Of Man's First Disobedience and the FruitOf that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tasteBrought Death into the World,and all our woe.." What is an...

John Milton opens Paradise Lost with "The Argument," a short summary of the Book; these lines describe Man's fall into sin after Eve and Adam eat from the Tree of Forbidden Fruit. Their having eaten from this tree has caused death and sin to come into the world, and "Man" is cast out of the Garden of Eden to have to struggle for existence. 

These lines which begin the first book of Paradise Lost allude...

John Milton opens Paradise Lost with "The Argument," a short summary of the Book; these lines describe Man's fall into sin after Eve and Adam eat from the Tree of Forbidden Fruit. Their having eaten from this tree has caused death and sin to come into the world, and "Man" is cast out of the Garden of Eden to have to struggle for existence. 

These lines which begin the first book of Paradise Lost allude to man's sin of disobedience in the Garden of Eden when Eve first ate from the tree that God forbade them to eat its fruit. In the first line "Fruit" is a pun upon the apple that Eve and Adam eat and the figurative "fruits" of their actions. After Adam and Eve are driven from Eden, it is not until "one greater Man," Jesus Christ, comes that mankind is "restored."

Paradise Lost addresses the question of how man [humanity] can endure in a fallen world, and it justifies the ways of God to Man. The first Book proposes the entire subject of Milton's renowned Poem written in English Heroic Verse without rhyme. This Book touches upon the cause of the Fall (as the lines above exemplify), Satan in the form of the Serpent who tempts Eve as he is "Stirr'd up with Envy and Revenge," Satan's revolt from God, and his having been driven from Heaven with all the others. Interestingly, in the European cultures, it is rather often that many people's beliefs in the history of Creation and Satan's existence derive from Paradise Lost and are confused with passages from the Bible.