It Is What It Is
Saturday. Eve’s first entry in her diary. She’s quick; she gets it:
“I feel like an experiment, I feel exactly like an experiment; it would be impossible for a person to feel more like an experiment than I do, and so I am coming to feel convinced that that is what I AM—an experiment; just an experiment, and nothing more.”
Adam's Complaint
Well, there are many, but he seems to particularly obsess over the loss of his right to name a new thing now that the new thing with the long hair has shown up. He wants to call where they live the Garden of Eden, but the new thing with the long hair does make sense:
“Says it looks like a park, and does not look like anything but a park.”
Even so, he still continues to refer to his home as the Garden of Eden. In private.
The Genesis of Metaphor?
An entry in Adam’s diary perhaps is a philosophical statement about the use of metaphorical language. Or perhaps it is just evidence of the first concrete use of metaphor:
“She accuses me of being the cause of our disaster! She says, with apparent sincerity and truth, that the Serpent assured her that the forbidden fruit was not apples, it was chestnuts. I said I was innocent, then, for I had not eaten any chestnuts. She said the Serpent informed her that `chestnut’ was a figurative term meaning an aged and mouldy joke.”
Adam, According to Eve
Eve’s entries are particularly fun to read. One of the highlights is her description of what she calls “the other Experiment” which she is convinced at first is reptile:
“It has no hips; it tapers like a carrot; when it stands, it spreads itself apart like a derrick; so I think it is a reptile, though it may be architecture.”
Cain
The coming of Cain does not strictly proceed along avenues of normal expectation. According to Adam's entry, Eve caught it and brought it back one day. Ever since, Adam has been utterly befuddled by the new arrival:
"It is not one of us, for it doesn't walk; it is not a bird, for it doesn't fly; it is not a frog, for it doesn't hop; it is not a snake, for it doesn't crawl; I feel sure it is not a fish, though I cannot get a chance to find out whether it can swim or not…In my judgment it is either an enigma or some kind of a bug.”
