A Common Struggle Depicted in Bread Givers and Of Plymouth Plantation

Whether in the Old World of community, familial relationships and traditional values, or in the New World of non-traditional relationships, individualism and uncertainty, the struggle for survival predominates the immigrant narrative. Religious and racial intolerance, social upheaval, economic hardship, and political turmoil underscore the causes of emigration, but the New world was far from idyllic, and traces of these scourges checkered the landscape of the New World as well as the Mother land.

The earliest immigrants who settled in North America were the Puritans in 1621. Unlike their predecessors in the late sixteenth, who ventured to America for the sole purpose of seeking gold and glory; the Puritans sought refuge in a vast new land, and freedom to practice their beliefs without fear of recourse from governing authority. In compact with the monarchy, the Church of England, and Anglican officials routinely oppressed and harassed the Separatists. William Bradford in his history, Of Plymouth Plantation, wrote of the Puritans, " But after these things they could not longer continue in any peaceable condition, but were hunted and persecuted on every side, so as their former afflictions were but as flea-bitings in comparison of these which now came upon them. For some were taken and clapped up in prison, others had their houses beset and watched night and day, and hardly escaped their hands; and the most were fain to flee and leave their houses and habitations, and the means of their livelihood " (Bradford 9).

In de-emphasizing the role of the Church, it’s rituals, and offices, and supplanting them with a more direct and personal approach to God and spirituality; the Protestant Reformation, through the works of Martin...

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...ared a common experience in the Old World as well as the New World, and both groups held in common a trust that God would provide the means necessary that would ease and hasten their struggle for peace, and their belief in freedom from oppression and persecution. Although each group’s faith is different, their cultures and traditions divergent; they met resistance to their way of life and living with an historical perspective with God and the idea of progress on their side. Every immigrant story is a progression in every realm of thought.

Works Cited

1.William Bradford. Of Plymouth Plantation 1620-1647 1981. New York: Random House.

2.Anzia Yezierska. Bread Givers 1925. New York: Doubleday

3. Chaim Potok. Wanderings: History of the Jews 1978 New York: Fawcett Crest

4. Charlotte Erickson Emmigration From Europe 1815-1914 1976. London: A&C Black