Second Climb

The chapter discusses meaningful, vital agency in Eden. Forms of living deadness are discussed and related to vitality in Eden, a vitality achieved through gardening and through perception. God’s inseparability from creation is explained via the poem’s animist materialism. Meaningful action arises out of collaborative agency with God’s creative work. It also moves one away from living deadness. The chapter presents Milton’s fourfold understanding of death. The chapter begins with the “unholy trinity” and Death as standing for formlessness. Death is the opposite of form-giving, the activity with which Adam and Eve are tasked, their gardening. A discussion of Edenic gardening then brings out alternative ways (Adam’s, Eve’s) of responding to God and, thereby, being alive. To fall, in part, means losing the capacity to work in a particular manner. It can also mean losing the ability to find God in the world which one perceives.