Thursday, November 26, 2009

Puritans: the Chosen People?

Michael Fong
ENG 48A
Journal #19 William Bradford
November 24, 2009




"Thus it pleased God to vanquish their enemies, and give them delivernce; and by His special providence so to dispose that not any one of them were either hurt, or hit, though their arrows came close by them, and on every side them, and sundry of their coats, which hung up in the barricado, were shot through and through. Afterwards they gave God solemn thanks and praise for their deliverance, and gathered up a bundle of their arrows, and sent them into England afterwards by the master of the ship, and called that place the 'First Encounter.'" (Bradford 119)


"The English in which it is written is that of the English Bible, or perhaps we should rather say the more popular language of the 'Pilgrim's Progress.' It is a language which Bradford uses with great effect." (G. Cuthbert Blaxland. "Mayflower" Essays on The Story of the Pilgrim Fathers. Ward & Downey Ltd., 1896)






Bradford records the encounter between the Puritan colonists and the Indians. Victory belonged to the colonists, and Bradford credited it to the workings of God. The protection of the Puritan colonnists from the arrows that the Indians fired was also said to be an act of God.



Blaxland categorized Bradford's language as that of the Bible, and in some ways, it is remarkably similar to the Old Testament. In the Book of Exodus, the Israelites, led by Moses to escape from the grip of the Pharaoh, underwent a similar journey to the promised land. The parallels are unmistakable; in Bradford's work, the theme of the Puritan colonists being on a divine journey could be observed. What is more interesting though is how Bradford fashioned the colonists. He included a reference of God in no less than nine occasions, and in each of the cases, God is said to be the direct cause of either the curse upon the enemies, or the success of the colonists themself. They saw themselves, in essence, as the Israelites, the chosen people. When mana rained from the Heavens, the Israelites rejoiced and knelt to thank God; similarly when Indian arrows spared the colonists, they took it as a form of God's protection.




However, the Puritan colonists, in my opinion, displayed the unfavorable traits of so many other groups of people before them who believed God was on their side and that they were chosen. The British, for instance, did the same thing with Indians as the Puritan colonists did with the Native Indians. Their religious fervor immediately led them to view other races as inferior and in need of enlightenment. Such mindset and mentality eventually sowed the seeds of slavery. The colonists adherence to the Old Testament blinded them in the virtues and qualities prescribed by Christianity. "Love thy neighbor"; "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The Bible could be interpreted in a great many different ways; it appeared that the Puritan colonists had their own separate interpretation.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Anne Bradstreet

Michael Fong
ENG 48A
Journal #18 Anne Bradstreet
November 19, 2009






"If ever two were one, then surely we. / If ever man were loved by wife, then thee; / If ever wife was happy in a man, / Compare with me, ye women, if you can. / I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold / Or all the riches that the East doth hold. / Nor ought but love from thee, give recompense. / My love is such that rivers cannot quench, / Thy love is such I can no way repay, / The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray. / Then while we live, in love let's so persevere / That when we live no more, we may live ever." (Bradstreet 206)








"A number of love poems written for her devoted husband, Simon Bradstreet—a busy colonial official often away from home—reveal a healthy sensuality and suggest that, although she was a Puritan, she was not puritanical." (Anne Bradstreet: An Overview. Thomas F O'Donnell)






In Bradstreet's "To My Dear and Loving Husband", she expresses her affection and love towards her husband. The theme of unity and eternal love could be observed in the poem, as well as the greatness of their relationship.



Writing in the age of Puritans, Bradstreet echoes one of the most famous Renaissance poets of all time in this particular poem, John Donne: "My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears...If our two loves be one, or thou and I / Love so alike that none do slacken, none can die". The language and tone is so alike that I would go as far as saying that this could definitely pass as a love poem written in the Renaissance by a man, were the genders be inversed. In "The Good Morrow" (the quoted excerpt above by John Donne), Donne incorporates the idea of mutual and everlasting love. O'Donnell mentioned that although Bradstreet was a Puritan, she was not puritanical, and surely this love poem to her husband is a clear example of such notion.



The equality and mutuality of the love expressed in the poem also could be interpreted as Bradstreet's perspective on femininity and gender. As opposed to the traditional, uptight, housekeeping wife, Bradstreet chose to profess her love in a direct manner, which was unorthodox for women at the time. I think, in a way, this is why Bradstreet was so popular within Puritans. True, they held to their beliefs with fervor and passion, but subconsciously desires and love, as described for instance in this poem, was repressed within their minds. Bradstreet echoes such ideas and thoughts, and as a result the Puritans at the time could, at a certain level, relate to what she was saying her poetry.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Michael Fong
ENG 48A
Journal #17 Jonathan Edwards
November 17, 2009




"The use of this awful subject may be for awakening unconverted persons in this congregation. This that you have heard is the case of every one of you that are out of Christ. That world of misery, that lake of burning brimstone, is extended abroad under you. There is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God; there is hell's wide gaping mouth open; and you have nothing to stand upon, nor any thing to take hold of; there is nothing between you and hell but the air; it is only the power and mere pleasure of God that holds you up." (Edwards 430)






"Never was there a happier combination of great power with great piety." (THOMAS CHALMERS, quoted by G. D. Henderson in Jonathan Edwards and Scotland, The Evangelical Quarterly, January 1944)


Upon his detailed elaboration on the workings of God and how He punishes the wicked, Edwards shifts the tone of his sermon. The second part of it starts with the above quote, focusing largely on converting non-believers into Christians, and those who were already Christians into more devout believers. The message of rebirth and redeeming oneself is dominant.





True, Edwards is a stout and devout Christian (to say the least), but he also possesses the power, as Chalmers put it, to impress his audience with his message. "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" invokes the sense of fear. Not only did it invoke fear, but it extends the fear to the realms of the unknown, that is, one would never know when God will strike, and that every sinner is essentially at the hands of a God, a God who will act according to his pleasure. We all have heard sermons on how God is the Almighty and that sinners should repent for their sins, but to put the message in such a powerful way and to instill such emotion within his audience (one could but imagine how the audience reacted to Edwards' sermon) is a work of art.








The feeling that I usually get from Christianity is that to some extent certain messages are sugar coated. We believe in Christ, we are saved from hell and doom. We admit to our sins and pray for forgiveness, we shall be granted that provided that we are sincere. Edwards' approach is unique; he infuses both the anger of God and the terrible consequences should we follow the path of evil, and present us with the one and only way to escape from Hell. His message is direct and not dressed up in fancy rhetoric. The difference in being moved by religion and comprehending religious ideas, according to Edwards, is the difference between reading the word fire and actually being burned. In "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", he has succeeded, in a way, in lighting a fire on all of our backsides.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

The Declaration of Independence

Michael Fong
ENG 48A
Jouornal #16 Thomas Jefferson
November 12, 2009




"He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain...And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another." (Jefferson 655)



"Nothing can be more absurd than the cavil that the Declaration contains known and not new truths. The object was to assert, not to discover truths, and to make them the basis of the Revolutionary act." (Letter to Thomas Jefferson by James Madison on September 6, 1823)







In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson goes on an elaborate attack on the British Empire and King George in particular, citing his violation to the rights of life and his lust for violence as well as war for his own greed as crimes and sins. This passage was ultimately dropped from the Declaration of Independence.


Oppression is, throughout history, the fundamental root cause of most revolutions across the world. Whether it is the Roman slave rebellion led by gladiator Spartacus, or the English Revolution in the wake of the execution of Charles I, or the American Revolution, it could be seen that it is oppression that drives people to revolt and to rebel. It is within human nature, and indeed the nature of every other living organism, to push back when cornered, to attack when too much pressure and force is delivered. For Jefferson to stand up against the British rule, and to construct the document that influenced the United States for years to come is, in itself, a feat that cannot be easily matched within the history of this country.
Yet, as we shower Jefferson with respect and pride the Declaration of Independence as the ideal of America, we must also look at this country and her place in the world as of now. Isn't the United States edging closer and closer to what Britain did? Wars are being waged and still the agenda is unclear. Other countries are constantly forced to the brink by America, either by the strong hand of economical coercion or by simple intimidation of power. Jefferson claimed it as a right and duty to go against tyrannical powers in situations where revolution is deemed necessary. With the actions of America within the past fifty years, is she inching closer and closer to that boundary when other countries would rise up and revolt against her? One could but only hope the United States would not follow the path in which Britain ventured through three centuries ago. If the object is to assert truths within the Declaration, let us make sure that this country would adhere to them.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Common Sense

Michael Fong
ENG 48A
Journal #15 Thomas Paine
November 10, 2009


"Ye that tell us of harmony and reconciliation, can ye restore to us the time that is past? Can ye give to prostitution its former innocence? Neither can ye reconcile Britain and America. The last cord now is broken, the people of England are presenting addresses against us. There are injuries which nature cannot forgive; she would cease to be nature if she did. As well can the lover forgive the ravisher of his mitress, as the continent forgive the murders of Britain...Asia and Africa have long expelled her [Freedom]. Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind." (Paine 636-637)



"History is to ascribe the American Revolution to Thomas Paine." (John Adams - Wikipedia)





In the quote above, Thomas Paine goes in an outright attack towards the British empire as a whole, accusing her of wrongdoings comparable to that of rape and murder. He ends by going on a ferocious lament on the gradual extinction of freedom in every other continent, thus singling out America as the "last free land"; the ultimate sanctuary for freedom, human rights, and peace.







Paine may not employ fancy rhetoric in his writing, but his "plain" style of writing is not, in any sense, a display of weakness in his arguments; rather, it cloaks the ingenuity
and brilliance of them. His mode of argument is so intricate and elaborate that the title "Common Sense" of his work seems all but a subtle suggestion of irony. I could not help but be reminded of yet another speech given by Mark Antony shortly after the death of Julius Caesar. Through the course of one single speech, Antony successfully turned the crowd from supporting and agreeing with the course of action of the assassins to a raging mob determined to avenge Caesar's death. The Roman public was thus turned to revolution against Brutus and his fellow statesmen, which in turn marked a significant change of political climate within the Roman Empire. "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears", began Antony with his speech, and what follows completely changed the mindset of the Romans and their perception of Julius Caesar. Isn't Paine doing a similar thing? Is he not declaring, "Friends, Americans, countrymen, lend me your ears", and designing within his arguments to refute and counter Britain? In "Common Sense", Paine's agenda is clear: to rally the colonies into joining the revolution against Britain, and through the course of his work he succeeded. His infusion of direct appeal of emotion to the public along with his clear, concise arguments (as opposed to the British mode of oratory, which tends towards the archaic and dense nature) indeed was a pioneer to the politics of America to this very day.

Friday, November 6, 2009

The Poet Laureate of African Americans

Michael Fong
ENG 48A
Journal #14 Phillis Wheatley
November 5, 2009




"Great Maro's strain in heav'nly numbers flows, / The Nine inspire, and all the bosom glows. / O could I rival thine and Virgil's page, / Or claim the Muses with the Mantuan Sage; / Soon the same beauties should my mind adorn, / And the same ardors in my soul should burn: / Then should my song in bolder notes arise, / And all my numbers pleasingly surprize; / But here I sit, and mourn a grov'ling mind, / That fain would mount, and ride upon the wind." (Wheatley 754)




"The poems written by this young negro [Phillis Wheatley in Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral] bear no endemial marks of solar fire or spirit. They are merely imitative; and, indeed, most of those people have a turn for imitation, though they have little or none for invention...She has written many good lines, and now and then one of superior character has dropped from her pen; as in the Epistle to [Maecenus]" (The Monthly Review 49 [Dec. 1773] - Taken from Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800)


The above quote is taken from Wheatley's poem "To Maecenas". Wheatley muses about the Greek classics, and imagines herself as a poet with skill comparable to the great Virgil. She acknowledges, however, that this is only wishful thinking, and that she would, instead, "ride upon the wind".



The reviews upon this particular poem, as could be seen above in the second quote, were largely negative at that time. People accused Wheatley of imitation and mere copying, and at the same time ironically though, they grudgingly admit, like the quote above, that Wheatley did write good lines "from time to time". They fail to mention, for instance, that Wheatley's knowledge of the classics was far superior than the average white individual. They also conveniently overlook the fact that Wheatley was writing in the high style of poetry by adhering to British traditions. Was it not Aristotle who elaborated on the theory of mimesis in Poetics that it is within human nature to align and respond to literature in a subconscious mimetic way? Wheatley's infusion of the classics with her own thematic messages in her poetry could not be doubted, in any way, as being insignificant and mere imitation of older texts. If Wheatley was born a white man she would have been hailed as one of the greatest poet of her time. Not only did slavery tighten its cold-hard steel chains upon the throats of the negroes, but it also inhibits prodigies such as Wheatley in being recognized.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Narrative of the Life

Michael Fong
ENG 48A
Journal #13 Olaudah Equiano
November 3, 2009


"They gave me to understand we were to be carried to these white people's country to work for them. I then was a little revived, and thought, if it were no worse than working, my situation was not so desperate; but still I feared I should be put to death, the white people looked and acted, as I thought, in so savage a manner; for I had never seen among any people such instances of brutal cruelty; and this not only shown towards us blacks, but also to some of the whites themselves. One white man in particular I saw, when we were permitted to be on deck, flogged so unmercifully with a large rope near the foremast, that he died in consequence of it; and they tossed him over the side as they would have done a brute." (Equiano 684)





"But even though it is replete with textual enigmas, Equiano's autobiography cannot conceivably be marginalized within the canon of slave narratives." (Ide Corley - The Subject of Abolitionist Rhetoric)



At this point, Equiano is on board of the slave ship, and had been contemplating a possible escape by jumping over the side into the water. Upon knowing that he was going to be sent to work for the white people, Equiano at first appears relieved, but then is worried about the savagery and brutality that his future potential white masters displayed.


We have so far read sufficient slave narratives and documents to at least grasp, if not understand, the appalling and deformed nature of slavery. How incredibly pathetic it is for the white people to not see the actions in which they were committing as outright savagery, but instead accuse the colored peopleas being animals? Such contrast is exceedingly ironic indeed.




I remember seeing an artistic portrayal of the moment when the British first embarked upon the soils of the New World. A naked woman is seen lying on a hammock, while a man in the attire of a soldier approaches. The New World is portrayed as a woman, helpless and seductive. In the history of mankind, the constant occurrence of one race/country raping and ravishing another is seen so often that one cannot but wonder if this is the nature of humanity. Equiano captures perfectly the feeling and emotion of deception that the Africans felt when being sold as slaves, and for this reason, I disagree with the notion that his Narrative of the Life as not being within the canon of slave narratives. The primary factor of slave narratives, for me personally, is always to put one in the shoes of the narrator and feel the emotions. It is a document of both the spiritual as well as physical hardships in which the system slavery imposes upon slaves. Is it that crucial whether Equiano fabricated his origins of birth or not? Is it really a key part in determining whether this is a slave narrative or mere fictional fantasy? I think not.