Light Yagami as Adam as Humanity

Or, Death Note Apple Symbolism and Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

Ishmael is a novel by Daniel Quinn published in 1992 about a man being taught by a psychic gorilla about modern society and its fundamental issues.

Death Note is... Death Note. I assume you know about it if you clicked on this blog.

The thing I want to focus on right now is the apple. Apples are obviously relevant in Death Note because of Ryuk, but they are also very present in the intro sequence, most relevantly, the shot where he’s biting an apple. This poses him as an Adam figure very outright, he’s literally biting the apple, but why?

First, let me state some points that I wanted to mention because I’d feel stupid if I didn’t but I didn’t really know where to put them: Light is also posed as a Lucifer figure in both symbolism and literal narrative parallel (guy thinks humanity #sucksrocks and thinks he can surpass God, has a downfall blah blah), he is ALSO posed as a regular angel figure because of his sort of serving position to an actual god of death (Ryuk)

Okay now that’s out of the way... Why would Light be Adam? In many ways, the story of Adam is also the story of Lucifer: the origin of the downfall of humanity. But that doesn’t really satisfy me... To answer my question, I need to think more about Adam.

In Ishmael, Genesis is very closely reread and reinterpreted as the story of the early stages humanity as a whole, instead of the story of the first humans. The garden story is reinterpreted like this: There are many trees in the garden, why is Adam (and also Eve but she’s not relevant to my theory, soz queen) only forbidden from the tree of knowledge of good and evil? Better yet, why is Adam forbidden from any of the trees at all? In Ishmael’s interpretation, the apple doesn’t actually grant Adam any knowledge since he is not a god, which the fruit is meant for.

He is forbidden specifically because it wouldn’t grant him any knowledge, but he would THINK it does. It would grant him... undeserved ego. Adam would eat from the tree and start to believe that he has higher judgement, that he is on the level of the gods, and that therefore, he can decide who lives and who dies. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

In Ishmael, this is framed as humanity deciding they can determine the fate of all creatures on earth. In my theory, this is Light deciding he can determine the fate of all humans on earth. He believes he has higher judgement, that he is on the level of the gods, and therefore, he can do their job: deciding who lives and who dies. This is the ego that the Death Note gives him, which ultimately leads to his downfall. If you wanted, you could interpret this as Death Note being a metaphor for the larger downfall of humanity caused by superiority and hubris. I just make Death Note theories, I’m not a philosopher.