"Snow White, the dumb bunny,
opened the door
and she bit into a poison apple
and fell down for the final time..."From Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, a poem by Anne Sexton
Why is it that this particular fruit has come to symbolise sin? Interestingly, there's no mention of apples in the Biblical story. Eve passes Adam "the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden..." (Genesis iii, 3), but nowhere are we told what sort of fruit it is; yet again and again, in retellings of the story, a pretty golden pomme is the cause of our ruin. Even the "Adam's apple" was thought to have been created by a chunk of the forbidden fruit sticking in Adam's throat.
The Ancient Greeks, of course, had an apple myth of their own. According to the story, Eris, Goddess of Discord, wasn't invited to the wedding of Thetis and Peleus. In revenge, she turned up with a golden apple, engraved with the words "For the Most Beautiful." As she'd expected, the vain goddesses Hera, Athene and Aphrodite fought for possession of the gilded fruit, each claiming they were the most attractive by far. Paris, the handsome mortal, was brought in to judge the matter, and concluded that Aphrodite was the prettiest.
He soon regretted it, but that's another story.
An apple, when cut in half, is redolent of other things. The human heart? The hard little pips in the soft flesh of life? When young, it's skin is smooth and, depending on the variety, can blush when ripe. We writers have taken advantage of these seductive details for decades, and the passing of an apple or a section of the fruit has become cliche in cinema. Yet the sharing of apples has a more wholesome significance too. The ritual of wassailing still takes place in some areas of England where a bowl of spiced cider (the alcoholic sort) is carried from door to door on New Year's Eve, as a traditional Pagan blessing. The inhabitants help themselves from the wassail bowl and sometimes give money to the bringers of the cider. Originally, the ritual was thought to bless the local orchards in the year to come.
What I like most about this fruit is how nourishing it is. Apples are pure, quenching, full of vitamins and fibre. They're naturally good for us.
Like sex.
Comments