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Literature and different cultures
The beginning of the colonial era
The beginning of the colonial era
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Correlation Between Tempest and the New World Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford, The General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles by John Smith, and The Tempest by William Shakespeare, seem to have one thing in common in that they all touch upon the aspect of life in the new world. While The Tempest alludes to the new world and focuses on an imaginary concept of a Utopian society, The General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles and Of Plymouth Plantation offer first hand accounts of life in the new world. John Smith tells us about life on the new land and his experiences with natives while William Bradford emphasizes the difficulties and hardships that the people had to endure in building a colony. The General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles by John Smith, portrays the enormous troubles the settlers were faced with by the Native Americans. He explains how he was captured by Indians and also saved by a young Native American girl, Pocahontas. He vividly describes the ceremonies and rituals of the Natives performed before his execution. However, the execution never occurred due to the tremendous mercy showed by the king’s daughter who blanketed John Smith’s body her own. Pocahontas went on to persuade the Native Americans to help the settlers by giving them food and other necessities. Despite her efforts to reach peaceful grounds, her people were still bitter and planned an attacks on the colony. Nevertheless, Pocahontas saved them once again by warning the settlers of attacks. Pocahontas went on to marry an Englishman and traveled to England. She resembled the prosperity and good that was to be found in an untamed land. Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford gives us an insight into the endurance of the early settlers and the kind of pain they went through in order build the foundation of our great nation. They embarked on the new world and developed a colony from the ground up. However, there troubles started long before they even stepped foot on the land. With a strong hold on their religious beliefs, they continued their voyage to the new world even though there were questions about the safety of the vessel. They managed to work hard on the ship and make it to the new world, tired and hungry, only to learn that there was no rest to be found, but even more work.
Thesis: The Roanoke colony proved to be an unsuccessful venture in the New World for England, since leaders of the expedition held the viewpoint that privateering would prove to be the most profitable aspect of founding the new settlements in the West. However future, still unsuccessful attempts to make a permanent colony at Roanoke, helped England understand how to build a prosperous one; and it became a building block for establishing future colonies for England and helped shape the ideas that would help launch their empire.
Nathaniel Philbrick tells the story of the Pilgrims, beginning with them breaking away from the Church of England, emigrating to Holland, and eventually to America on the Mayflower. He talks about the relationship they had with the "Strangers" or nonbelievers that accompanied them on their adventure. He tells stories about disease, death, deception, and depression. I had never thought about it, but you know some of those people had to be suffering from depression. He tells of joys but mostly of hardships and as he describes some of the first meetings with the Native Americans. His description of the first Thanksgiving is not the same as the pictures I have seen all of my life.
As a young child many of us are raised to be familiar with the Pocahontas and John Smith story. Whether it was in a Disney movie or at a school play that one first learned of Jamestown, students want to believe that this romantic relationship really did occur. As one ages, one becomes aware of the dichotomy between fact and fiction. This is brilliantly explained in David A. Price's, Love and Hate in Jamestown. Price describes a more robust account of events that really did take place in the poorly run, miserable, yet evolving settlement of Jamestown, Virginia; and engulfs and edifies the story marketed by Disney and others for young audiences. Price reveals countless facts from original documents about the history of Jamestown and other fledgling colonies, John Smith, and Smith's relationship with Pocahontas. He develops a more compelling read than does the typical high school text book and writes intriguingly which propels the reader, to continue on to the successive chapters in the early history of Virginia.
In this book, Kupperman is telling a well-known event in remarkable detail. She intentionally uses last three chapters of the nine to tell the Jamestown’s history. The first six are in relation to how Jamestown came to be. The first chapter deals with political, national and religious conflicts during this period and how it motivated the English to venture West. The second is titled,” Adventurers, Opportunities, and Improvisation.” The highlight of this chapter is the story of John Smith, and how his precious experience enabled him to save ”the Jamestown colony from certain ruin.” (51) He is just an example of the “many whose first experiences along these lines were Africa or the eastern Mediterranean later turned their acquired skills to American ventures.” (43) Chapter three discusses the European and Native American interaction before and during this period. “North America’s people had had extensive and intimate experience of Europeans long before colonies was thought of, and through this experience they had come to understand much about the different kind of people across the sea.” (73) This exchange of information happened because a lot of Europeans lived among the Natives (not as colonist or settlers), and Natives were brought back to Europe. The people in Europe were very fascinated with these new people and their culture. Chapter four analyzes this fascination. It starts off talking about Thomas Trevilian, an author of “an elaborate commonplace book,” that showed “the English public was keenly interested in the world and in understanding how to categorize the knowledge about all the new things, people, and cultures of which specimens and descriptions were now available to them.
In “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson,” Mary Rowlandson, a Puritan mother from Lancaster, Massachusetts, recounts the invasion of her town by Indians in 1676 during “King Philip’s War,” when the Indians attempted to regain their tribal lands. She describes the period of time where she is held under captivity by the Indians, and the dire circumstances under which she lives. During these terrible weeks, Mary Rowlandson deals with the death of her youngest child, the absence of her Christian family and friends, the terrible conditions that she must survive, and her struggle to maintain her faith in God. She also learns how to cope with the Indians amongst whom she lives, which causes her attitude towards them to undergo several changes. At first, she is utterly appalled by their lifestyle and actions, but as time passes she grows dependent upon them, and by the end of her captivity, she almost admires their ability to survive the harshest times with a very minimal amount of possessions and resources. Despite her growing awe of the Indian lifestyle, her attitude towards them always maintains a view that they are the “enemy.”
Jamestown, Virginia, is a crucial source of legends about the United States. Pocahontas, a daughter of an Indian werowance married an Englishman named John Rolfe and changed her name to Rebecca. In her article, “Gender Frontier”, Kathleen Brown underscores gender role and responsibility in both Native American and English settlers. Gender frontier is the meeting of two or more culturally specific system of knowledge about gender and nature. She also stresses the duties that they played in their societies prior to the arrival of the English people in the early colony in Virginia. Brown describes the difference values between Europeans and Native Americans in regards to what women and men should and should not do and the complex progression of
In Thomas King’s novel, The Inconvenient Indian, the story of North America’s history is discussed from his original viewpoint and perspective. In his first chapter, “Forgetting Columbus,” he voices his opinion about how he feel towards the way white people have told America’s history and portraying it as an adventurous tale of triumph, strength and freedom. King hunts down the evidence needed to reveal more facts on the controversial relationship between the whites and natives and how it has affected the culture of Americans. Mainly untangling the confusion between the idea of Native Americans being savages and whites constantly reigning in glory. He exposes the truth about how Native Americans were treated and how their actual stories were
In the New World Bradford and Morton were both important men of our history. The stories of both great men give us an insight into the way religion and influence affected Puritan life.
Disney movie “Pocahontas” and John Smiths “The General History of Virginia” there were many differences, other than things someone could compare. The two versions had different thoughts and views on the accounts of Pocahontas, the Native Americans, and John Smith. The way Disney portrayed Pocahontas had more of a view of mending enemies, compromises being made between two parties, and that there is more to life than materialistic things. On the other hand, John Smith’s account of what happened was way different than Disney’s version of what happened. For example, John Smith describes his journey to Virginia as a long journey, filled with Hunger, with a majority of the people who attended the voyage with john smith ended up dying. At the end, with him and others being captured by Native Americans who reside on that land. Although, no one knows the actual events that took place during this time.
Pocahontas was the daughter of Chief Powhatan which made her an Indian Princess. When she was 12 years old, she saved a colonist named John Smith from being clubbed to death. After this, the relationship between the colonist and the Indians were at peace. Captain Smith sent many presents to Powhatan and the Indian woman gave food to the colonist. When John Smith left Jamestown because of a gunpowder accident, the peace between the Indians and the colonist weaken. In 1612, Governor Thomas Dale ordered for Pocahontas to be kidnapped, held for ransom that would be paid in corn by Chief Powhatan. While she was held captive, Pocahontas was baptized Christian and given the name Rebecca. Also while she was imprisoned, Pocahontas fell in love with John Rolfe, who then asked for her hand in marriage. Sir Thomas Dale and Chief Powhatan gave their consent and they got married in Jamestown on April, 1613. This marriage brought peace between the English and the Indians for many years. On 1615, John and Pocahontas had a child named Thomas. Pocahontas became the center of English society’s attention. She had then become Lady Rebecca Rolfe. Before going back to Virginia, Pocahontas became sick. She died on March, 1617, at the age of 21 in England. She was buried in the chapel of the parish church in Gravesend. Rolfe returned to Virginia, where he manufactured tobacco. I liked Pocahontas because she was the kind of person who was willing to do new things and she did the right thing even if no one would agree with her. She is famous for her actions (even if Disney exaggerated them) and I admire her strength and courage to stand up for what she believed in.
Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford and A Description of New England by John Smith are essentially irrelevant to one another in the way that each piece has a very different point of view. The author John Smith was a pilgrim who arrived in the Americas and wrote a description of the new land. William Bradford was also a pilgrim who arrived at Plymouth and wrote more about the realities of his personal journey. The purpose of this essay is to contrast the purposes of the writers, their intended audiences, and how each writer gives out a specific feeling.
William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation differs from William Byrd’s The History of the Dividing Line in the cases of purpose, tone, and style. The main purpose of Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation is to show how the colonists in Plymouth colony were struggling and dying due to the lack of food, and how the Native Americans in the area came and helped them. Natives like Squanto “directed them how to set their corn, where to take fish and to procure other commodities” (Bradford, 33). The lessons taught by the Natives saved the colonists and they formed a mutual friendship, as evidenced by the first Thanksgiving. Bradford was trying to show how the colonists were suffering and dying, but survived with the help of the Natives. Byrd, on the other hand, showed that the Virginians
With high hopes in creating a successful settlement and starting a money-making colony, the settlers were in no way prepared or aware of the hardships and dilemmas they were about to face for several years. Upon their arrival, colonists faced disease, famine, and multiple hardships and were watched from afar by natives who were pleased at the settlers’ struggle. The Powhatans were known for their culture of “dark superstitions and devil worship,” making them a cruel adversary to the white settlers. The natives were a major threat to the settlers; if they were captured, they would be stoned to the head and scalped for the members of their tribe to admire. Pocahontas was the favorite daughter in her father’s home, so it would be expected that she would always side with her tribe. Instead, she “effected a remarkable and significant relationship… with the small group of settlers at Jamestown […]” then years later with English royalty. Fascination with their advancements in technology drew Pocahontas to the colony. John Smith became very close to her as he taught her the English language and she taught him the native language. During the time spent at Jamestown, Pocahontas became well
One of the settlers, John Smith, wrote about all that happened in Jamestown. In one of Smith 's writings he talked about how he had been taken prisoner by the Powhatan and just before he was executed him Pocahontas threw herself on him, saving his life. After Pocahontas 's actions she became a trusted
Mary Rowlandson’s “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson” and Benjamin Franklin’s “Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America” are two different perspectives based on unique experiences the narrators had with “savages.” Benjamin Franklin’s “Remarks Concerning the Savages…” is a comparison between the ways of the Indians and the ways of the Englishmen along with Franklin’s reason why the Indians should not be defined as savages. “A Narrative of the Captivity…” is a written test of faith about a brutally traumatic experience that a woman faced alone while being held captive by Indians. Mary Rowlandson views the Indians in a negative light due to the traumatizing and inhumane experiences she went through namely, their actions and the way in which they lived went against the religious code to which she is used; contrastingly, Benjamin Franklin sees the Indians as everything but savages-- he believes that they are perfect due to their educated ways and virtuous conduct.