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(2016
midterm assignment) Sample Student Midterm Answers 2016 (index to #2 samples) #2b: Short Essay (Favorite Term) |
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Jackie Rodriguez
Reason will have its Reign
With
almost all of this material being foreign to me I was intrigued by a lot of
things however I think what grabbed me the most was the texts we read that were
extremely religious. That time period going into the age of Enlightenment when
we read The Wonders of an Invisible World
and right after that we read Sinners
in the Hands of an Angry God really struck me as passionate. I feel like
leaving that period behind we were leaving a period of blind faith and it was
really then that we started changing the way we looked at the world. I feel like
this was a huge turning point for people; it helped shape so much of who we are
today. This I think helps us to talk about the objective that I find myself the
most drawn to, objective 3, which America do we teach? Clearly this is an
America that we should make sure we teach, as the Puritans have written so much
down about or history and the founding fathers took great pains to say that
religion is something each person has a freedom to but that it will not be part
of the government. Both of the texts show religion as really pushed to the front
of whatever was going on in that time. This will always be a struggle for
America and it is important to see what religion can do when it is not held in
check.
The
Wonders of an Invisible World is a firsthand account of events from the
Salem witch trials. This is something that, while it is a dark spot in American
history, is really a point of wonder and almost like something exciting. The
fact that it deals with the supernatural is really a drawing point. The text
reads kind of dry and boring but that is due to the nature of it told strictly
as a factual account. However, the facts that the text presents such as
apparition of evil spirits, cows falling mysteriously ill and a woman having her
hands mysteriously bound are all unexplained and that leaves a lot of room for
people to be intrigued. Now the point here is that when there is anything evil
and supernatural going on most people are going to turn to another supernatural
entity, God. They are going to expect God to carry them through this, as they
have been faithful servants. In talking about this phenomenon in class, I feel
confident that a lot of this IF it is not due to the presence of Satan, is due
to the presence of mass hysteria or illness. Nevertheless, the text is a good
example of how these people clung to their religious beliefs so much so that
they were willing without proper evidence execute women based on the fear and
hysteria of other town’s members. Every religion if I am not mistaken has a
negative or devil figure and while this text is really focused on that influence
on people it really shows how people handled that. It shows a government, as the
women were tried in a very religious context, that let religion rule the justice
system and what came of that. The senseless death of many people that really
cannot be justified in a good moral light.
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God was so interesting to me because no matter how I felt, meaning that no matter if I agreed or not I felt the passion in his sermon. I feel like this was a last ditch effort of the last big Puritan. This showed me a man who really believed what he was saying and felt conviction to make the others understand. The imagery used in this sermon is really powerful and even if you do not necessarily believe as he does it is easy to find yourself thinking that you don’t want that to happen to you and you find yourself listening harder to find out how to avoid this fate. He tells us that we are all sinners and that we are all going to hell and we need to repent for our ways and turn to god. The nation will always face this kind of bleak warning as we are in the eyes of many, always on a path of decline. It is very powerful and it holds many gothic images that also hold importance. There are many ways you can teach this text and show importance in something we would find a bit over the top now. Nonetheless, you can really feel the urgency in his sermon and you can imagine with the age of reason coming in fast how he must feel. People everywhere are going to turn away from god and start looking to reason and logic; which will inevitably cause us to wonder can we empirically prove the existence of god. If we look back that is exactly what we have done. We are now saying that the earth was even created in a different manner then we once all believed. I guess when I first read the text I thought it was over the top and dramatic but when I started to ask myself why does this matter should it be taught, I could see that it was much more than that. It really paints a picture of what America was like at that time and it is important to the birth of the America that we find ourselves in today.
Over all the America we decide to teach should have this dark spot as
well as this intimidating spot of our history. These are two times when the
people speaking were not winners and yet their story is still important. This
objective cannot be fulfilled without asking how these texts matter today, and
they really do. In the sense that we still deal with religion on a day to day
basis and there is always someone who is trying to get religion integrated into
whatever is possible. There is always some religious figure out there trying to
scare people into a moral code with the prospect of hell and judgement. These
texts really open our eyes to the fact that they are still happening today and
we need to watch for them so we do not have another bought of mass hysteria that
causes us to lose grip on what the founding fathers wanted for our country.
