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Recommended: American Revolution
“Aww, look at the little pilgrims!” I hope that the shock did not show as much on my face as it felt inside. I could feel my ears turning red. After taking my candy and politely saying “thank you,” I walked dejectedly back up the unfamiliar driveway to my father’s confused smile and continued on down the street to another house. I was not a pilgrim that Halloween. I was a colonial. And there is a huge difference between the two: one, a Puritan fleeing religious persecution and the other a citizen in an established city as the tides of revolution rose throughout the thirteen small colonies. I was not dressed up as the former, but the latter, a colonial citizen. However I had to remember, as Kurt Vonnegut inscribed into the immortal pages of American literature, “So it goes.” And so it went and continues to go.
The last day of October is often portrayed as chilly: the frigid winds of winter rolling in and the last, life-giving rays of summer sun fading away. In real life, at least in the micro-universe of Mount Laurel, New Jersey, All Hallows Eve is often a time for sweat...
Nathaniel Philbrick opens his book by drawing a direct line from the early Pilgrim’s arrival on Plymouth rock to the building of America. He goes on to say, “Instead of the story we already know, it becomes the story we need to know.” Many of us growing up, myself included romanticize about the pilgrims in the light of the first Thanksgiving and we think about the Indians sitting down with the Pilgrims to take part of the Thanksgiving meal. Next, we believe the myth that everyone lived happily ever after.
As America slowly began molding into the creases of different values and cultures, so did its literature. One trait that had always been securing itself within the lines of these literary texts was the protagonists’ naivety. Theses characters typically established an intention to do good things, but eventually fail due to tumbling upon tempting obstacles and falling into the trance of distractions. An example of this situation occurred long ago during the 16th and 17th century. A cult of English Protestants known as Puritans aimed to “purify” the Church of England by excreting all evidence of its descent in the Roman Catholic Church. The Puritans enforced strict religious practices upon its believers and regarded all pleasure and luxury as wicked or sacrilegious. Although their “holy” cond...
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.
In the 1700’s the Puritans left England for the fear of being persecuted. They moved to America for religious freedom. The Puritans lived from God’s laws. They did not depend as much on material things, and they had a simpler and conservative life. More than a hundred years later, the Puritan’s belief toward their church started to fade away. Some Puritans were not able to recognize their religion any longer, they felt that their congregations had grown too self-satisfied. They left their congregations, and their devotion to God gradually faded away. To rekindle the fervor that the early Puritans had, Jonathan Edwards and other Puritan ministers led a religious revival through New England. Edwards preached intense sermons that awakened his congregation to an awareness of their sins. With Edwards’ sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” he persuades the Puritans to convert back to Puritanism, by utilizing rhetorical strategies such as, imagery, loaded diction, and a threatening and fearful tone.
The setting is eighteenth century Boston, Massachusetts. The population in Boston between 1760’s and 1790’s ranged from sixteen thousand to eighteen thousand . Some of the major building that are well known for the time period are Old State House; originally called Town House, this building is very historic the Boston Massacre of 1770 took place in front of this building, also the Declaration of Independence was first read off the balcony. Also Boston has the Old South Meeting House; which in that time was the largest meeting space, this was where the “convocation met before the Boston Tea Party, and this is community commemorated the Boston Massacre” . Another building is the Old North Church, the first stone was laid in April of 1723 taking twenty-two years to complete, this is the oldest church is Boston today. This church’s steeple was immortalized by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his poem “The midnight ride of Paul Revere” . The geography in Boston is that it was a coastal region with poor soil, this was not a farming community, and most people that lived in Boston were people that practice a trade or a craft. The climate in Boston ca...
As I began to research this paper I soon realized that the topic I was looking on would be difficult because of the aspect I was attempting to look at it from. I wanted to see everything from the eyes of those who remained undocumented by the history books. But if I’m looking for something that isn’t there, how on Earth can I find it? I turned to my paragraphs to show me the light. George Hewes was a lowly shoemaker in Boston in the pre-revolution years, and was written about by Alfred Young. But what did the author leave out, and why was he biased towards the young patriot.
When one evokes The Salem Witch Trials of 1692, the image that comes to most peoples minds are that of witches with pointed hats riding broomsticks. This is not helped by the current town of Salem, Massachusetts, which profits from the hundreds of thousands of tourists a year by mythologizing the trials and those who were participants. While there have been countless books, papers, essays, and dissertations done on this subject, there never seems to be a shortage in curiosity from historians on these events. Thus, we have Bernard Rosenthal's book, Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692, another entry in the historiographical landscape of the Salem Witch Trials. This book, however, is different from most that precede it in that it does not focus on one single aspect, character, or event; rather Rosenthal tells the story of Salem in 1692 as a narrative, piecing together information principally from primary documents, while commenting on others ideas and assessments. By doing so, the audience sees that there is much more to the individual stories within the trials, and chips away at the mythology that has pervaded the subject since its happening. Instead of a typical thesis, Rosenthal writes the book as he sees the events fold out through the primary documents, so the book becomes more of an account of what happened according to primary sources in 1692 rather than a retelling under a new light.
Religion was the foundation of the early Colonial American Puritan writings. Many of the early settlements were comprised of men and women who fled Europe in the face of persecution to come to a new land and worship according to their own will. Their beliefs were stalwartly rooted in the fact that God should be involved with all facets of their lives and constantly worshiped. These Puritans writings focused on their religious foundations related to their exodus from Europe and religions role in their life on the new continent. Their literature helped to proselytize the message of God and focused on hard work and strict adherence to religious principles, thus avoiding eternal damnation. These main themes are evident in the writings of Jonathan Edwards, Cotton Mathers, and John Winthrop. This paper will explore the writings of these three men and how their religious views shaped their literary works, styles, and their historical and political views.
Shannon, T. J., & Gellman, D. N. (2014). American odysseys: a history of colonial North America. New York : Oxford University Press.
Now, as the family of four travels across the continent, the narrator is able to slough off all the obligations which society has dumped on her. Almost relieved, “we shed our house, the neighborhood, the city, and…our country” (378). On the road, she is no longer forced to hide from the friendly phone calls or household chores. The narrator has been freed on the highway to Ontario, Canada. The Prisoner of War, held under siege in her own home, is liberated to be “hopeful and lighthearted” (378). This trip becomes a break from the life that she’s is currently leading, a life which society thinks should make her content. With this new bit of freedom the narrator is able to form an identity for herself.
This book was the study of war and how people wrote about it. But also the book makes it apparently clear that this was the start of a new American identity. Throughout the writings, stories, and all of the religious battles that were fought one true thing remained the colonist’s Englishness was gone. This was not New England any more this was something new. This was a “New” New England.
Zuckerman, Michael “Pilgrims in the Wilderness: Community, Modernity, and the Maypole at Merry Mount”, The New England Quarterly, Vol. 50, No. 2 (Jun., 1977), pp. 255-277. The New England Quarterly, Inc.
The pilgrims landing on Plymouth Rock has had a number of important impacts on America today. Whether the impacts were positive or negative, it was the pilgrims that had taken the journey to the New World and made the present what it is today. Originating from England, the English were Puritans who believed that the Church of England was in need of spiritual purification. Instead of altering the church, the English set off on a voyage to the New World for new opportunities. The pilgrims could start over and build a new society from scratch without having the chance of having corrupting influences on the Old World. Religion wasn’t the only temptation of going to the New World, there was famine and the taxes in England that made them want to depart to the New World. The New World had the opportunity to obtain rights and then they could live in the society that they had envisioned (Gray, 48).
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.”
Death is absolute. Kurt Vonnegut challenges this basic principle in his novel Slaughterhouse - Five. The plot revolves around a soldier, Billy Pilgrim, who meets the Tralfamadorians, an alien race, who alter his perception of time and reality. Kurt Vonnegut coins the phrase “So it goes,” which serves to equalize all deaths as well as to diminish their severity, and create a satirical social commentary on the insignificance of human misery.