we find plots that involve divine
commands that were disobeyed, brothers who fought for power, sons who vied with
their fathers and mothers with their daughters, wicked step-mothers who
oppressed their step-children, heroes on various sorts of quests, many of which
involve trips to the underworld literally or figuratively, women who assist and
in many cases marry the heroes on a quest, brides who are won in contests, and
so on. As for the functions that such traditional tales might perform, some
explain the origin and evolution of the world as we know it or account for some
cultural fact or meteorological phenomenon; some preserve in the form of a
story the fictional accounts of the history of the storyteller's people; others
offer moral instruction or entertainment to their audience.
I would like
to show how one motif, that of a divine command disobeyed, has been used in
stories that perform two of these different functions mentioned above (the
first and third), with a surprise modern parallel added at no extra cost! I
begin at the beginning: the story of Adam and Eve. Soon after their creation,
God gave the celebrated first couple clear instructions: "You may eat
indeed of all the trees in the garden. Nevertheless of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil you are not to eat, for on the day you eat of it you
shall most surely die." In terms of the folktale motif, the moment God
uttered these words Adam and Eve were doomed. To my knowledge, there exists no
story in which a command is given that is completely respected: once upon a
time God/the gods/a king forbade the doing of X and thereafter X was never
done. Not only would such a plot frustrate our expectations but it would almost
seem to go against human nature: if something is forbidden it must have some
value and therefore we feel the need to obtain it. The longing for items of
value, whether they consist of knowledge, treasure, power, immortality, etc.,
is a universal experience, an essential feature of our survival instinct, I
would imagine. Moreover, success in achieving the forbidden fruit, whatever it
is, typically leads to two further universal experiences: guilt and punishment.
"Then the serpent said to the woman, 'No, You will not die! God knows in
fact that on the day you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like
gods, knowing good and evil.'" So Eve and then Adam ate an apple from this
tree and came to know good and evil, in addition to shame.
The specific
results of their act of disobedience are interesting to consider: The serpent
would from then on crawl, which presumes that it moved differently before, and
would be hated by humans thereafter ("I will make you enemies of each
other: you and the woman, your offspring and her offspring"). As for Eve,
she and all women after her will experience pain in childbirth and will be
subordinate to their husbands, which, given that this is a punishment, presumes
that the author rather interestingly views the subjugation of women by men as
something bad. Adam's punishment will be the struggle for survival
("Accursed be the soil because of you. With suffering shall you get your
food from it every day of your life.") and eventual death ("… until
you return to the soil, as you were taken from it"). The story serves the
first function mentioned above. The author attempts to explain the world as he
knew it: snakes crawled and were hated, women experienced pain in childbirth
and were under the power of their husbands, food sources and supplies were
difficult to find and maintain, and people did not live forever. As such, this
story is a pre-scientific account of the nature of life articulated through the
motif of a divine command disobeyed.
The collection
of tales assembled by the Brothers Grimm includes many examples of the third
function mentioned above, which I call pre-educational, a story meant to
entertain and/or instruct. In the fairytale "Our Lady's Child," the
Virgin Mary rescued a young girl from poverty by bringing her into heaven. One
day, as Mary was about to go on a long trip, she gave the girl thirteen keys to
as many doors with the command that she not look into the thirteenth. After
finding that there was an apostle behind each of the twelve doors, her
curiosity to learn what was behind the thirteenth got the better of her and she
looked inside. She saw the Trinity in all of its glory. When Mary returned, the
little girl refused to own up to what she had done and, as her punishment, she
was sent back to earth without the ability to speak, and lived in a thick forest
until she was a woman of marriageable age. One day a king found her while
hunting and, as typically happens in fairytales, he fell in love with her. They
eventually married and, after the first child was born, Mary appeared, returned
her ability to speak, and asked: did you look into the thirteenth door? The
girl denied it and the baby, a son, was taken. The king's court was sure that
their queen had eaten her son, but the king maintained his wife's innocence.
There followed two more births (a son and a daughter) and, still refusing to
admit her guilt, both children were taken by Mary. At this point, the king
could not help his wife any longer. Condemned to die at the stake, as the
flames were about to consume her she regained her voice and shouted out that
she did look into the thirteenth door, at which point Mary sent a storm to put
out the flames and restored the three children. The woman lived happily ever
after.
"Our
Lady's Child" does not explain how the earth came into being or how humans
in general fell from grace, nor does it give an account of the origins or early
history of a specific people. Rather, its purpose is made clear in its concluding moral: "He who repents his
sin and acknowledges it is forgiven." The educational value of the story
is explicit and, what is more, the happy ending validates the lesson we are
meant to learn. This same folktale motif can even be found in a popular
children's song, and one that imitates the function of pre-scientific tales in
its concluding pseudo-etiology: the
saga of Bunny Foo Foo!
Here comes Bunny Foo Foo
Hopping down the forest
scooping up the field mice
And boppin' 'em on the head.
Down came the good fairy and she said:
Little Bunny Foo Foo, I don't want to see you
Scooping up the field mice
And boppin' 'em on the head.
I'll give you three chances.
And if you don't behave
I'll turn you into a goon."
Driven by a
deep-seated urge to bop small feral rodents on the head, Foo Foo, true to the
motif and apparently of a violent nature, ignores the divine command and is
turned into a goon, whence comes the phrase, as we learn at the end of the
song, "Hare today, Goon tomorrow." While there is little educational
value in the song — on the contrary Bunny Foo Foo has achieved a sort of heroic
status in his steadfast refusal to comply with the good fairy's assumption of
autocratic authority and unwanted paternal protection of field mice — children
enjoy singing the song. What is more, the etiological conclusion — a farcical
explanation of the phrase "Here today, gone tomorrow" — reveals the
extent to which this motif is associated with accounting for origins.
Returning to
the story of Adam and Eve, life after Eden appears to be primarily dualistic.
Before the fall, Adam and Eve did not know — nor could they have known — the
meaning of either good or evil. Only after they experienced punishment for
their disobedience could they assign a value to behavior and its consequences
that was positive or negative. Similarly, they could not have known love without
experiencing hate, truth without falsity, beauty without ugliness, cold without
hot, wet without dry, tall without short, satiety without hunger, and they
would not have understood the value of life without an awareness of death. If,
hypothetically speaking, our first parents had never disobeyed God's command,
they would have lived forever in a state of complete fulfillment but would
never have been able to comprehend or appreciate it without an awareness of its
opposite. While acquiring the knowledge of opposites brought Adam and Eve
suffering and ultimately death, it also taught them the significance of
goodness and of life, without which they would be stuck in an eternal
childhood, incapable of appreciating creation in its richness and diversity, living
in a vacuous state that offered no opportunities to grow.
So herein lies an interesting quandary.
We live in a fundamentally dualistic world but long to return to consciousness,
a sort of prelapsarian (i.e., before the fall) state where oppositions disappear.
Were we to achieve this state, should we arrive at a form of existence beyond
good and evil, if we were able to regain Eden, would we thereafter be able to
know or appreciate that we were happy once its opposite, unhappiness, was no
longer able to be conceived? I for one would give it a try!