Essay Questions

What does the very inclusion of Eve’s diary as part of this imaginative reimagining of the Bible suggest about Twain’s view toward women?

One can well imagine a great many of the few male authors of the time lacking fear of attack and assault on the part of religious leaders for indulging in sacrilege—or even blasphemy—taking it upon themselves to rewrite Genesis from Adam’s point of view only. It is even possible to come up with a handful of male authors who might have at least have had the willingness to give Eve her due with an excessively abridged version of her pointing directly to the inferiority of God’s second thought. But few male authors of the time, indeed, would ever have even considered as unpursued lark creating diaries giving equal time to both Adam and Eve and—even more so—making Eve’s diaries the more intellectually challenging and coherent of the two. If nothing else, this decision should foster admiration for Twain as being very much ahead of his time on the issue of sexual equality. Of course, this is no by means intended to be taken as proof that Twain’s perspective on the issue is not in its way just as complicated and complex as any other progressive male.

In terms of misogynistic assurance of gender inequality, what is the single most controversial attribute handed to Eve relative to patriarchal non-theological historical narrative?

By the end of the first paragraph of her diary—at which point she is not yet a full day old—Eve is already exhibiting advance critical thinking skills at the level of ontological questioning of existence. By contrast, Adam’s first entry notes the weather and invents the word for rain. The stage now set, Twain pushes the very limits of the conventions of what is known about pre-historical mankind. Though nobody knows the facts for sure, of course, it has become grounded within the fabric of the mythos of humanity that the discovery of fire marked the first major epochal shift in evolution and that it was a male who made this discovery. By handing the reins of this discovery to Eve, Twain effectively undoes the whole of patriarchal thought by snipping at the cord stretching back to its origin. After all, the knowledge of fire occupies such an elevated place that the Greeks gave it to the gods as something that man could only steal and ever learn for herself.

Adam writes “I never had a thing perplex me so” about something he terms a variation of kangaroo. What is he actually talking about?

The arrival of the kangaroo-like creature baffles and bewilders an Adam already portrayed as not being the sharpest mind in the Garden of Eden. In fact, he at first is so unsure he think it must be some kind of fish, but upon putting it into the water, it immediately begins to sink. It can’t swim and he can’t quite figure out what the heck it is since it also doesn’t fly, hop, or slither. While Eve immediately takes a special interest and care for the strange new addition to the Garden unlike she’s shown toward anything else, Adam cannot wrap his head around it. In fact, it takes him five months of entries before he finally is ready to reject his initial idea that it belongs to the kangaroo family. They name it Cain, but it still takes them quite a while to learn that it is a human boy.