Eve's Diary
Mark Twain
eBook
(A Creative Commons Novel, Jan. 14, 2017)
Eve's Diary (Illustrated & Annotated) - Have you ever read a story where the title told you something new and significant? Titles can be used to add depth by revealing important information. One example is 'Eve's Diary,' a short story by Mark Twain. It is told from the perspective, or point of view, of Eve-the biblical first woman created by God. However, we are not told Eve's name in the story until the very end, where there is a section titled 'At Eve's Grave.'This makes sense in the premise of the story. After all, why would she say her name in her own diary? Instead of giving us her name in the story, Twain uses the title to tell us what the story is: a diary written by Eve. Knowing this adds significance that would not exist if the protagonist, or main character, were a different person.The story goes through Eve's entire life, but the main focus is on the beginning when she and Adam are in the Garden of Eden. It begins with her 'birth,' saying, ''I am almost a whole day old, now. I arrived yesterday.'' Eve chronicles her life in the garden, telling us what she thinks as she discovers new things.She watches as the garden is perfected, and she learns. She sees that the moon disappears during the day but returns again at night. She tells us, ''The moon got loose last night, and slid down and fell...it breaks my heart to think of it.''Later, she notices, ''They returned the moon last night, and I was SO happy...It slid down and fell off again, but I was not distressed…'' As she watches and learns things, she comes to the conclusion that her purpose is to learn and explore, and she is content with this.A little ways into the story she meets Adam, though she initially thinks he is a reptile and finds out his name later. She is fascinated by him. They are both initially scared of each other, but she quickly recovers and begins following him around, eventually deciding he is a man. She finally gets him to talk to her, and they spend all their time together for a while.Eve helps Adam name things since he appears to be bad at it. She regards this as her personal skill, commenting, ''I seem to know just by the shape of the creature and the way it acts what animal it is.'' We see this in action when she accidentally creates fire and names it, along with 'flame' and 'ashes.'At one point Adam avoids her for a few days, which greatly distresses Eve. In an excerpt from Adam's diary, we learn that this is because she overwhelms him with her talking and zest for life. He tells us about the time she tried to adopt a Brontosaurus against his protests: ''I said a pet twenty-one feet high and eighty-four feet long would be no proper thing to have about the place...''We also learn from Adam that the animals love Eve as much as she loves them. Regarding the Brontosaurus he says, ''…he came out and followed her around like a pet mountain. Like the other animals. They all do that.''wain skips the actual event of the first sin, relying on the reader's knowledge of the Bible story to know that Eve picks the forbidden fruit and she and Adam are kicked out of the garden. In Twain's story, the next section starts after they are already out. Eve says, ''When I look back, the Garden is a dream to me. It was beautiful, surprisingly beautiful, enchantingly beautiful; and now it is lost, and I shall not see it any more.''ENJOY!!...