Malus as muse: Symbolism

Many cultures and traditions have incorporated the symbolism of the apple. There are some variations, but the themes that keep coming up are knowledge, lust, immortality, and earthbound passions.

In Genesis, Eve is tempted by the snake to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge and to convince Adam also to eat the fruit. What I didn’t know before I did some research is that the name of the Adam’s apple, an anatomical feature that men have but women do not, comes from the Biblical story that a piece of the apple got caught in Adam’s throat. Fascinating.

Interesting that Eve chose (I like to believe that it was a choice) knowledge even though it brought her pain. Interesting exchange. As punishment for daring to want to “know,” God gave her an excruciating pain that would be the consequence of her desire for Adam. By eating the apple, she might gain wisdom, but she would never be free of lust. When God asks Adam how he came to realize that he was naked in the Garden of Eden, he blames Eve for giving him the apple, and when God asks Eve why she did this, she claims to have been tricked by the snake. The original act of bad faith? A refusal to take responsibility for choice?

What about the apple in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs? I’m thinking now of the version written by the Brothers Grimm, not necessarily the Disney version, which tends to alter details to make them more palatable to impressionable young girls. In the Grimm’s Fairy Tales version, Snow White is little more than a sweet, suggestible, subservient airhead. Three times, despite the warning of dwarfs not to open the door of their house to or interact with strangers while they are away at work, Snow White succumbs to the trickery of her jealous stepmother-queen disguised as a crone: first she agrees to buy a lace corset from her, which the crone then fastens so tightly that Snow White nearly suffocates, being saved in the nick of time when the dwarfs return to their house. Second, Snow White agrees to let the crone comb her hair with a poisoned comb, and again the dwarfs save her when they return home by pulling the comb from her hair. Last, the queen concocts a half-poisoned apple, which she convinces Snow White to taste along with her, only the crone hands Snow White the poisoned half while she keeps the harmless one, and Snow White lapses into some sort of a near-death coma. Subsequently, Snow White is rescued from her coffin not by a kiss (Disney version), but when a prince jostles the coffin enough lugging it away from the forest to cause the chunk of poisoned apple to fly out of Snow White’s throat. Nice!

So how about those apples? To me, there’s an element of vanity going on. The irresistible lure of something beautiful. The desire to incorporate that beauty into ourselves by eating it.

I may have to get this.