Anne Bradstreet and the New World

Anne Bradstreet was a well known poet. Her poems reflect her Puritan culture. They are simply documents that have recounted many important events in her life and have influenced her cultural perspective. Bradstreet was a woman, a daughter, wife, mother, Puritan, a well educated woman, a poet and an English person who tried her best to adjust her lifestyle in the New World in New England struggles. All of these experiences are reflected back to her poems. Each and every poem has something significant about the way that she lived and the way she portrays women in some of her poems.

In my account, two of the poems that I read, “Here Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House…,” and “To my Dear and Loving Husband,” were both really interesting in my opinion. In the first poem she describes how her house burns and cries out to God for help. She uses strong words and adjectives to describe this action. “And to my God my heart did cry….the flame consume my dwelling place… my pleasant things in ashes lie (Bradstreet 212).” These quotes imply how she feels about her house burning. She further on, goes to describe how no guest will ever come to her house again, nor eat on her tables. It helps us, the readers to understand the poem by how she wrote it. She describes in a way that we can feel the action that is happening in front of our eyes, and she uses rhyming words to add a flow to the poem.

Bradstreet understood her daily life to be very hard as a mother, wife, and a woman. In the poem she states that after she looked at her burning house she “blest his name that gave and took…that laid my good now in the dust (212).” In these lines she conveys to the audience that she is not angry at God as to why He burnt her house. She accepts what God has done and appreciated what God had given her. One Puritan value that she establishes here is that she has no attachment to the worldly objects. She believed that everything belonged to God to begin with.

In the second poem, “To My Dear and Loving Husband,” Bradstreet conveys her love towards her husband. She wished that her love will be honored even after her death. “if ever wife was happy in a husband. She feels for him like no other person in the world. She challenges woman who may have claimed to have the same kind of love that she has towards her husband. She further describes that “my love is such that the rivers cannot quench (206).” His love is the sole satisfaction for her in her life. At the end of the poem she conveys that there is no way she can repay a price for such love. She sums up by saying that we should value a person’s love when they are live rather than when they pass away.

When Bradstreet came into the New World, she faced many difficulties. She fell sick, and had to go through several other problems. yet she didn't give in. She struggled to make a family and a living as a mother and a wife. She did her best in all and even after she found time to write her poems and be well recognized for it. As she conveys, “at first when I came into this country, my heart rose…but after I was convinced it was the way of God, I submitted to it and joined the church at Boston (187).” Bradstreet’s poetry help us to examine the Puritan culture and lifestyle of each in the New World; they help us to understand what it was like to live in the New World and what kind of hardships each person faced. Bradstreet lived a hard life but she never gave in. She was a strong women and a strong believer and she depicts that in all her writings.

Acknowledgements:

The following specific poems and quotes and some lines were taken from the “The Norton Anthology: American Literature" Seventh Addition (Volume A).

Columbus, Smith, Cabeza de vaca....who is who?

Well to start off this blog, I will be honest- I really don’t know how to start it off. On this entry today I will be focusing on some early explorers that made a difference in the American history and literature. If you still couldn’t guess who I am talking about, their names are: Christopher Columbus, John Smith, and Cabeza de vaca. “The American culture has had two dominant and opposite myths of early explorers: The noble, courageous bringer of light and civilization to the barbarous world; and the despoiler, who is greedy, unimaginative, and depraved.”

Christopher Columbus was noble and courageous, in my opinion. He had done series of four voyages between 1492 and 1504. His first three voyages tarnished his reputation but his last voyage helped him to recoup his reputation after suffering in Panama and ship wrecked in Jamaica. When crossing several island, Columbus found innumerable people living on those islands. First island, he named San Salvador, second he named it Isla de Santa Maria de Concepcion, third he named it Fernandina, to the fourth he named it Isabella, and finally to the fifth he named it Isla Juana. He had sent other men that accompanied him to some islands further down to find out more but as they came with no important details, he carried on with his voyage. But at the end of his fourth voyage, Columbus was not very pleased. He wrote in his letter to Ferdinand that he had lost all his hope, and that the earth should weep for him.

Columbus was brave enough to go on this voyage and find out the places that he discovered. It took him several years to complete his voyage and only courageous men such like him, can complete his voyage after starting it. Although he didn’t really gain success at the end of his voyage he was still known to be noble and indefinable as he “did not sail upon this voyage to gain honor or wealth; this is certain, for already all hope of that was dead.”

The three documents by John Smith summarizes that John Smith was an adventurer, colonist, and promoter. He established colonies and attempted to attract settlers with his writings. His purpose was to bring people to the new world. He also wrote a pamphlet in which he tried to persuade people to join him in the new land. His audience was intended for people from England, and some settlers.

What shaped my understanding of Columbus and Smith was their characteristics. Both were noble and courageous. Both had good intentions to find a place and bring back goods, but John Smith was kind of boastful and proud. One was an explorer while the other was an adventurer. As mentioned earlier, Columbus found many islands which he named and wrote back letter to Isabella and King Ferdinand about his voyages. Some he wasn’t so happy about and some he was. Smith on the other hand, describes the pleasure of how risking one’s life for getting your piece of land brings to men. He also implies that building one’s own house, planting your own crops- would be easy to have if there was no prejudice. Columbus was the courageous bringer of light and civilization while John Smith was the despoiler.

Cabeza de vaca was an early Spanish explorer of the new world. He was the “son of the village alderman, grandson of the conquerer, and descendant on his mother’s side from a hero of the wars against the Moors who was given the family name Cabeza de vaca (cow’s head) when he used a cow’s skull to mark a strategic route through an ungarded mountain pass.” Cabeza de vaca was like Columbus. He was a brave and a courageous explorer. He described the different religions of different people. He conveys if a son of a villager dies, the whole village mourns for a year, and they can only eat what other give them. Due to this, many families were poor and to face off the living conditions. What shaped my image of him most clearly is the fact of how he carried out his own expedition and helped others to get through some. His narratives explain his exploring experiences and allow the audience to go into the deep past and feel what it was like to be there.

Overall, the early explorers had their own advantages and disadvantages. If one was noble and courageous, the other was a despoiler, while the third was in between or even like, in my opinion, like Columbus. All did exploration on their own with the help of others. Some succeeded while others had to face the consequences. In all, these early explorers show us the different ways of thinking style and provide us with examples of their personal accounts so we can understand their expedition better. This was my account of these three famous early explorers. What is your view on it?