1. Dear John Miller;
Congratulations! Your Senior Exit Portfolio has been positively reviewed. You are one step
closer to graduating as an English major from Georgia State University.
The faculty in the English Department take the Senior Exit Portfolio very seriously. Each is
reviewed by two tenured faculty members, who carefully read through your reflective statement
and take great care in evaluating the individual samples of your work.
Your assessment numbers were:
interpretation 5
writing 5
understanding 4.5
Overall 5
In addition to the numerical score for your portfolio that the department uses exclusively to
assess our own curriculum, the readers of your portfolio offered the following brief comments.
You should approach these comments as candid, constructive advice about both your work at
Georgia State and the areas where you might need to improve further:
The reviewers said:
HIGH PASS. Your reflective essay provides a lucid and beautifully written account of learning to
write well, and the essays you have included in the portfolio bear out your claims. If anything,
you are too generous with your account of your shortcomings, as your essays show close
attention to how language and figuration work. I especially enjoyed reading your essay on
literature and alchemy because it constructed a persuasive argument from such diverse examples.
Excellent work!
John: Your portfolio contains very well-written essays that reveal, in turns, your capacity for
research and your considerable abilities as a close reader of literary texts. The latter skill is more
consistently on display in these essays, the best of which is the intricate analysis of reason and its
limitations in the temptations of Adam and Eve books 4 and 9 of Paradise Lost. The alchemy
essay, however, also makes a compelling argument that draws on second ary literary and
historical scholarship. Your reflective essay also contains several welcome moments of humor in
its discussion of your development as a writer.
We hope that the readers' comments are useful as you move forward with your future plans.
Again, congratulations on completing this degree requirement. We are proud of your
achievement and wish you continued success in your future endeavors.

2. John Miller
February 29, 2016
Reflective Essay
Since the beginning of my scholastic career, I’ve never had to look back on my life and write
about what caused my interest in literature and where it would eventually lead me. This portfolio
has been an effective way of getting me to do that. In this essay, I will outline my thought
process when faced with the prospect of compiling material for this portfolio.
There was no single moment I discovered I loved literature. It has always had a place in
my life, like food. Similarly, my appreciation for it has developed over my lifetime in different
ways, such as the first time I empathized with a character, or the first time I was surprised by a
plot twist, or the first time I noticed deliberately-placed symbolism. All of these pleasant
surprises led me to want to read as a habit, for no reason apart from simple enjoyment. I was
lucky to have parents who encouraged me to read and knew what books to recommend to me at
each stage of my mental development, just as I was lucky to go to schools that did the same.
I was always interested in the storytelling, and as I grew older, I gravitated to more
unconventional modes of storytelling. In high school, I was reading a lot of self-conscious fiction
such as existentialism and postmodernism, genres which I didn’t fully understand and which no
one else around me was reading, as far as I knew. I wanted to read complex and nuanced stories,
and I was able to do so in high school literature classes. In some classes we read ancient Greek
plays and epics. I studied Latin in high school, which buttressed my understanding and
comprehension of the English language as my vocabulary grew. None of these classes was very
challenging to me because I liked the subject matter and I always seemed to understand what the
teacher was trying to express, even if I had not noticed before what he or she was highlighting in

3. the text. Because of this, I thought I could enter college as an English major and not have to
work hard, turning my hobby into a diploma.
Of course, this illusion quickly disappeared when I realized English classes in college
would not only involve reading and interpreting texts, but would be writing-intensive as well. I
had not, up until that point, been pushed to write, and my writing skills were frankly subpar.
Early composition classes had me jumping through hoops to express things I had not been able to
express in writing before, and I briefly considered dropping English as a major because of how
difficult those classes were for me. Things began to fall into place with practice, however, and I
decided to stick with the major.
The most challenging type of paper I was required to write was the research paper. I had
my first taste of this in Dr. Robert Burns’ Critical Theory CTW in Fall, 2012, when I had to write
a close explication of any poem of my choice, being sure to quote and cite the poem and its
author in my essay. I chose a poem from the end of a novel called The Possibility of an Island
and practiced quoting it for the first time. In this essay, titled “Close reading of a poem from ‘The
Possibility of an Island’ by Michel Houellebecq,” I experienced issues with pacing my thoughts,
transitioning between them, and discovering the most efficient ways to say things. What helped
me overcome these issues was my choice to begin writing in a personal journal in my free time.
Within a year, I had filled a stack of composition notebooks with general, unstructured thoughts
and musings. As I practiced writing these composition notebooks, I found the act of writing
become simpler and more pleasurable. I was finding ways to say more with fewer words, and
soon writing became much less of a chore than it was a pastime.
This personal exploration, paired with the training from the early college composition
and CTW classes gave me the ability to tackle the unforgiving research papers that were to come

4. in my Junior and Senior years. Finished with all of my rudimentary and preparatory English
classes, research papers in this period were more challenging. I believe my writing developed the
most during this time, beginning with one particularly difficult paper called “Literature and
Alchemy” which was the final paper of a class called Medieval Literature taught by Dr. Robert
Scott Lightsey in Fall, 2013. For the assignment, each student was to choose their own topic
relating to literature during the Medieval period, based either on what had been read during class
or anything else of interest. I chose alchemy because it was a subject that I was and still am
independently interested in, and was partly the motivation behind me taking the Medieval
Literature class in the first place.
The most difficult part of writing this essay was the research. Having chosen such a broad
subject, my challenge was to find not just adequate sources, but diverse sources as well. Because
alchemy has its roots in ancient traditions, it was necessary to include quotes from at least one
article about an ancient text called the Turba Philosophorum. Then, I wanted to choose two
articles written about Chaucer’s Canon Yeoman’s Tale from the fourteenth-century poem The
Canterbury Tales. Finally, at the suggestion of Dr. Lightsey, I pushed further into the
Renaissance for more evidence of alchemy’s impact on literature of that general period, and
found articles discussing significant influence upon the poet John Donne.
The challenge was then to take these diverse sources and stitch them together into a
comprehensive argument. This was daunting because of how different all of my sources were.
Even so, I was able to arrive at the conclusion that literature was the primary medium through
which alchemy developed and that it was less of a pseudoscience than it was an exercise in
symbolic and literary art. Looking over the essay now, I see that I could have stated my thesis
more explicitly in the first paragraph. Also, I might have benefited from bringing together even

5. more sources and citing more authors of the period rather than having Geoffrey Chaucer and
John Donne become emblematic examples of my argument. This use of the authors as emblems
also causes the paper’s readability to suffer. My argument would have flowed better if I had
structured the paper around the central arguments rather than the poets themselves.
Another one of my essays that suffers from a faulty structure is “Figurative Language and
Symbolism in the Play All for Love by John Dryden,” which was the final essay in Dr. Tanya
Caldwell’s Spring 2014 British Drama class. Though this essay was written a semester after
“Literature and Alchemy” there is still no explicitly-stated thesis early on in the essay, causing
the rest of the essay to rely on an argument that remains murky at best. Reading through the
essay, the reader gets a lot of arguments to support a thesis that can only be inferred. On the first
page, I list a few examples of what the “figurative language” in the play accomplishes, but I
don’t unify these observations into a comprehensive argument. Unlike “Literature and Alchemy,”
the paragraphs remain on-topic and concepts are not revisited unnecessarily, which is a good
development, but can be ascribed to the fact that there was only one text to discuss and each
article I cited referred to that text directly, so there wasn’t much of a temptation to scatter
arguments around my sources.
The following Fall, I wrote “The Fatality of Ignorance in Book IX of Paradise Lost,” for
Dr. Stephen Dobranski’s class on John Milton. In that essay, I only had to cite two texts:
Paradise Lost and The Oxford English Dictionary, yet I found my arguments tending towards
disorganization again. On one hand, the essay lacks an all-encompassing thesis. The central ideas
of the thesis are present in the first paragraph, but they’re divided between two sentences that are
not placed next to each other. On the other hand, the paragraphs in this essay are far more self-
contained than they were in previous essays. The subject of each paragraph is mentioned at the

6. beginning of each paragraph, yet many of the paragraphs lack a reference to the paper’s overall
thesis.
My choice of quotes is more effective in this essay as well. In the previous two essays, I
found myself grasping for applicable quotes in the academic journals I chose to cite, often to a
clunky and incongruous effect. In my essay on Paradise Lost, the quotes directly and
unambiguously support the argument I am making. The assignment was designed to encourage
precise wording in the essay, challenging students to “earn” their interpretation of a word used by
Milton by citing the definition it likely had during the time Milton used it. Not only did this help
discipline my own word choice, but it reminded me that words’ meanings change depending on
the era in which they are used.
Between Fall of 2013 and Fall of 2014, there have been both noticeable changes in my
writing as well as enduring bad habits. Of those bad habits, the most prevalent is not focusing my
theses enough, and failing to remind the reader how each argument throughout the essay supports
the thesis. Also, my writing would benefit from more revisions, as I consistently find a
clunkiness to my sentences, sometimes accompanying a monotonous repetition of words. To iron
out my writing, focusing on these aspects in particular could make it more readable on the
sentence level. In the future, I want my writing to reach a level of rhythmic regularity and
exactness of definition that it is easily understandable upon first review, and that I don’t have to
drone on to express whatever point I’m trying to make. If I am able, I would like to use graduate
school as a way to practice my writing skills, as well as to provide a way to continue my English
education. Also, my knowledge of literature is somewhat broad, but not nearly as broad as I
would like it to be. Similarly, I would like to begin to specialize in at least one era or genre of
literature, though I don’t know which one that will be, in order to dig deeper into one subject

7. than I have heretofore been able. Eventually, I’d like to read and write my way to a doctorate,
then use that degree as an excuse to continue never to stop.

8. John Miller
Dr. Burns
ENGL 3040
Fall 2012
Close reading of a poem from “The Possibility of an Island” by Michel Houellebecq
Many of the poem’s mechanisms are lost, being a translation. The poem brings the
subject of the speaker’s life to the forefront. There is the repetition, “My life, my life” which
gives the reader the sense that the speaker is exasperated by his life, or that he’s addressing it
doubly in order to shame it or because he is having trouble coming up with something to say
about it. The life is his “very old one” meaning either that he’s writing from old age or he feels
that his life has gone on for a long time. Then comes: “My first badly healed desire/ My first
crippled love.” These are either continuations of the idea about life, or they are addresses to
events in his life. He could be talking about either or both. The last line of the first stanza
confirms that he’s addressing a “you” and that the “you” is returning from somewhere. This
stanza overall gives a sense of nostalgia, beginning with the broadness and oldness of the
speaker’s life, the introduction of the nostalgic moments of badly healed desire and crippled
love, and the suspense of the return of all of this. The second stanza is a shift in tone. He begins
to pontificate, “It is necessary to know/What is best in our lives.” This gives the reader a sense
that the poem is not as lamenting as it first appeared to be and that the speaker is trying to see the
good in his life. He answers himself immediately, suggesting the best thing in life is “When two
bodies play at happiness/Unite, reborn without end.” This is a very enigmatic, abstract
statement. The reader wonders if the “bodies” are human bodies or just any kind of body. The
bodies’ actions are to “play at happiness” then “unite” which results in being “reborn without

9. end.” Could he be talking about courtship, copulation and procreation? Possibly, but, again, the
ambiguity leaves the passage open to many interpretations. The first two stanzas have each been
full sentences, complete statements in and of themselves, but the third sentence begins with the
third stanza and ends with the fourth, making the last two stanzas one complete statement. The
statement begins, “Entered into a complete dependency,” which makes the reader think the
speaker is still talking about the two bodies from before, until, in the second line, the subject of
the sentence is introduced, “I”, which reminds the reader that the speaker is talking about his
own life. So, “in complete dependency,” he knows “the trembling of being” and “the hesitation
to disappear.” These two lines mirror the two middle lines of the first stanza, the “badly healed
desire” and “crippled love,” iterating the anguished attitude of the speaker toward life. Then,
suddenly, an image: “Sunlight upon the forest’s edge.” This image is very dubious because there
have been no allusions to the sun or to a forest, so the reader is left to fill the gaps. The only line
so far that could refer to a forest is the “trembling of being” line, because trees tremble in strong
wind. In the final stanza, the speaker is still detailing what he knows. Beginning the line with
“And love,” gives the reader a sense of finality, that love will be the final thing he talks about. It
also gives the reader the idea that love is the subject of the poem and what the speaker really
wants to talk about. His attitude toward love is no mystery. Love is “where all is easy/ Where all
is given in the instant.” Still speaking about what he knows, the speaker begins the final
statement, “There exists in the midst of time,” which brings a particularity to the subject. The
finished thought, “The possibility of an island” gives the reader a sense of finality, a kind of
quasi-catharsis, and puzzlement. What island? Maybe an island away from life.

10. John Miller
Dr. Lightsey
ENGL 3300
Fall 2013
Literature and Alchemy
Alchemy’s best aspect is its literature. While the discipline is commonly thought of as a
science, this aspect of it is in fact secondary to its orientation in manuscripts. Alchemy is a
discipline concerned with both the material and spiritual, the numinous and concrete. It portrays
these separate orientations in different ways, sometimes masking its material concerns in lofty
and spiritual language while other times using its materiality as mere metaphors for its spiritual
occupations. Both combinations of the two aspects breed very interesting literary works and
literary analysis is best equipped to understand the works’ depictions of the overlaps of these two
aspects of reality.
To study alchemy, one must look at various manuscripts from various eras and look at the
development of the thoughts and practices of the alchemists who wrote them but to truly
understand alchemy one must look beyond the theory and practice and look straight into the soul
of the art. Alchemists are always writing scathing critiques of past philosophers in order to
redeem alchemy from false alchemists, yet at the same time encrypting their doctrines in esoteric
poems and formulae, keeping to a strict code of secrecy about the discipline’s central truths.
Though these refutations are common, alchemy does retain a somewhat consistent codification
throughout its evolution. The purist and secretive behavior of alchemists is central to the
understanding of what alchemy is and what it is trying to do. It is an occult art, meaning it is

11. hidden and obscure, and being so, it takes painstaking study into its literature to glean its hidden
messages.
In this essay, we will make a far-reaching tour of alchemical manuscripts and English
literature of the Medieval and Renaissance periods. We will look at the similarities and
differences between certain alchemical writings to hopefully gain a deeper insight into the way
alchemists and authors thought and tried to communicate what alchemy was and, along the way,
learn why alchemy is literary it its best and criminal at its worst.
The first of these manuscripts to be mentioned in this essay is the Turba Philosophorum
because it is considered one of the earliest European alchemical texts and because of its here-
pertinent take on what alchemy is. As Plessner notes of another theorist named Ruska, the Turba
Philosophorum is not so much a treatise on alchemy as it is “a polemical book attacking the
Greek alchemists and aiming at a liberation of alchemy from the plague of substituted names,
basing it on a universally recognized natural philosophy.” (Plessner 332). It is significant because
it is no more than a compendium of Arabic ideas of philosophy and cosmology (appropriated
within the frame of what is understood as alchemy), taken within the context of Greek ideas and
translated for European readership. Its date of publication is not precisely known, but it is
thought to have been written around 900AD. The text consists of multiple writings by
preeminent Greek and Arabic philosophers about the nature of materiality, and presents itself as a
sort of meeting of minds, minds which do not ever come to a singular consensus but agree on
certain points. Whereas both the concept of the four elements (earth, air, fire, water) and the
concept that the physical world consists entirely of combinations of these four elements make
their way into the alchemical discourse in this text, the concepts’ origins are exogenous to
alchemy and are rooted more in Athenian (Platonic and Aristotelian) philosophy. As well, the

12. Turba features the seemingly eternal maxim “That which is above is equal to that which is
below; that which is below is equal to that which is above,” a central idea in alchemy and many
other occult traditions. The Turba then is a good snapshot look at the state of established
philosophers’ opinions of so-called alchemical thought circa 900 in both the Greek and Arabic
worlds, the latter proposing that alchemy wasn’t--or shouldn’t be--quite what the Greeks said it
was. It wasn’t a “plague of substituted names” but a more general approach to understanding the
world based on natural philosophy.
Changing pace and skipping centuries, we look at an author’s literary commentary on the
discipline: Geoffrey Chaucer and his Cannon’s Yeoman’s Tale (1475). S. Foster Damon provides
a very good argument in favor of Chaucer’s understanding of alchemy in his article, even going
so far as to call Chaucer an alchemist, backing the claim with quotes such as alchemist Elias
Ashmole’s remark that Chaucer “is ranked amongst the Hermetik Philosophers...” (Damon 782)
(Hermeticism being an occult philosophy closely related to Alchemy). Without getting into too
much detail, Cannon’s Yeoman’s Tale depicts alchemist characters who are, as Plessner notes,
“the dupe of [their] own hopes, and the duper of the hopes of others” respectively (783); they are
swindlers and liars. Paradoxically, at the end, there are “fifty-four lines sympathizing with real
alchemy” (783), framing the rest of the Tale as an example of false alchemy. Here, as in the
Turba, we get a run-down of what alchemy is not and a call for a more liberated and enlightened
view of the subject. The Tale:
If your eyes cannot see well, look that your mind lack not its sight. For though you stare and look
never so widely, you shall not gain a mite in that business, but lose all that you can borrow, beg,
or steal.

13. This is an indictment of the practice of alchemy without the understanding of what
Chaucer thinks of as alchemy’s true value: a good understanding of the metaphors hidden in
alchemical texts--texts which are not meant to be taken literally, but read metaphorically. What is
called “The Philosopher’s Stone” or “The Great Work” is disguised in many different forms
throughout all alchemical literature, never quite the same each time, but there is always this
adherence to the metaphorical format of its communication. Unfortunately, the reason we cannot
guess at what Chaucer calls the “secret of secrets” (which is some singular profound truth) is that
initiates were bound by oath to never speak it. As the alchemist Jabir (Gerber) from the Turba
states, “...wise men of our time have by their own industry found out this science, but would not
by word or even by writings discover it to such men because they are unworthy of it”. Tale again:
...the dragon should be understood mercury and nothing else, and by his brother, brimstone,
which is drawn out of sol and luna. “And therefore,” he said, “take heed to my saw, let no man
busy him in this art, unless he can understand all the mind and speech of philosophers if he do, he
is a foolish man. For this knowledge and this cunning is of the secret of secrets, by God.
These proclamations by Chaucer imply a few things about alchemy. Chaucer’s focus on
alchemy is not in the texts, formulae and organized philosophy, but in the mind of the individual
above all else. For Chaucer, to understand anything written of or about alchemy, one must
understand the writer’s mind, which brings what is commonly thought of as a science into the
literary realm and even beyond that into the realm of individual perception. This separates the
philosophers from the petty proto-chemists who were trying to make a quick buck off of the
whole ‘lead into gold’ thing by the process of what Chaucer calls “multiplying” (counterfeiting,
essentially).

14. These two examples are wildly different in many ways: they were written centuries apart
from one another, they were written by a group of Arabic philosophers and an English author
respectively and one is a serious work of alchemy by alchemists while the other is a perspective
on alchemy by an author who is not himself an alchemist, but who is somewhat well-versed in
alchemy. Drawing two distinct pieces together like this creates a very start contrast, but I put
them side-by-side not because of their differences but because of their similarity. Both name and
describe false alchemy and false alchemists, denouncing their works and both hint at a correct
alchemy, a pure one. If one were to read numerous texts from this general period, one will notice
this tendency among alchemical writers. There is always painstaking effort taken to nit pick the
aspects of the previous work thought incorrect or misleading from other aspects that the new
work then adopts for itself.
Continuing to look at a more literary perspective of alchemy, the poet John Donne
provides many an interesting take on alchemy in his poetry. In fact, as Mazzeo states, “some of
his poetry is virtually incomprehensible without a knowledge of alchemical theory” (Mazzeso
104). Again, in Mazzeo’s article, we have a reiteration of the importance of the understanding of
alchemy rather than its practice, where he states “A mastery of its philosophical basis was
essential for a mastery of the Hermetic art.” (104). Mazzeo also notes an important concept in
this particular era of alchemical philosophy, the idea that a man is a projection of the entire world
in a smaller form. This is one thing that is meant by the quote I mentioned earlier, “as above, so
below”. Donne:
If all things be in all/ As I thinke, since all, which were, are and shall,/ Bee, be made of the same
elements:/ Each thing, each thing implyes or represents./ Then man is a world; in which
Officers/Are the vast ravishing seas; and Suiters,/ Springs; now fill, now shallow, now dry;

15. This idea of Microcosm and Macrocosm also extends into the realm of astrology (another ancient
art that predates these manuscripts). In the Medieval and Renaissance understanding of the
cosmos, there were only seven extraterrestrial planets. These planets symbolized seven different
stages in the “great work” or the creation of the Philosopher’s Stone, which was a unified
substance often symbolized as the Sun (which itself is a symbol of unity). Donne’s opinion of
alchemy was much like Chaucer’s in that he saw most alchemists as being self-deluded or
deluders of others. Donne in Love’s Alchymie:
Some that have deeper digg’d loves Myne then I,/ Say, where this centrique happiness doth lie:/ I
have lov’d, and got, and told,/ But should I love, get, tell, till I were old,/ I should not finde that
hidden mysterie;/ Oh, ‘tis imposure all:/ And as no chymique yet the’Elixer got,/ But glorifies his
pregnant pot,/ If by the way to him befall/ Some odoriferous thing, or medicinall,/ So, lovers
dreame a rich and long delight,/ But get a winder-seeming summers night.
Here we see Donne making a similar statement as Chaucer in Cannon’s Yeoman’s Tale,
that alchemists are less interested in doing good work than they are in making money. The
difference between Donne’s and Chaucer’s attitudes is that Donne doesn’t seem to think that
there is any true alchemical way and that all alchemists are simply chasing shadows with their
study of alchemy.
When we look at and analyze the literature surrounding the cultural phenomenon known
as alchemy, we get the sense that all that the discipline really contributed to humanity was a few
of the earlier rudimentary chemical formulas for things ranging from balm to counterfeit coins.
Alchemy really blighted humanity by breeding a “social pestilence” of deluded con men. Even

16. alchemists themselves could not steer away from the idea that most alchemists were plain wrong
about what they were studying, and sometimes (in the case of Jabir and Chaucer) suggesting at a
true form of alchemy. Others, such as Donne, were not so optimistic about there even being a
true form. A notable disadvantage of this “secret of secrets” is, that if it is not shared, it will die
with the minds in which it is kept secret. If this central notion of alchemy is so valuable, then
surely they would have taken steps to ensure its longevity. Perhaps the most valuable thing
alchemical writing has provided is the literature that sprung out of its interpretation. Chaucer and
Donne are much more well-known than Jabir or other authors of manuscripts I have not named
(Paracelsus, Sendivogius) because their writing is more immediate and beautiful than the more
bare-bones writings of the early alchemists.
As the science of manipulating the outside world developed, alchemy’s more material
concerns became outdated, but the peculiar way in which they codified their ideas remained in
the forms of preserved texts of poetry and of philosophical inspiration. The poetry and literature,
therefore, turns out to be one of the more immortal and valuable aspects of alchemy as it has
survived today because it provides fertile ground for interpretation and supplies an endless
vocabulary to assist with literary daydreams.
Works Cited
Damon, S. Foster. "Chaucer and Alchemy." PMLA 39.4 (1924): 782-788. JSTOR. Web. 08
December 2013.
Duncan, Edgar H. "The Literature of Alchemy and Chaucer's Canon's Yeoman's Tale:
Framework, Theme, and Characters." Speculum 43.4 (1986): 633-656. JSTOR. Web. 08
December 2013.

17. ---. "Donne's Alchemical Figures." ELH 9.4 (1942): 257-285. JSTOR. Web. 08 December 2013.
Feinstein, Sandy. "Horsing Around: Framing Alchemy in the Manuscript Illustrations of the
"Splendor Solis"." The Sixteenth Century Journal 37.3 (2006): 673-699. JSTOR. Web. 08
December 2013.
Mazzeo, Joseph A. "Notes on John Donne's Alchemical Imagery." Isis 48.2 (1957): 103-123.
JSTOR. Web. 08 December 2013.
Plessner, M. "The Place of the Turba Philosophorum in the Development of Alchemy." Isis. 45.4
(1954): 331-338. JSTOR. Web. 08 December 2013.

18. John Miller
Dr. Tanya Caldwell
ENGL 3280
30 April 2014
Figurative Language and Symbolism in the Play All for Love by John Dryden
All for Love, a play written for the stage by John Dryden in 1677, is a standalone piece in
Restoration theatre for many reasons. Dryden set out to compose a play different from other
plays he had written in the past, choosing a type of language wholly different from his previous
ones, a form of epic poetry that excluded rhyme. He also incorporated other unconventional
narrative structures and techniques, such as the play’s abandonment of Aristotle’s classical
unities, working to change the then-modern conception of a classical form. The play’s unique
language should be considered in any interpretation of the play, as it is is central to its
effectiveness as a theatrical piece and as a work of literature. The figurative language and the
symbolism in the play are integral because of their reflection of the characters’ environment, and
they often assist as an element of foreshadowing. They also serve to give a more subtle and
effective dimension to the characters’ frequent emoting, and add to sentiments that otherwise
could not be expressed by literal language or gesture. Most importantly, the language of the play
is a reflection of a particular kind of play Dryden wished to write, one free of rhyming couplet
and with controversial changes to the conventions of tragedy. The opening monologues of the
play, delivered by Serapion, a priest, set the tone for the remainder of the play. His monologues
are highly symbolic and figurative and act to cast foreboding on the play proper. The
monologues contain references to the Nile river, which becomes a prominent symbol in the play
with regards to its flooding, and describe the Nile overflowing and bringing with it a bipolar

19. destruction, “Men and beasts were borne above the tops of tress that grew on th’upmost margin
of the watermark,” which is then turned around suddenly, “with so swift an ebb the flood drove
backward,” (Dryden, 276). The imagery of a flood which overwhelms those living things in its
way in one way then changes its direction entirely is a foreshadow of the approaching
psychomachia, and serves as a symbolic basis for that torrential emotion. It is telling, then, that
Alexas comes in and begins to speak of Antony and Cleopatra, suggesting to the audience that
his change of subject is not a detraction from the subject of Serapion’s speech. This rising and
falling imagery is repeated multiple times throughout the play, often during times of stress, such
as when Antony requests those around him to “let me perish; loosened nature/Leap from its
hinges, sink the props of heaven,/And fall the skies, to crush the nether world!” (292). Not long
after this latter quote, Cleopatra and Antony make reference to Caesar and evoke sailing
imagery: “with what haste/Would she let slip her hold, and make to shore,” and a passing
reference to Caesar, “Give to your boy, your Caesar/This rattle of a globe to play withal,” (292)
which foreshadows the trip Antony takes by boat to Caesar in act five. An instance of repeated
symbolism comes in act three when Anthony says “Thou foundest me at my lowest watermark,”
(294) echoing Serapion’s speech at the beginning and giving concrete evidence of the analogy
between Serapion’s speech and his own psychic condition and its eventual outcome. That the
language works on a subliminal level creates a sense of premonition in the audience, who do not
know what will happen but who as a result experience foreboding.
Dryden is well aware that the symbolism is much more effective in expressing the idea
than a literal address or warning would be, beginning Serapion’s speech with the disclaimer,
“Portents and prodigies are grown so frequent that they have lost their name,” (276). What
Dryden is saying with this is that no one figure, not even Serapion, can be turned to for a reliable

20. warning, suggesting instead that phenomena speak for themselves, or that words are somehow
insufficient. As Cleopatra proclaims, “I have loved with such transcendent passion/I soared, at
first, quite out of reason's view/And now am lost above it,” (285). The Latin epigram to the play
by Cicero, roughly translating to, “It is easy, indeed, to criticize some flaming word, if I may use
this expression, and to laugh at it when the passion of the moment has cooled,” (276) expresses
this idea in a different way, suggesting that the literal meaning of any given line in the play can
be interpreted as flat or ridiculous, but it is the feeling behind the language that carries its true
meaning. Because of this, the importance of acting becomes forefront in the production of the
play, and much of the play’s meaning is up to a production’s actors’ interpretations. Since the
language cannot carry itself, actors’ apotheosis of the characters’ sentiments behind the language
would become integral to the production, especially in the eyes of celebrity-savvy Restoration
theater-goers, as “actors contribute as much, if not more, to the meaning of any performance as
much as the playwright does,” (Caldwell, 186). The feeling behind the words does not
necessarily have a fixed quality, however. As Vance points out, “...for the most part Dryden
shapes through his imagery a hostile and fragmented landscape that that precludes our viewing
Antony and Cleopatra’s love and Antony’s behavior through any simplistic or well-defined moral
perspective,” (Vance 422). Vance refers to the predominating sentiment Anthony and Cleopatra
continually refer to as “a constancy Dryden portrays as transcendent,” (422) and the feeling
behind it is often indeed conflicted.
In writing All for Love, Dryden was “concerned with finding less constricting rules,”
(King, 270) which led to his experimentation with language and its role within a plot. In general,
the play has been seen as a point of transition in Dryden’s writing, being that “By the early
1670's, Dryden had begun to be dissatisfied with the heroic play,” (King, 268). He hoped to write

21. something which “produces pity for the hero,” (269) yet “produces no true tragic catharsis”
(270). This lack of cut-and-dry resolution to which Vance refers when he notes the absence of a
“well-defined moral perspective,” (Vance, 422) strengthens the play’s emotional intensity
because, despite the conflict in the play, no parable comfort can be found for the characters or
spectators of the play. The effectiveness of the play’s language lies in what King calls “the
predominance of passion over reason, the heightened language which raises our emotions, and,
most importantly, the achievement of sympathy and compassion for the errors of the main
characters,” (King, 270). King argues that Dryden’s intention in writing the play was “raising the
spectator’s emotions, rather than...the inspection of deeper values,” (270) which, of course, could
be true. More likely, however, is that this aim is precisely the object of value, that instead of the
play being a parable or a lesson, the characters, scenes, and above all, language exist all for love,
so to speak, or for the love of playwriting and language. Of course, he could be correct in
claiming Dryden “...confuses achievement and intent,” (271) in that anyone who went to see the
play could not have the experience of the heightening emotions or the elegance with which the
language propels the plot. As with any play, it is up to the spectator to decide how effective the
playwright is in his intentions, but the longevity of the interest in All for Love and its continued
ability to affect through its unconventional language tells us how many spectators have decided
over the centuries.
Works Cited
Caldwell, Tanya. "Meanings of "All for Love", 1677-1813." Comparative Drama. 38.2/3 (2004):
183-211. JSTOR. Web. 30 April 2014.
Dryden, John. “All for Love; or The World Well Lost" The Broadview Anthology of Restoration

22. & Early Eighteenth-century English Drama. Ed. Canfield, J. Douglas, and Maja-Lisa Von
Sneidern. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 2001. Print.
King, Bruce. "Dryden's Intent in All for Love." College English. 24.4 (1963): 267-271. JSTOR.
Web. 30 April 2014.
Vance, John A. "Antony Bound: Fragmentation and Insecurity in All for Love." Studies in
English Literature, 1500-1900. 26.3 (1986): 421-438. JSTOR. Web. 30 April 2014.

23. John Miller
Dr. Dobranski
English 4150
4 December 2014
The Fatality of Ignorance in Book IX of Paradise Lost
In Paradise Lost, John Milton expands on Biblical myth in order to provide its characters
with more expressive voices, personality and depth so that a reader may intimately understand
their actions. The reasoning Milton provides for their actions is of central importance to the
nature of his view of the actions themselves and what they imply about God and his creations. In
Book IX of Paradise Lost, Milton builds upon the unique decisions that preceded and followed
the downfall of Adam and Eve and comprises three debates: one between Adam and Eve, the
second between Satan and Eve before she tastes the fruit and the third between Adam and Eve
after she tastes the fruit. An appeal to ignorance, which is a form of argument that suggests
something must be true because there is no evidence to the contrary, concludes each of the three
debates. In Book IX, Eve wins her first debate with Adam through an appeal to his ignorance of
what might happen should they work apart from each other. Satan wins the second debate by
appealing to Eve’s ignorance of the consequences of eating the fruit and finally, Eve wins the
third debate with Adam by appealing to his ignorance of the same. Neither Adam nor Eve’s
ignorance is in itself fatal, but a reader of Paradise Lost should understand why Milton chose to
conclude each debate in Book IX with the same kind of argument and ask why such arguments
would ultimately be effective against Adam and Eve.
To begin, a reader must know what Adam and Eve are like from the beginning to the end
of the story and how they each relate to their own ignorance. A reader of Paradise Lost knows

24. everything they need to know about Adam and Eve by Book IX but the way Milton delivers
information about them is deliberately piecemeal because he wants to transmit facts at points
they would be most relevant in the story. For instance, the first time the reader sees Adam and
Eve is in book IV through the eyes of Satan, as Satan has until then been the primary character of
the epic. The reader sees Adam and Eve as they are from the outside: “Godlike erect, with native
honor clad / In naked majesty seemed lords of all” (4.289-90) and observes that they both know
that God “...raised us from the dust and placed us here” (4.416), are both in agreement over the
fact that God loves them and that they are “not to taste that only Tree / Of knowledge” (4.423-
24). The reader then gets a sense of Adam’s ignorance of death when Adam observes that “So
near grows death to life, whate’re death is, / Some dreadful thing no doubt” (4.425-26),
illustrating that his knowledge is quite limited. Beginning in Book V and lasting until the end of
Book VIII, the extent of Adam’s ignorance as well as the intensity of his desire for knowledge is
explored through his conversation with Raphael. Raphael only speaks to Adam in order to warn
him about Satan on behalf of God. Throughout this conversation, Adam is full of questions, only
some of which Raphael answers. Raphael gives rather detailed information about the six days of
creation, and other general facts about the cosmos but God has already told Adam all he needs to
know himself and it is not in hiss interest to fulfill his creations’ desire for knowledge. A reader
may assume that God wants Adam and Eve to remain in a position of relative ignorance because
of this. Raphael provides his own reasoning in Book VIII, saying that God “Placed heav'n from
Earth so far, that earthly sight, / If it presume, might err in things too high,” (8.120-21) but that
eventually, they will be allowed to grow and gain knowledge if they remain faithful to God.
Just as Adam gets most of his information secondhand through Raphael, Eve gets her
information third-hand through Adam and she prefers to hear it accompanied by “conjugal

25. caresses” (8.56), showing that she is averse to simply learning by hearing. In this respect, she is
more ignorant than Adam because she is less receptive to information the way it is dispensed
from Raphael and therefore God. She knows all that Adam knows, but she gains the information
from a further distance.
Despite these limitations, God has been careful to imbue Adam and Eve with certain
faculties that compensate for their lack of knowledge. Foremost of their God-given abilities are
‘will’ and ‘choice’. Choice is also called ‘reason’, for “reason also is choice” (3.108). ‘Will’ is an
ambiguous word that could mean many things, the most likely of which is “inclination,
disposition (to do something),” which is either an inclination to obey God or the opposite
(“Will”). If read negatively it could also mean “bewilderment.” Milton also uses it as a verb
meaning “to choose or decide to do something” when Adam says of Eve that whatever “she wills
to do or say, Seems wisest” (8.549). “Reason” most likely means “that view of things or manner
of proceeding which seems wise, logical, or correct” and “choice” most likely means
“circumspection, judgment, discrimination” (“Reason” and “Will”).
These are attributes Adam and Eve have that make them able to love God genuinely and
at the same time what affords them the ability to disobey God. In Book III that a reader learns
that Adam and Eve have everything they need in order to stay in paradise; he has created them
“Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall” (3.99). This is essential for a reader to understand
that Adam and Eve’s disobedience in Book IX was their decision. God says in Book III that the
conditions of Adam and Eve’s temptation are utterly fair because of the attributes he has granted
them. In other words, there is no valid excuse for their disobedience. But he does not utterly
condemn them, because “man falls deceived / By the other first: man therefore shall find grace”
(3.130-31). This observation qualifies his previous statement about choice, implying that choice

26. is vulnerable to deception, supposedly because deception can be a very strong force. But is their
choice really free if it is vulnerable to deception? Having learned what information has been
given to Adam and Eve, a reader knows that the couple is fully qualified to resist making the
wrong choice, even when they are deceived. Knowing as God does that man will ultimately fall
through “whose fault? / Whose but his own?” (3.97-98), a reader must ask what precise fault it is
through which they fall, and must assume, given what was already discussed, that it is a fault in
their reason, or, in other words, an erroneous choice, and that that choice was not made solely
because they were being deceived, but because of some other fault in their character which they
were able to resist despite the power of deception. Still, God calls will and reason “Useless and
vain” (3.109), suggesting yet another fault leads them to fall.
The faults in question are alluded to and developed throughout the text of Paradise Lost
but their significance becomes fully apparent when Adam and Eve both eat the fruit. Milton
devotes much time into the development of their characters in order to show what factors
inherent in their characters led to them each making the wrong choice. Milton uses Adam’s
account of his own creation in Book VIII to show that Adam is dependent on Eve for
contentment. After God brings Adam into Eden and shows him all of the splendors that make
Eden worthy to be called paradise, Adam is still unsatisfied because he sees that all of the
animals are “Approaching two and two” (8.350) but that he is alone and he wonders “Among
unequals what society / Can sort, what harmony or true delight?” (8.383-84), and that he wishes
for an equal so he can be like the “Lion with Lioness” (8.393). Otherwise he is unable to enjoy
paradise alone. This aspect of his character can be considered a strength as God sees Adam’s
desire for an equal as a sign of his desire to know “not of beasts alone...but of thy self” (8.438-
39). Ironically, a reader knows that it’s precisely Adam’s desire to remain with Eve that leads him

27. to eat the fruit with her, but it is important to recognize that his downfall was not due solely to
his desire for company but that it was wrapped up in his desire for self-knowledge as well. It is
also important to note that for Eve to act as a fit mate for Adam, she must be his equal and not
his subordinate. After she eats the fruit, Adam knows she is no longer his equal. Part of his
motivation for eating the fruit is to become equal to her again.
A major fault in Eve’s character is that she is quite narcissistic. In Book IV, she says that
her first action upon being created was to look into a lake and see her own reflection. Before
knowing she was looking at herself, she was drawn to the image. Then God speaks to her and
leads her to Adam and tells her “he / Whose image thou art, him thou shalt enjoy” (4.471-72),
appealing to her attraction to her own image and attempting to get her to see herself in him. But
when Eve sees Adam, she doesn’t see herself, she sees a face that is “Less winning soft, less
amiably mild” (4.479) and she turns back to the lake. Here there is a dramatic discrepancy
between how Adam sees Eve and how Eve sees Adam. Whereas Adam can see himself reflected
in Eve, Eve does not see herself reflected in Adam, and is therefore less receptive to what he says
and does and what rules he is subject to.
In the first debate in Book IX, she suggests that she and Adam split up to “divide our
labors” (9.214) but her true intentions for splitting up become apparent when she complains that
“Looks intervene and smiles” (9.222), showing that she is less interested in accomplishing more
work than in being alone and not having to see Adam’s face. Adam responds by conceding that
“if much converse perhaps / Thee satiate, to short absence I could yield” (9.247-48), which is a
strange thing for Adam to say, given that he is happiest when he is around Eve. Adam is willing
to concede to Eve’s desire for time alone out of respect for her, but he still has misgivings about
her absence, worrying that Satan, who “somewhere nigh at hand / Watches, no doubt” (9.256-57)

28. and might try to tempt her would be best avoided. Throughout this debate, both Adam and Eve’s
intentions blur as they each presuppose what the other wants and means, showing that, at this
point in the story there is not “Collateral love, and dearest amity” (8.426) but that it is being
disrupted by something in Eve’s character. That disruption becomes clear when she obliquely
reveals she would rather be tempted alone than cower with Adam, and they fall into
disagreement as to whether it is a good idea for her to face temptation. This exchange is full of
suppositions as they are each arguing about a situation they are in total ignorance of. Strangely,
Eve gets Adam to agree to let her go off alone by appealing to that ignorance. She insists that
“our trial, when least sought / May find us both perhaps far less prepared” (9.380-81). This is the
first appeal to ignorance in Book IX. Adam is unable to rebuke Eve’s argument because he does
not have enough information about the tempter to convince her to stay. Eve knows this, and
that’s why it’s an appeal to ignorance. He defers to her reasoning, perhaps because he has already
used all arguments to his knowledge, or perhaps out of love or of overestimation of her reason,
saying that if she thinks they’re “both securer then thus warned thou seem’st / Go” (9.371-72).
One difference between the debate between Adam and Eve and the debate between Satan
and Eve that follows is that Satan argues from a place of knowledge. He knows all about Adam
and Eve from observing them as he did in Book IV, so he is able to play to Eve’s narcissism by
calling her “Empress of this fair world, resplendent Eve” (9.568). Satan’s appeal comes when he
blithely suggests another reason she eat the fruit by asking positively if God will be angry “For
such a petty trespass, and not praise / Rather your dauntless virtue...?” (9.693-94). Again, as in
Adam and Eve’s debate, Eve has no way of arguing against Satan because she does not have the
enough information to form a rebuttal. She asks herself “What fear I then, rather what know to
fear / Under this ignorance of good and evil...?” (9.773-74), showing that her ignorance keeps

29. her from knowing why she should not eat the fruit, and allows her to speculate falsely. She
knows she should not, she just does not know why, and Satan’s suggestions suffice to negate
God’s command by replacing her absence of knowledge with divisive reasoning. Incidentally, the
very nature of her transgression is physical and sensory, which a reader already knows is one of
her weaknesses.
After Eve eats the fruit, she wants to share it with Adam because she can’t enjoy it alone,
similar to how Adam can’t enjoy paradise alone. When she offers him the fruit, she argues he
should eat it because “This Tree is not as we are told, a tree / Of danger tasted, nor to evil
unknown” (9.863-64), which prompts Adam into a monologue in which he self-deceives, making
the third appeal to ignorance in Book IX. He sees she has fallen and “in her cheek distemper
flushing glowed” (9.887) but he begins to give himself reasons he should also eat the fruit.
Foremost of the reasons is that he thinks it will be unbearable to live apart from Eve if she falls
and he doesn’t, and he makes another appeal to ignorance, this time, an appeal to his own
ignorance, supposing that “Perhaps thou shalt not die, perhaps the fact / Is not so heinous now”
(9.928-29).
As God said in Book III, “Man falls deceived” (3.130) and a reader of Paradise Lost
knows that this deception was, in each of these three debates in Book IX, a combination of the
exploitation of character flaws and appeals to ignorance, debate tactics which can be called
forms of deception. However, when Adam eats the fruit, it is not deception that finally sways
him, as the narrator of Paradise Lost says that Adam falls “not deceived / But fondly overcome
with female charm” (9.998-99). This statement, though contradictory of God’s statement in Book
III, reinforces the fact that Adam and Eve are entirely to blame for their choices and hints at why
an appeal to ignorance would work if made convincingly and compellingly. God gave them

30. everything they needed to remain in Eden, but they let their desires and doubts eschew God’s
“sole command” (8.329), yet their culpability is hidden beneath the subtlety with which Milton
shows the dangers of Adam and Eve’s ignorance. Despite the falsity of Eve’s arguments, they are
valid when considering what little information she and Adam have. As well, it is understandable
that Adam would assume that God was lying about the fruit bringing death if Eve had not yet
died upon eating it, discounting the unspoken qualification that God never said when it would
bring death. But ultimately, the validity of Adam and Eve’s reasoning is irrelevant when it comes
to the absolute authority of God. As Adam points out,
Firm we subsist, yet possible to swerve,
Since reason not impossibly may meet
Some specious object by the foe suborned, (9.359-61)
Given that Satan knows more than Adam and Eve, has even deceived cherubim and can
argue in a way that makes “intricate seem strait” (9.632), a reader can assume that Adam and
Eve’s reasoning alone is no match for Satan’s. Since not only the appeals to ignorance, but all
forms of deception can circumvent reason, Adam and Eve should have relied on their will, faith
and obedience toward God in order not to fall through ignorance, not in their own reason.
Works Cited
“Will. n.1.” Def. I.1.a. The Oxford English Dictionary. 3rd ed. Oxford UP, 2010. Web. 20
Nov. 2014.
“Will. n.2.” The Oxford English Dictionary. 3rd ed. Oxford UP, 2010. Web. 20 Nov. 2014.

31. “Will. v.2.” Def. 3.a. The Oxford English Dictionary. 3rd ed. Oxford UP, 2010. Web. 20
Nov. 2014.
“Reason.n.1.” Def. 6.a. The Oxford English Dictionary. 3rd ed. Oxford UP, 2010. Web. 20
Nov. 2014.
“Choice. n.” Def. 6. The Oxford English Dictionary. 3rd ed. Oxford UP, 2010. Web. 20 Nov.
2014.
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton, Ed.
William Kerrigan, John Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon. New York: Random House,
Inc.2007. 293-630. Print