Diaries of Adam and Eve- Mark Twain

Diaries of Adam and Eve

By Mark Twain

            I found the Diaries of Adam and Eve to be interesting. Twain has an unordinary account on the classic biblical story of Adam and Eve. I found it to be ingenious for him to tell the story in a diary format from the opposing perspectives of both Adam and Eve. The diary entries are kept light and playful and they allow gender differences to be distinguished.

            In Adam’s first diary entry, I thought it was interesting how when he and Eve first met or rather saw each other; he was not as intrigued with her as she was with him. He states that he is not used to company and yet he still would rather not have any company- “I wish it would stay with the other animals”. Though Adam is lonely, he seems to prefer it that way.

Eve’s first diary entry describes her being afraid of Adam at first. She explains that she is afraid he is going to chase her and possibly try to kill her. I thought this was funny because she ends up chasing him up a tree. Eve chasing Adam up a tree was what I thought was a nice rendition of the game of cat and mouse that men and women or girl and boys who like each other often play. This was a coy way for Twain to start developing their relationship.

            As the story goes on, Adam describes becoming annoyed with Eve for naming everything. He is annoyed that she needs to have a name and explanation for everything, and he feels that once she names something it is set and stone. Eve believes she is taking a burden off of Adam’s shoulders by naming everything; she thinks that he is perhaps uneducated or unable to name things and she would rather do it so as to not cause him any embarrassment. Eve wants to please Adam, it she is kind and caring which attributes to many qualities of the female gender. Eve also is persistent with her efforts to make Adam like her and accept her company which can also correlate to females today as many of them are persistent in their efforts to obtain the affection of males. I also found it very fitting that Eve seemed to analyze Adam’s every move; just as most females do now. It seems that when any of my friends go on dates with males of their interest, they come home and they discuss every word that was said and they even analyze their body language as if it were all encoded to mean something, some secret message that the boy wanted to say but wouldn’t outright say. It is silly, but most females do it and in most cases all of the body language and words said between them and the boy don’t correlate with anything we came up with when we were analyzing them.  

            Eve encounters the snake, which represents evil Satan, who tells her to eat the apples though Adam advised her not too. As any strong woman would, she ignored his advice and listens to the snake and ate them and in fact brought the apples to Adam as a kind gesture to feed him. Though it was against his principle, he too ate the apples. Since they ate the apples, Adam lost his property and they now have to work to live in the Garden of Eden. Adam finally admits enjoying Eve’s company and says he would be lonely without her. Do you think that Adam learned to tolerate Eve or that he did like her all along but did not want to follow his feelings?

            The last diary entries by both Adam and Eve recall their time in the Garden of Eden and of their relationship. Eve describes, “The Garden is lost, but I have found him, and am content. He loves me as well as he can; I love him with all the strength of my passionate nature, as is appropriate to my nature.” This quote really stood out to me and got me to thinking if loving someone with all of their nature is truly only appropriate to the female gender? I think not. Do you think that Eve loved Adam more than he loved her? Do you think that she put more into the relationship and valued the relationship more than he did? Why or why not?

            I love that Eve goes on describing that she doesn’t know why she loves him. It is not due to his belongings or his accomplishments or even his lack of such things. She has no distinct or single reason why she loves him. I agree with her that love is unexplainable. We don’t really know or understand why we love people, we just do. For whatever reasons, we love people and people either love us back or we don’t. I find it nearly impossible to explain love due to its many forms and differences. Love is love and I love that!