In John Milton’s Paradise Lost, what fruit does Eve eat from the forbidden tree?
Answer
The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge
In John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Eve eats fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Milton’s epic retells the biblical story of the Fall, focusing on Satan’s temptation of Eve and Adam’s subsequent disobedience. Satan enters Eden in the form of a serpent and persuades Eve that eating the forbidden fruit will bring knowledge and make her more like a god.
The poem describes the fruit as coming from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, but it does not identify it as an apple. The familiar apple association comes largely from later Western art, tradition, and wordplay in Latin, where “malum” can mean both “evil” and “apple.”
Milton published Paradise Lost in 1667, initially in ten books; the revised 1674 edition arranged it into twelve. The epic’s subject is “Man’s first disobedience,” and its central events take place before and during humanity’s expulsion from Eden.