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(2014
midterm assignment) Sample Student Midterm answers 2014 #1: Long Essay |
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Dawn Iven
4 March 2014
Gothic Tales: The Struggles in Early
America
Literature is much like history; they can
both tell us stories of our past.
America has a rich history, and literature that eloquently tells about the early
years of our country. We all know
about Columbus discovering America, but I believe the Pilgrims and the Puritans
give us a better look at how our country came to be.
They came to this country looking to get free from religious persecution.
The story of their struggle to find religious freedom comes with tales of
romanticism predominantly the Gothic.
Veronica Ramirez says in her essay “How the Gothic Works in Pre-Romantic
Texts,” “The Gothic is an element of Romanticism, and even though most texts in
our course proceeded the Romantic period (late 1700s-1800s), there are threads
of Puritan/Moral Gothic and Wilderness Gothic in our texts.”
Gothic tales can be found in the reality of not only the lives of the
Pilgrims and Puritans, but in their religious beliefs as well.
Today we have a multitude of religions, and because of the struggles they
endured coming to this country, we have the freedom to choose whether we want to
believe in a higher being or not, as well as, which religion best fits our own
belief system. In “Puritans in New
England and England,” it says, “Puritan attention to family love, patriarchal
responsibility, monogamous covenant marriage, child discipline (which meant
training, not hitting) have had a strong influence.”
We still share these conservative views
in religion today. When deciding
“which America do we teach” (Objective 4), I believe the whole story, good and
bad, of the Pilgrims and Puritans is an important part of our history and
literature.
William Bradford tells the story of the Pilgrims in his “Of
Plymouth Plantation.” He refers to
the Pilgrims beliefs of Protestant Reformation as “the light of the gospel” and
Catholicism as the “darkness of popery.”
The Protestants believed Catholicism was leading them “away from the
light of divine revelation and into the darkness of human sin.”
The Gothic, shown in the comparison of
Protestantism and Catholicism, references the light and dark as well as good and
evil. Gothic can also refer to the
correlation of the Plain Style of the Pilgrims and Puritans, and the Baroque
Style of the Catholics. Plain Style
(the light) refers to not just the simple ways of living life, but also the
plain black and white clothing of the Pilgrims and Puritans.
Baroque Style (the dark) refers to the
Catholics, whose churches, and music were elaborate, and dramatic.
We read in, “Puritans in New England and England,” “The Puritans are
associated with the 17c Baroque era, but frontier conditions and middle-class
life limited their extravagance.”
Therefore, we consider the Puritans who came to America to be Plain Style as
well.
There are some differences between the Pilgrims and Puritans
such as, the Puritans came to America a decade after the Pilgrims, and while a
hundred Pilgrims came to American, five thousand Puritans came over.
While more individuals came over as Pilgrims, the Puritans came as a
community. The Puritans wanted a
utopian community, which John Winthrop in “A Model of Christian Charity,”
describes this community as “that every man might have need of other, and from
hence they might be all knit more nearly together in the bonds of brotherly
affection.” He also refers to this
utopian community as “a city upon a hill.” This
is how these courageous people came to a new world and helped create America.
Both the Pilgrims and the Puritans
wanted to separate themselves from the Catholic Church, but their religious
beliefs differed, with the Pilgrims having more beliefs that are radical.
Gothic is shown in our texts when Bradford states, they
suffered “bloody death and cruel torments; other times imprisonments and
banishments.” Because of the
religious torture and torment of these modest people,
they see going to a new world their chance to get away from the religious
persecution as well as “propagating and advancing the gospel of the kingdom of
Christ in those remote parts of the world.”
The Pilgrims had many hardships when they arrived in America.
They had little food, no shelter and most died because of illness.
Bradford tells us of “savages ready to fill their sides full with
arrows…, and winters sharp and violent…cruel and fierce storms…what could they
see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beast and wild men…”
Dark woods filled with savages shooting arrows are an excellent example
of Wilderness Gothic. (Objective 2:
Read Early American Literature as an origin story about the beginning of
North America and literature.)
The Puritans, who also suffered from harsh surroundings, saw
the same sort of Gothic as well as another aspect of it.
In 1692, “mass hysteria” occurred when some young girls who were possibly
bored or maybe even sexually repressed, began “acting out.”
They began accusing people of witchcraft.
Before it was all over, around 150 people were accused, 27 trials held,
and 19 people convicted and put to death.
The Salem Witch Trials may have occurred among the Puritans because of
such strict moral beliefs.
The idea of witches conjuring up spells in dark woods and afflicting the
innocent brings vivid Gothic ideas.
Cotton Mather says, “The New-Englanders are a people of God settled in those,
which were once the Devil’s territories.”
He speaks of a black man (or Devil), of apparitions, ghosts, and mist.
These supernatural notions are all elements of the Gothic.
In “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” the famous “fire
and brimstone” sermon of Jonathon Edwards, he speaks of Original Sin and the
belief that “people are not born innocent and pure but in a state of sin, from
which God may redeem them.” He
believed that only following the will of God would keep a person from going to
hell. “God will not hold them up in
these slippery places any longer, but will let them go: and then at that very
instant, they shall fall into destruction.”
He used fear and the threat of going to hell along with Gothic tones of
“black clouds of God’s wrath now hanging directly over your heads, full of the
dreadful storm, and big with thunder.”
His use of Wilderness Gothic is much like all the others, except he uses
the power of nature, instead of nature itself.
People today are still obsessed with the Witch Trials and
because of this obsession, many movies have been made about the subject.
The mass hysterias, like the ones that happened during the Salem Witch
Trials, still happen in today’s society with the last being, the “Day Care
Sexual Abuse Hysteria of the late 80s to early 90s.”
Gothic elements used in Early American Literature makes the texts
interesting and intriguing to students.
People love being scared and hearing the horror that is inflicted on
others. This is what makes these
texts relevant today. (Objective 1:
To learn about early North American and U. S. texts, cultures, and make them
matter now.) Students will continue
to fall in love with Gothic authors such as Edgar Allan Poe and Stephan King.
Texts used for Essay 1:
Puritans in New England (and England)
Bradford, Of
Plymouth Plantation
Jonathan Edwards, Sinners
in the Hands of an Angry God
Cotton Mather, The Wonders of the
Invisible World
Web review: Salem
Witch Trials
