Whitman's Poetry

I have to say, I do really like Whitman’s poetry. Unlike the poetry of Emily Dickinson- who you may review I did not enjoy so much- Whitman is all about connecting. The issue with Whitman that Dickinson does not face is the question of whether of not his poetry is actually poetry.

            Poetry has controlled form. Poetry requires musical language. Poetry is narrative musical art. Poetry is somewhat indefinable, really. I don’t know that I can define it, although I think that poetry is at least recognizable.  Some “poetry” is questionable to me. While Emily Dickinson’s poetry show her great skill with language, it lacks what I believe is the poets innovation; though I did mention in my last blog that her poems were more interesting in her time. She just doesn’t have the poets heart as far as I am concerned. She barely shows me anything I could not have figured out on my own sitting in my own window. Some of what she rights barely even makes sense, especially in a way that is consistent with her style. She write on both a figurative and literal level, but her style is very explicit. Every now and then, she (arbitrarily) throws in a line which works only for rhymes sake or that adds something, but not to the meaning.

            Whitman, on the other hand, writes everything explicitly, with heart, has many layers of meaning, but not so many levels. At least in my humble opinion, that is. Song of myself is all about connection to everything and everything within everything. And how all of those things connect. Just reading the print tells you everything, no guessing involved. He draws the reader in, not only by stating that his atoms belong to the reader (in second person),; He also commands and questions the reader.

            Again the problem is whether or not Whitman is a poet. Well he is definitely a poet, based on the loose meaning of the word. All people have poetry in their souls (I sound like Whitman now…), at least most writers master the language so that they can write somewhat poetically. But are these poems? Maybe not. They feel an awful lot like musings. All of the sections are different lengths; there is no meter, or rhyme scheme. But does poetry need any of these things? No, but it does require some consideration of the music of language. No the issue of whether or not Whitman’s work is poetry is somewhat subjective. I can find the music in this work. The care put into his descriptions show a true love for that which he writes. He uses incredibly descriptive phrasing, in which the sounds of the words fit well with the aesthetic of the meaning. For instance:

“Bearing with Bandages, water and sponge,      Straight and Swift to my wounded I go. (The Wound Dresser 25-26)”

The word choice for the above lines are appropriate in creating the level melancholy suspense which one might experience in entering a hospital ward.

In song of myself, section 26, he says:

“Steep’d amid honey’d morphine, my windpipe throttled in flakes of death,"

This line is in reference to a, what I think, is a requiem for someone violently killed.  The sounds of the words are tough on the reader, with many of the syllables ending in hard consonates, exhausting almost to even read.

Whitman uses repetition, both in the word he begins a sentence with and the construction of the entire sentence.

“I exist as I am, that is enough,         If no other in the world be aware I sit content,             And if each and all be aware I sit content. (Song of Myself 413-415)”

Almost all of the clauses in section 15 begin with “The”; some with “And”. Each “The” grants a higher and higher level of emphasis during the reading of the section.

Slight Rhyme:

 “Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,        Looking with side curved head curious what will come next, (song of myself, 77-78)”        “It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,          It may be if I had known them I would have loved them, (Song of myself, 112-113) 

  I think that both of the poems show a certain mastery of the language and sound. I wonder, if these poems were read aloud, how they would strike a person who didn’t understand English. I think read well the words and the spacing between lines (and the suspense it creates) would have effect

Whether or not either of these two pieces actually constitutes poetry makes very little difference to me, I suppose, because I like them. Whitman probably wouldn’t have cared either way.

 

Emily Dickinson

I can’t exactly figure out why I dislike Emily Dickinson’s poetry so much. I found that as I was reading it that I was constantly bothered by it. It may have been the fact that the old image of her as a crazy recluse kept creeping into my mind as I read. At some point during every poem I read I would get distracted and moan to myself “Go outside, Emily!”
The introduction provides us with the information that although Emily greatly admired Emerson’s writing, she never journeyed next door to meet him when he was in town lecturing. The Norton Anthology explains that she had preferred to keep the Emerson of her imagination instead of meeting the real person. This is exactly how I understand the woman while I read her stuff.
The poems all seemed to me to be, as they are normally characterized, very observant. But nothing within them felt really intimate, in regard to her or the subject of poem. The introduction called her daring, but I struggled to find any audacity within her poetry. Mainly I felt that Dickinson is very impersonal in her poems, does not show any real connection with the concepts she writes about and that her writing, while it sounds lovely, isn’t meant to make a whole lot of sense to anyone but her.
Of the one’s we read, I probably disliked the following the most:
1. #124: line 1: “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers”
I understand that it is the convention of poetry to use a lot of the passive voice, mainly for rhyme, suspense and emphasis on a subject, but it really got to me in this poem. I didn’t have any idea what she was talking about. The main subject seems to be the members of the resurrection, at least in the first stanza. The second still leaves me wondering what Dickinson is getting at. I think what she is saying is that once the resurrection occurs, all of physical time as we know it will enter into this arc which will also draw in the earth and the skies. I take the final three lines to mean that while the aforementioned is happening, the hierarchy on earth will be shed and worthless. Nevertheless, I had to read this nonsense five times to make the connections between the two stanzas, since the subject shifts from the either the dwelling of the members of the resurrection or the members themselves, depending on how you read it, and the events that will happen during the resurrection.
2. #146. First line: “All over grown by cunning moss,”
I don’t get this one either. When Dickson refers to “This Bird” is she talking about Charlotte Bronte or herself? She may have intended to be ambiguous there, I give her that. But the final stanza is garb to me. Is Bronte the Nightingale? Well then I guess “This Bird” in the second stanza is Bronte as well. But then what does she mean by “Yet not in all the nests I meet”? Is Dickinson trying to express that she has gone looking for Bronte without being able to find her? Didn’t she just say that the bird was in Yorkshire? Or was the line about Yorkshire just an observation? Or is Dickinson the bird, and Bronte the more distinguished Nightingale? I have no idea.
I don’t want to think that my problem is that I just don’t get poetry. I just don’t care for hers. I think an issue that I have is that I felt that most of her poetry is about concepts, but not about anything specific. Also, I think that I decided that her musings were awfully trite, but I recognize after some consideration that her work probably wasn’t as trite during her time.

Margaret Fuller and the great Lawsuit

            The assigned section from Margaret Fuller’s The great Lawsuit: Man Versus Men, Woman versus women One if the reasons I liked Margaret Fuller (besides my affinity toward anything Feminist in nature) was her boldness. The audacity with which she spoke was very moving once, especially considering her time, and also leads me to wonder how much she would have been taken seriously for her time. Would she have been considered radically unhinged by the male population, which led to her being published? Even so, the introduction explains that she was widely read by women, so at least we know that some people gained from her writing. Nonetheless, I have to wonder if the risks she took in writing led to scorn by the ruling males.

            The Great lawsuit starts off very positively for men, granting the redeeming quality that once they actually face some sort of hardship, they are able to understand that women face hardship, possibly even worse than their own. Though her language confused me some, I believe that her second argument (after discussing the changes brought on by the French Revolution) was that although equality is great and all, if there is no justice in general, it hardly seems very rewarding to fight for equality. Basically, I think I can safely sum up the first paragraph to mean that:

1. Men, once suffered a bit, can actually see the greater suffering of women.

2. Once women get a taste of equality, they may (depending on the situation of the society), think that that sucks too.

-Note: I hope that the second part isn’t fully the case because it may lead to the dissuasion of fighting for equal rights.

            Then Fuller starts getting bold and just saying what is what. First, she talks about other ways the ruling people have been oppressive. I wonder now if the notion of the patriarchy was in existence yet. I believe current feminist bell hooks defines patriarchy as the white supremacist capitalistic patriarchy, meaning that the prior-mentioned are the people who define and control culture. But I digress. I was saying earlier that I admire, just as much as her profoundness, Fuller’s boldness. She makes very strong statements. I like how she defines America as being the nation to develop a template for a just society, like how Europe had already been meant to “promote” the mental culture of man. I like that, unlike me, when she uses the statement “all men are created equal” she doesn’t think that the word men is gender specific. I like that she uses and reiterates that statement, explicating that that term means that if “external freedom” is achieved for a nation, it must be everyone in that nation.

            Fuller fights against the fact that men at this time take advantage of their wives. She degrades men in the same manner in which women have often been degraded, except the evidence she points to about men is much more dishonorable than women’s tendency to be “gossipy”. She points out men living off the “industrious earnings” of their wives. She points out men taking their wives’ children away from them after she tries to leave him to bring her back.

            Then again, I like that Fuller is a feminist speaker who represents most women, in that she doesn’t have to be a man-hater to make her arguments. She not only fights fot the dignity of women being represented by society, but for the goodness of men (gender-specific) to be acknowledged by society (mainly women). She says she believes that it is improbable that the only way for women’s rights to be publicly considered is for a woman to be publicly representing these rights. She believes that men are both influenced enough by women and inherently caring enough to consider women’s rights on their own. The issue then, must be an outside influence, which stymies men’s fighting for gender equality.

Emerson: Self-Reliance and The American Scholar

On of the main issues I came across in reading Emerson was that I found contradictory directions in the introductions of Self-Reliance and The American Scholar. In the first paragraph of The American Scholar, Emerson states that:
-“the gods in the beginning divided Man into me, that he might be more helpful to himself.”
-“there is One Man, -present to all particular men only partially, or through one faculty.”
He regards this knowledge as a great wisdom, expressing that instead of living in a right state in which the main foundation of men is an one intact unit, we live within a degenerate state in which all of the abilities have been too far divided. As for the position of the scholar, Emerson explains that in an ideally unified state, in which men recognize that all men comprise one Man, the scholar represents the noble action of Man Thinking. He contrasts this model with the degenerate version in which the scholar is merely a “thinker”, or “the parrot of other men’s thinking”.
The deduction for these first few paragraphs of The American Scholar is that it is vital for performance within a society and self-actualization that we consider all men part of a wider entity which is Man.
Self-Reliance not only appeared to contradict this perspective, but also to negate its value. As I read the essay, I anticipated passages prescribing that we work to completely depend on ourselves, especially in regard to physical and material necessities. The following statements confusingly (in my opinion) appear on the first page in relation to what a person feels, believes and thinks:
1. “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men, -that is genius”.
2. “Speak your latent conviction and it shall be the universal sense: for always the inmost becomes the outmost.”
Neither of these statements made a whole lot of sense to me, both in regard to introducing the concepts of self-reliance or in having any individual self-contained meaning. While the rest of the document contains many fantastic pieces of wisdom, I finally realized that Emerson is not discussing the importance of Self-reliance as far as health and security or self-sufficiency within the realm of physical needs. The purpose of Self-Reliance­ is to promote knowing your own mind and being true to that mind. Said self-reliance related to relying on your own mind. In other words, the lesson of Self-reliance borrows from Platonic teachings and from two recognizable quotes:
The ancient Greek proverb “Know thyself” which once accomplished should be followed by the principle of “to thine own self be true.”
Once I reread some of the sections in both texts, I found the connection between what I had misjudged to be adverse works. Self-trust is vital in both. In The American Scholar Emerson states that:
“In self-trust, all the virtues are comprehended. Free should the scholar be, -free and brave.”
In Self-Reliance he states that man should be weary of conforming and to “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”
The American Scholar was written in 1937, while Self-Reliance was written in 1941. Since clarifying the purpose of both, the relationship between the counsel within both works has become clearer as well. My assumption is that while the mastery of self-reliance (in Emerson’s sense) should be observed over an individual’s lifetime, and can take a life’s full journey to achieve, the advice from Self-reliance­ actually precedes the advice of The American Scholar. Ultimately, I believe that trusting one’s self is both the initial and ultimate necessity of one’s life according to Emerson, and that distrust in one’s self impedes a person from ever accomplishing anything.

Washington Irving: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

While reading The Legend of Sleepy Hollow I felt inclined myself to wonder what the purpose, for Irving was of this tale. I tried to imagine (quite wrongly I suppose) what the message of the story is. I struggled on the following levels.
First I found myself conflicted because not only does Irving fail to explain the outcome for Ichabod, but he also fills the reader’s brain with options which all have different implications as far as any sort of moral. I contemplated that the point of the story was to point out how easily fear can be instilled in humans. That we never feel completely safe and could easily be convinced that we aren’t alone in the wilderness. I.E. Ichabod believed he was being followed, later chased, after Brom Bones taunts his with his manly, yet frightening tale. This made me wonder then if this is really the tale of the headless horseman or if the monster is just disillusioning human paranoia.
My second issue in finding a lesson was that I found that none of the characters deserved any respect. Ichabod Crane is a voracious, freeloading womanizer. Brom Bones is your basic arrogant tool. Katrina is not so much a character but a means to both men’s rapacious ends. Because of my distaste for each person, I couldn’t root for any, nor could filter out a lesson based on any of the character’s behaviors and respective outcomes in the story.
I finally found some resolve in the postscript.
The final sort of "lesson" derived from the story according to the story-teller of the post script of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow begins with the following:"That there is no situation in life but has it's advantages and pleasures, provided that we will but take a joke as we find it."This means that as long as we have a sense of humor, some pleasure or advantage can be derived from any experience. This appropriately appears to be a joke in itself, considering the fate of the legend’s protagonist. It also serves to show that the story-teller implies that legends, particularly this one, are taken too seriously, both in the credibility assigned to them and in regard to the fact that, being legends, they do not involve the person being entertained by them.
The story-teller continues:
"That, therefore, he that runs races with goblin troopers, is likely to have rough riding of it:" which he concludes with the final portion: "Ergo, for a country schoolmaster to be refused the hand of a Dutch heiress, is a certain step to high preferment in state."I found the second part confusing, wondering again if he is just telling the “cautious old gentleman” and the reader to basically shut up, stop worrying and just enjoy the story. On the other hand, it could just be intended irony that the story-teller is reducing the lesson of Ichabod’s experience to advising school-teachers to date on their own level.
It is amusing, however, despite my confusion, that the story-teller equates the risk and/or imprudence of riding with an ill-tempered phantom with pursuing women out of your league. I think that again that the intention is to be humorous, implying that even after all the stupid, sinful and death-inviting behavior of Ichabod, basically the dumbest thing he could do was try to date Katrina.
This final thought leads me to believe that the glib story-teller might just be Brom Bones.

Phillis Wheatly

The poetry of Phyllis Wheatley was very amusing. Not that I mean to oppugn her beautiful poems, all of which are masterpieces, but reading her work after finishing the exhausting tales of Douglas and Equiano, I felt a bit like some of her eloquent lines were maybe a little…forced. I entered into her section already with the knowledge that despite the many prohibitions a slave would have faced, one could still achieve sophisticated, even scholarly English speech and that a person forced into slavery might be able to be shockingly positive. But Wheatley’s enthusiasm in regard to her own personal enslavement felt like a stretch. From the first line, “Twas mercy brought me from my pagan land” I didn’t buy it. Wheatley’s poems seem so contrived to me that they both failed in serving their intended purposes and impeded my enjoyment.
The first poem, On being brought from Africa to America had two supposed functions, I believe. The first is to prove to wary white people that black people can be faithful and refined. The second function is to comfort slaves oppressed by white slave-owners through the insistence that black people too can be faithful and refined, and therefore, fit in.
The first of these goals was not met, in my opinion, because: many slaves during the first few hundred years in America converted and I don’t believe the majority of white people respected them much more because of it.
The second goal, to appeal to slaves feeling lost, isn’t even probable because:
-how many slaves could even read at the time?
-Slaves were just as much forced into Christianity as they were forced into slavery. In the case of black people, religion just looks like another form of oppression.
Finally, I take the last four lines of On being brought from Africa to America to mean: “there are some people who hate blacks, and think blacks are diabolic. But as a consolation, they are wrong because blacks too can be saved (which I know because it happened to me…)”. Really when broken down, it doesn’t feel very comforting. If the same people who force blacks to convert also think their color makes them diabolical, how is the fact that a black person can convert going to make a difference, Wheatley? Also, she is basing all of this information on her own experience. She was brought to America, taught to believe Christianity and therefore is refined.
This brings me to my main problem with the poem, which is that Wheatley equates refinement with Christianity; only through Conversion can one be appropriate to participate in a respectful society. If refinement and Christianity are the same, the majority of slaves would have been “refined” because they would have already faced conversion. Her belief here doesn’t account then for how many slaves dealt with abuse despite being Christians. But if slaves hadn’t been dealing with such abuse, there would be no need for the poem, with respect to soothing blacks or whites. If Wheatley was writing from her own self-attained conviction, however, which she had investigated and come with on her own without the persuasion of the master’s world-views, there might have been a more powerful message to match the strong language.
I don’t believe that a person would have held the Christianity=Refinement=Acceptance-belief unless it was impressed upon her. I think that Wheatley’s masters, though probably well-intentioned, influenced her so much that her work isn’t interesting on a creative level. I imagine that had she not been heavily influenced by her masters, and written from a more natural standpoint, her poetry would have been much more interesting. Then again, if she had not been trained, her work wouldn’t have been as marketable to those who could read. No educated (i.e. white upper-class male) would have wanted to read the terrible truth about being forced away from family to be a servant. The educated people were the same people responsible for arranging society the way it was; they would want to see people thriving their way. Instead this poem is interesting on a more sociological level. I look to these works to experience an assimilated slave’s endeavor to participate in the Americanized Anglican-inspired tradition of the ancient art form of poetry.
Still, the lesson, which is still a valuable one for this time in history, is that a person, torn from her home and brought to a country to face horrible discrimination (both racial and gender), can still show incredible potential in one of the highest forms of art. This lesson and the inherent beauty of her phrasing, does make her work very satisfying to read today.

Judith Sargaent Murray on the Equality of the Sexes

Judith Sergeant Murray On the Equality of the SexesOne of the reasons that I enjoyed Judith Sergeant Murray was her alternative method of writing about subject of sexism. Not that her thoughts are all that different from the more modern stuff, it’s just that she has a way of laying down information that makes it all seem very sensible. She makes it feel like what it should be, common sense.
Feminist writing, especially prior to third wave feminism, always exhibits the frustration I experience when I am attacked with profeminist skepticism or criticism. This frustration is very present in Murray’s work as well, as she becomes increasingly more passionate. My frustration is mainly due to the (what I consider) evident issues of society and history. I just don’t get where the confusion lies about the unequal nature of female treatment in many elements of society. I think many feminists or profeminists can feel like they are beating their heads against a wall having to actually explain what should be obvious to people. Not that all feminist matters are obvious, one of the awful natures of oppression is its sneakiness. It’s just that often enough the person inquiring about profeminist reasoning is already decidedly against the study.
Murray begins her essay by questioning the nature of nature- would nature be biased in how it assigns intellect-then emphasizes the unlikelihood of this supposed great disparity of intellect in men and women. Her tone throughout the essay shows the same level of exhaustion that other writers display, wondering if the patriarchy is just blind.
She obviously is trying to use the male-imagined stereotypes about women to her advantage in the essay. She discusses the four types of intellect: Imagination, Reason, Memory and Judgment. With each of these types of Intellect she uses what mean say as evidence of women’s capability against men.
She begins with women’s talent with imagination. I smiled to myself when she said that she barred the contemptuous smile, but not for the reasons that she barred it. She discusses how women so beautifully decorate themselves. She also brings up women’s ability “to slander”, which also tickled me. The problem is that although many people value imagination, because the manners of fashion and gossip are considered trivial or negative, they don’t get any credit as being creative. The problem, as Murray continually points out is that women do not have the education to guide their intellect, which only leaves negative possibilities for them.
Murray disregards reason, basically blaming women’s lack of reason on men, who have denied them. Not other arguments there.
Memory is easily settled for Murray as well, who decides that old women are a likely approached as old men for their memories, which are just testaments of their experiences.
Judgment is the aspect which incites the most passion from Murray, who uses the argument that study shows that two year old females develop judgment better the males. She says that after that the experience of the child will evince the superiority. Murray points out that basically, since there is no worse fate than being a learned lady, a female will have nothing to do but to use her imagination; contemplating fashion and scandal, and possibly doing even worse things for her strength of character.
I like how Murray again uses common sense, no B.S. talk when she counters the argument of “Your domestic employments are sufficient”. Her obvious, forced reply makes me laugh, considering how backward the aforementioned argument is. Her response is a question, allowing the questioned to have to say something; Is it not crazy for someone with all of the faculties of a human being to have to confine their imagination to pie fillings?
Part II just makes me think about how a person in Murray’s time would have contemplated the role of women; this is 1790. I can’t imagine being a feminist during this period, yet I can’t imagine not being one either. For the protofeminist of 1790, I think, how could you deal with this blatant degradation? Murray describes women adorned with bows, denied any education apart from shopping and homemaking, and treated like inferiors. I wonder how a person would deal with facing actual scrutiny for opposing the patriarchy without going crazy. Then again, I also wonder how a woman could not care about the subjugation of women, unless they were sadly brainwashed in some manner.

Creativity in Slaves: Fredrick Douglas

The slave narrative of Fredrick Douglas is much less inspirationally peaceful to read and is more of a human rights piece. He painstakingly accounts more of the abuse he endures as a slave than Equiano shows in his narratives. Still, while Douglas does not appear to have been as resourceful and able to protect himself as Equiano, he shares what I believe to be a characteristic of creativity which all slaves seem to have shared in order to survive.
One of his first homes begins as a pleasant experience, with an initially very kind mistress, Mrs. Auld. Early on, before she converts to a power-tripping, crazy oppressor, she begins teaching him to read little. Upon criticism for educating Douglas by her husband, she stops and eventually transforms as a slave owner. But Douglas gains from hearing Mr. Auld castigate her teaching Douglas, realizing how important reading and writing must be, and how this great power is a threat to his masters. He makes it his main focus to secretly learn to read and write from this day forward. Both the comprehension of the importance of reading from Mr. Auld’s lecture and the means by which Douglas surreptitiously learns to read show great creativity. Douglas befriends poor, hungry white children while running errands, offering them bread to teach him from a stolen book. He also learns the names of letters through attention paid to labels (“s” would be the label for “starboard”). After learning four letters, he would challenge arrogant boys, cleverly tricking them into showing him more letters.
In chapter IX, he recounts his experience with “Captain Auld” as a gruesome living, as he and the other slaves were practically starved to death, and were not only subjected to beatings but torture. He discusses a weakened female slave who was often tied up for five or so hours, whipped, cut and starved for her inability to lift large bushels after an accident which had left her severely burned and injured.
While with Captain Auld, he explains that he was punished because he would “accidentally” lose one of the horses, and have to travel five miles to retrieve him. The truth was that Douglas had intentionally let the horse go because, although the trip was long on an empty stomach, he could fill his stomach at the house of his master’s father-in-law, who always fed his slaves.
Douglas relates in chapter X that he is moved, still under the ownership of Master Auld, to work as a field-hand for a Master Covey. Master Covey is regarded as an incredibly abusive fellow, stripping and cutting Douglas for failing at a task he had no prior experience in on his first day of work. After a grueling six months of torture, Douglas again finds a creative means of bettering his situation. He falls over while working a particularly tiresome task and then has to endure very harsh beatings from Covey. After some time he stops complying to Covey’s demands to get up a return to his work, but lets Covey commit violence to him. He then walks seven miles, ignoring Covey’s protests, to Master Auld. He assumes that if he comes to Master Auld all bloody and beaten, requests his protection and conveys that Covey is harming his own bosses property (his slave) he will face better treatment. Though this proves to be an incorrect assumption, it still shows a great amount of creativity in his problem solving. Though he eventually finds that he has to face and defeat Covey in a fight to gain any respect, he tried creatively peaceful resistance first.

Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine and Common Sense
In the textbook’s introduction to Thomas Paine, it says that he was supported by Benjamin Franklin, who called him an “ingenious, worthy young man”. I have to say that his pamphlet, Common Sense, was very interesting for me to read. I felt that he proved himself to be very wise, and intelligent about the injustices the colonists faced and a master of persuasive rhetoric.
In outlining this work, I found that all of the textbook English mechanisms of persuasion were present, exemplary for an English 190 class. The following are the points of persuasion that I noticed in Common Sense.
To begin, the title Common Sense instead of something more longwinded and boring like “why colonists of America should fight for independence from British Tyranny” gets right to the point of his persuasion; that a person with common sense will fight to extricate the American inhabitants from abusive British rule. Most of what he says in his essay is common sense exactly. The problem is that he has to consider that common sense is being defeated by the loyalty to custom, as Paine points out. One of the ways in which I would define American culture, unlike English culture is, for better or worse that Americans lack the pride in tradition that the English possess. Americans don’t tend to do things because “that’s the way they have always been done”. I can’t decide, as I read Common Sense whether the American disinterest in maintaining tradition is something that stems from Federalist liberalism or if it was there to begin with. Paine certainly has the spirit of a Maverick (teehee), but did all of the settlers?
Anyway, the introduction of the essay begins by appealing to the dubious reader, addressing those most likely to disregard the pamphlet. Paine explains this issue of custom/tradition in the first page, explaining that the “defense of custom” is a result of habitual belief that something because something doesn’t appear to be wrong that it is right.
Paine addresses the importance of the cause at hand, pumping up the reader, (creating a patriotic lust even?) by reminding that this is a huge amount of the globe at stake and that the geography is the only concern of the King of England, not the wellbeing of his English brothers and sisters in America. He contemplates options, separation and dependence on England.
Some of the persuasive approaches of Common Sense are the following:
*Paine is very creative in his reasoning, coming up with great analogies for America: -as a child, who has thrived without meat
-as a child of England, and therefore an threatened enemy of France and Spain
*Paine uses Financial Appeals: citing the economic state of America after English wars, mentioning taxes.
*Religious appeals: Attributing the distance between the continents as protective gift from God, as well as the fact that God allowed the discovery of America at nearly the same time as the religious persecution of the Protestants during the reformation.
*Paine appeals to the pride of the individual, expressing how England is taking advantage of Americans in everyway, and that all that is left for Americans is unpopularity by association.
All in all, Paine’s very convincing work really befits its title.

Franklin and Concerning the Savages of North America

Reading Benjamin Franklin’s Remarks Concerning the Savages makes the Native Americans not only appear to have an ideal society, but also makes them look like what many of the settlers were seeking when they left England. Franklin’s thoughts are so profound and well-written that I wonder how anyone reading could not have been in complete agreement with him. He seems to appeal to many aspects of society that the English would have prided in a way that shows that the Native Americans both matched and even exceeded them.
First, he explains that Indians were concerned with the wisdom, as the Indian men would grow old and eventually become sages of society. These sages were an essential part of their tribes, as the younger people would go to them for understanding. The British not only prided themselves on their wisdom, but deemed themselves superior to others based on their concern with attaining and preserving old wisdom. Also language was and is one of the most important features of English culture, which Franklin prudently points out is the greatest attainment of the Native American oral tradition.
The Native American, often perceived as beastly heathens, was not a police society; punishment was not one of the terror-causing aspects of the culture. One of the issues in England at the time was the injustice, and violent public punishment and government sponsored torture.
He explains that the Native Americans believe that the English waste their time on educational pursuits, which mainly function to make them feel superior to others. While the English spend hours making themselves feel pretentiously educated, the Indians focused on being active and not learning that would instruct them toward artificial desires. Franklin draws up an example of a trade proposal to the Indians of the Six Nations, in which six of their young men would be funded and allowed to go to an American college. He accounts the Native American’s polite rejection of the offer, including their reasoning (past examples where Native Americans who were students came back unable to function properly within the tribe) and a very clever final proposal, which was to take six of their white boy and make men of them.
Franklin points out the clever memory of the women, who mentally record during public counsels the events and information of the meetings. He tells that the women have remembered everything as well as the written documents the Americans possess, for the last 100 years. Another aspect of these counsels which he mentions is the ritual aspect, showing the Native American value of tradition, also important to the English. Despite the emphasis on tradition, the councils, Franklin points out, are different from British councils, which allow interruptions and are full of confusion.
The politeness of the Native Americans is something that I never have really considered in the past. While I always imagined these tribes to be considerate of people within the community, I would have never used the term “polite” which, I confess, I would have attributed to more western societies, of those deemed at the time to be more “civilized”. But the Native Americans appear to have rules for most of their actions, which functioned mainly to show respect to others. I have to say I have gained quite an admiration for these lost cultures, where I only had respect before. I imagine that this work would not have been taken incredibly seriously to the English, who were too conservative and unlikely to respond to Franklin’s truthful degradation of them. But I think the American Revolutionaries and those rebellious against the Brits would have liked it.

Mary Rowlandson

The Captivity of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson has been one of my favorite pieces thus far in the class. I enjoyed many aspects of her narrative and thought that it had many intriguing qualities. Not that I necessarily thought liked everything about the narrator, I just found enjoyment in analyzing the text.
It is certainly a somewhat doleful (a word that Rowlandson uses MANY times) text to read, mainly due to the amount of detail she uses. I wonder when reading it what the purpose of some of the detail is. Could she really have remembered everything so well, including somewhat ridiculous specifics? The overbearing detail, maybe simply for today’s audience, displays lack of skill and control in writing. Some of the experiences of each remove can be redundant and other data just feels unimportant. Why does Mary Rowlandson have to give a personal story for every discomfort she faced, why can’t she just explain in the text what was prohibited, or what she encountered, without describing a whole experience? It could be because she is an untrained writer. Perhaps the detail is meant to satisfy British and American audiences who at the time viewed this tale as an adventure, and craved knowledge about these exotic people? In the end I believe that she is just telling her story, dealing with all of the post-traumatic stress and getting every detail out is the most cleansing way of doing so.
One of the main amusements I found with the piece is how removed I feel from the puritan woman’s experience. Rowlandson is nothing like any of the women I have met in my life and it tickles me to think that women today are even related to a woman like this. She shows great physical strength throughout the piece, especially initially, but is awfully whiny about having to do anything strenuous. I understand that due to the amount an American wife would have to do (hours and hours of housework and childrearing) that she must have been incredibly strong, but still she portrays her self as very insulted when she has to do anything physically active. By the second remove, she has already been taken from her husband, seen her nephew beaten to death, lost her own children, her house ha been burned, she is starving while the Indians eat great meals in front of her and she is watching her one surviving child die. Still the entire eleventh remove is Rowlandson complaining about having to climb a hill.
She also is extremely faithful during this story. She constantly is angry that she has “no Christian friend near me, either to comfort of help me.(page 239)” I think that it is funny in some ways that she equates helpfulness, goodness and comfort with Christianity, though I suppose that is all she is accustomed to. Also, she frequently calls the Indians “heathens”, which belittles them on the basis of their unchristian religious beliefs. She must think that their cruelty stems from paganism.
At times I found her persistence in faith to be inspiring, as it absolutely does keep her going. Although I do understand that this would have been terrifying, I giggled to myself many times in the story, because of her world-view. She constantly pulls out bible verses that she doesn’t discuss, but that may relate to a word or thought that she has in the story. Some of these passages just feel forced into her text. I like the part in the Twelfth Remove when her mistress takes her bible away from her and throws it outside. Rowlandson runs after it and continues to hide it with her and pray secretly. This shows that Rowlandson, in the midst of the chaos of the attack by the Indians ran to retrieve her bible, or that, more likely she had one in her pocket anyway. I don’t know any women today who cling so tightly to their bibles as Rowlandson. Also, the fact that the native American woman throws it outside, showing that she either associates the Bible with pleasure, which she doesn’t want Rowlandson to experience in captivity, or that she may perhaps have a personal issue, possibly stemming from the forced conversion of the Native Americans.
The reason I both enjoyed and had trouble taking the text seriously was not that I didn’t feel sorry for Mary Rowlandson, but reading from today’s perspective, it almost seems like a satire. I was impressed with her strength in a traumatic situation, and amused with her voice and opinions, all of which felt completely antique to me.

Winthrop

Winthrop and Willaims

Winthrop
Winthrop’s sermon, The Model of Christianity, is a model for the community which he believes should be established in the New World. Based on his sermon, we can conclude that he interprets the settlement of the New World purely as a religious pilgrimage, and that he views the colonization as a duty for enabling and defining Christianity. Based on this reading, I assume that during this period, the stereotype of American settlement as being the occupation of Christians to be the mainly true. Weren’t people who wanted to change their status participating in this settlement as well?
Winthrop is very focused on the religious implications of the settlement in his sermon. While the world he envisions is quite ideal, regardless of religious orientation, his sermon is essentially a guideline for how he thinks people should act in the New World. It is full of prescriptions and proscriptions, all of which are supported by biblical excerpts, leaving me to ponder the necessity of religious text to define and explain what principles should be included in the formation and preservation of a society.
Winthrop is the quintessential American Puritan leader. But I wonder if he would act as a great human being if the bible didn’t tell him so. He says that natural law is only relevant in a pre-fall world, being that natural justice is only valid if it is in line with Christian belief, or divine Christian law.
Winthrop explains how someone should give in the new land, according (like all of his other prescriptions) to the bible. If a person has enough to give, he should give abundantly. The objection might be that a person should save wealth for his descendants, to which Winthrop explains that a person must give to the descendants as though they too will have enough, not for extraordinary times when they would have nothing. The second objection is that a person should save assuming that bad times may be ahead (a plague), which Winthrop explains that there WILL be bad times ahead in heaven if a person doesn’t pay his dues. He also explains that the righteous is merciful and lends to others, which I like. For lending he explains that if some one can repay you, give them exactly what he asks for and expect it back. If the person has no means of repaying you, lend as an act of mercy, as a gift. As far as forgiveness for someone who you thought could pay you back but who has no means, then you should forgive the person. Mercy mainly should be granted according to God’s law, in which Winthrop mainly uses the Golden rule. Finally, Winthrop describes how and why people, as Christians, should love one another.
This text offers some insight into the interests of the people leaving England behind and what cultural aspects were concerns regarding their leaving. Obviously both money and greed were an issue if Winthrop emphasizes the need to be a merciful lender and donator in his sermon. Likewise, a he care a lot about how forgiving and compassionate a person acts. In the passages in which he discusses love as the bond between the parts (people) of the body (of Christ), he clearly want to ensure the unity and understanding of all people in America. The reason I think this was so hard to maintain in the New World is that he stands by the fact the Divine law makes Natural law somehow obsolete, therefore permitting that people who don’t fit into his blissful religious bond will be outcasts of society. Also, the bible, which can be easily interpreted (for cruel purposes of the ill-intentioned) can’t be the authority over everyone. I think that Winthrop, because he attributes the iniquity of English society to it not being authentically Christian, believes that a wholly religious society will be the answer. This only works in theory, if everyone is equally as devout and equally good, and leaves no room for anyone who doesn’t fit in. Only Winthrop does not see that believing in the Bible does not necessarily grant a person integrity.

John Smith and The genral History of Virginia,. new England and the Summer Isles. (Page 57-66)

John Smith from the general history of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles, FROM CHAPTER 2. WHAT HAPPENED TILL THE FIRST SUPPLY:
The author describes coming to Virginia after a difficult journey from England, which took from May until September. The writer, according to the vague footnote could be a number of people, including John Smith himself. The Preface explains that this chapter comes from a book of chronicles which in clued some of Smith’s own writings, many added after a later publication. The work proposes that Smith mainly edited the piece, though it appears as though his own interests are at the heart of the work, as it is very complimentary to Smith, speaking very highly of his performance in the new World.
In the first few pages the author outlines how the mismanagement of the supply onboard caused many casualties, citing the irresponsibility of the ship’s President, who hoarded his own supply of sustenance. After the president’s death, the author discusses the mental condition of the fearful crew on the ship, mainly in relation to encountering the savages. Then this person credits God for transforming the savages into merciful suppliers for the crew of the ship once they arrive;
“ each hour expecting the fury of the savages, when God, the patron of all good endeavors, in the desperate extremity so changed the hearts of the savages that they brought such plenty of their fruits and provision an no man wanted.”
I found this part of the passage interesting because I wonder exactly why the author thinks God’s will is the reason for the humanity of the Native Americans.
The first reason I considered was the supremacy of Christianity during the 17th century. Not only was the church the highest earthly power in the defined hierarchy of the time in England, but voyagers to the new world, I suspect, needed an inflated presence of God to get them to takes such a harrowing risk. Perhaps the narrator’s belief that God made the “savages” civil was not so much xenophobia, but piety, which would have been an important tool in exploration.
Another reason I imagined is that the previous texts and knowledge characterized Native American societies as both ruthlessly violent and wildly primitive; combining all of the diversely different indigenous people’s into one definitive problem. Thus the reason for the prevalent and degrading term “savages” to define a race. Additionally, the intended audience for the piece would be aristocratic English, far removed from the perils of colonization. Would it have been backward for the narrator to discuss the Native Americans in a positive light, harming the author’s credibility/likeability to the wary and pretentious English?
Then again, I understand that John Smith was writing at this time to persuade authorities in England to finance and endorse him as a leader in Virginia. The rest of this narrative shows his insider knowledge of the great voyage and his courage and diplomacy in working with this presumably threatening group of people. The narrator acts as a critic of his leaders, detailing their faults as directors in the New World, but has nothing but great things to say about Smith. The confusion about the authorship and the favorability depicted about Smith certainly leaves me wondering if it could be anyone else writing it.

Bartolome de Las Casas y Columbus.

I have been very concerned lately with the idea of the bystander. In my philosophy class on genocide and the holocaust we discuss the bystander on a regular basis and discuss whether or not we believe that a bystander is as immoral as a person who commits crimes against humanity. There tend to be a lot of gray areas (do you consider someone who made assignments in paperwork for the organization of the Nazi mass killings evil as the killer?) especially regarding the individuals who were both bystanders and victims in a sense. I tend to be forgiving of most of humanities cruelties, but at the same time, I believe a bystander is a necessary participant, though passive, in evil.
Bartolome de las Casas is an example of an active participant of justice, which changes the way that I feel about many of histories explorers and colonizers.
I used to give Renaissance Europeans the benefit of the doubt as far as how evil people were. I though that torture and murder were so implanted into their psyches that it made them ok, even if what they did was not. Casas shows that this is not the case by proving that at least educated people in the 16th century had a sense of right versus wrong. Included in the moral code, at least for Casas, is indigenous people, Africans and women (which I presume still was rare). This means that the acts committed by many of the conquistadors were morally wrong, without any room for cultural argument.
Casas really shocked me because he used Christianity to defend his claims, something mainly corrupted for the sake of imperial greed. Despite his Christian faith, he calls the Spanish settlers “The Christians”. I think this may be meant to make a point; that Christians too can be perverse, or that they are not acting according to the title they define themselves by. He discusses the way that, as Columbus said in earlier writings, the Native Americans had believed that the voyagers were gods; and how the Christians proved themselves not to be worthy of that status through their mercilessness. He describes the Christians as animals, much like how the Europeans had conceived the Native Americans. The Christians are basically greedy, warmongering, gluttonous rapists. The violence he describes is awful to read about, especially when one considers how innocent and unprepared the Native Americans were.
It all transfers me back to Columbus’ writing about the new world that he found from 1493. The letter, to Luis de Santangel, regarding the first voyage describes, very concisely, what he thought was Asia. He expresses great awe about this land where trees of a thousand kinds never lose their leaves and everyday is as beautiful as Spain in May. It sounds so much like another Eden. The Native, he expresses, never approach him, but run away at the sight of him. It all is a very depressing image, of these innocent people who would soon, as Casas relates to us, be destroyed, along with their paradise.

Native American Creation Tales

I had some trouble making any actual sense of the Native American creation stories, which I connect to my Christian and Darwinist educations. Both Christianity and Darwinism can work together; simply put, God created evolution. In the Christian creation stories, (one) God is mainly an organizer of chaos, ordering everything according to a satisfying plan for human beings to consider. It is almost too convenient, the way the bible can be interpreted, in regard to satisfying both the human mind and the teachings of Darwin. Although the bible doesn’t account for dinosaurs, it does place humans last in the evolution, and take away some of the sensationalism, and you have what could be your basic big bang theory.
The Pima Creation story was obviously not originally written down, so it does not have numbered parts like the Old Testament text. Instead there is a much more creativity, but less form. In the beginning there was no earth, no water, nothing- I heard that one before. The rest is almost nothing like the Old Testament creation story, and therefore cannot be understood through current scientific understanding. The story is magical. It is not so much about the order of creating the earth, but about how the process took place:
-the doctor of the earth rubs his breast to make the greasy earth; he rubbed his palm, not three, but four times to position the earth.
-he creates ants and then revises this creation.
-he makes man out of his eye and the shadow of his eye to make man look like him. Then he revises man after making the sun and the mountains.
-the recipe for the sun is hardened ice in a hollow vessel, placed in the sky. The moon has the same recipe. The stars were spit into the sky.
-He rubs his breast to make man doll and a woman doll. With nothing to eat, the people eat each other.
-He kills the remaining people by letting the sky fall to the earth. He does this a number of times, finding something faulty in all of the people he makes.
-He starts over on the earth.
The issue I had was that the story feels senseless, and redundant. I don’t know exactly why this is so bothersome for a creation story. Christians are taught that God is all-knowing, but Native Americans are pagans, and believe their god’s have faults. I suppose the Christian beliefs developed out of Jewish beliefs which developed out of Ancient Mesopotamian beliefs. Religion has evolved as well. It’s hard for me to understand any primitive stories of creation.
The Iroquois story has even more issues for someone accustomed to Old Testament creation. Mainly the story of creation begins with two worlds already in existence. Also, the story is full of animals who serve the people and gods of the story. The only animal ever pointed out in Genesis is the serpent, Satan.
Other than the serpent, Human beings live out the rest of their lives in the Old and New testaments disconnected from animals and the natural world to some extent. It seems that, based on biblical education, that Human beings- with the exception of ritual animal sacrifices, are somehow above the natural world, and that because we are God’s most prized creatures, we should perpetuate a connection to the higher realm of God and heaven. I like though, much more, that the Native Americans priorities involve and connect both the natural world and the spiritual world.