Shattered fragments of american literature
Since the dawning of the new world several eras have swept over this fertile soil and planted their seed in society. The first that reigned over the new world is the Puritan era. The English Protestants or "puritans" came to the new world to flee from religious persecution, which was occurring in England in the late 1500s and into the 1600s. Such persecutions consisted of painful and humiliating amputations of ears and the slitting of nostrils. The puritans lived by one main belief, which was to purify the corrupted English church, they found that America was the perfect opportunity to practice their beliefs. Goals of the puritans are solely focused on wanting to live free of sin and keep god from getting angry. A puritan named Jonathan Edwards describes how god feels about sinners in his writing entitled Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, "The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you and is dreadfully provoked..." (Edwards 81). Edwards explains how god is enraged with sinners and the treatment one will face if one commits a sin. For example he compares a sinner to an insect, the lowest form of life, a being that gets no respect. Thus presenting god
As opposed to just relying on one dubious source as did the puritans and their omniscient god. I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die discover that I had not lived" (Thoreau 237). The civil war was the fire the fire that fueled realism into a burning fury, since it was one of the bloodiest American wars to date. Thus meaning realism excludes any fantasy and focuses on the morbid and factual facts of life. Franklin is depicting knowledge as something you have to work for, through reason and experimentation, regardless of the amount at stake. For instance if the rain flooded the town it was god punishing the people, not that it was merely monsoon season. This happened in the early 1700s when the economy was at an all time high and people were overwhelmingly happy to be alive. The war set a crucial reality in everyone's mind that life is not so splendid and sublime as we wish and more so that it is fierce and unyielding. Rationalism sprang about after puritanism because people wished to find a more logical explanation to the questions of everyday life. 200 to 300 poor fellows-the groans and screams- the odor of blood. Whitman describes the battlefield with an odor of blood, setting the metal image of amputations and bullet abrasions.
Common topics in this essay:
God God,
Thoreau Thoreau's,
Walt Whitman,
Richards Almanac,
English Protestants,
,
Jonathan Edwards,
Benjamin Franklin,
odor blood,
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Acceptance Essays
