Adam, hero of the epic, is introduced in Canto I as an aged scholar disillusioned with life, but dreading the proximity of Death, with whom he converses in a vision. The Goddess of Life grants him the youth of Faust and the immortality of the Wandering Jew. Unlike either, he has the physical and mental characteristics of an adult joined to the naïveté of a child. In Canto III Adam appears in a casa de huéspedes, naked and poor, oblivious of the past, without the use of language, with longings for liberty and action. Here his disillusionment begins. His nakedness shocks public morality; and the innocent Adam who is hostile to nobody, and in whom the brilliant spectacle of nature produces nothing but rejoicing, receives blows, stonings, and imprisonment from his neighbors. Childlike he touches the bayonet of one of his captors, and is wounded. This symbolizes the world's hostility to the innocent. In Canto IV we find Adam in prison. His teachers are criminals. He was born for good; society instructs him in evil. In Canto V he experiences love with the manola Salada, but sees in this passion nothing but impurity. He longs for higher things. Circumstances abase him to crime. He joins a band of burglars, and, falling in love with the lady whose house they are pillaging, protects her against the gang. In Canto VI he continues along his path of sorrow. He enters a house where a beautiful girl is dying, while in another room revelers are making merry. This leads him to speculate on life's mysteries and to reason for himself. The poem ends where Adam has become thoroughly sophisticated. He is now like any other man.
Evidently it was the poet's intention to make Adam go through a series of adventures in various walks of life, everywhere experiencing disillusionment. In spite of the elaborate prospectus quoted above, we may agree with Piñeyro that the poet started writing with only the haziest outline planned beforehand. Espronceda frankly reveals to us his methods of poetic composition:
¡Oh cómo cansa el orden! no hay locura
Igual a la del lógico severo.
And again:
Terco escribo en mi loco desvarío
Sin ton ni són, y para gusto mío....
Sin regla ni compás canta mi lira:
Sólo mi ardiente corazón me inspira!
"El Diablo Mundo" is no mere imitation of Byron's "Don Juan" and Goethe's "Faust," though the influence of each is marked. It has numerous merits and originalities of its own. Inferior as Espronceda is to Byron in wit and to Goethe in depth, he can vie with either as a harmonious versifier.