J. Hector St. John de Crèvocoeur

First off, long name.  Secondly, long name.  Thirdly, long name.  Fourthly, let's talk about this guy.  The first thing I find fascinating about the guy whom lends his name to the title of this blog post is that he had so many hardships to deal with, both before and after he came to the colonies.  When he came to the colonies, he immediately seemed to feel pride in it and started to call it his home.

Hang on, let me backtrack.  He had one wife/fiancee die.  Then he got married once he got to the colonies to someone else.  They had a few kids.  He leaves the colonies for a time, but then returns to find that his wife had been murdered and his children were living with strangers.  I mean, that's rough.  That's really rough.

In all of it, however, he still seemed to love America and consider himself an American, no matter where he was at.  I think he said it best (at least for his time) when he said that upon arriving on the shores of the colonies, you feel a sense of national pride in your countrymen and what they have accomplished here.  That is what an American was at that time.  They felt more pride in America (the British Colonies) than they did in their home countries (their motherlands).

Jonathan Edwards

Where to begin with Jonathan Edwards?  I know. I think I'll begin with, and focus on, the sermon titled: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.  I'll mainly do this because it's something I've read before for other classes and it's the main point of focus we had in my class at USF.

One thing I learned from reading it in this book and going over it in class is that he didn't necessarily read it in an angry or furious fashion, as I had previously thought.  In a class in my high school, we had to read this speech aloud, and we read it angrily.  We also had to write short speeches that were of a similar nature and read them aloud in class (all I remember is I had some colonial time period insults in my, which I thought were pretty funny).  Now, after learning that he didn't necessarily present this speech the way I thought he had, I see it in a whole new light.

Before, I saw it as he was angry and was really trying to drive home the point that everyone was probably going to die and go to hell or face God's wrath at some point.  Now, I see it as so much more than that.  What I believe Jonathan Edwards was trying to do with this sermon was show people how "in the wrong" they were, but not just condemn them and leave them there.  No, I believe this message is one of conviction and not condemnation.  The difference being that he is calling them back to God and saying, "Hey, you did wrong.  You messed up.  Thankfully, it doesn't have to stay that way.  You're better than this.  Come to God.  Let Him work through you and save you from the ending you deserve," rather than being full of condemnation and only saying, "You messed up.  You failed.  God doesn't want you back.  You're all going to die and go to hell.  There is no hope for you."

So although most people might have a problem with Jonathan Edwards because of this sermon, I think they have a problem with him for the wrong reasons.  It's not one of pure anger, as most people seem to think it is, but rather one of compassion, trying to help them back from their wrongdoings by showing them where they will end up going if they continue on this path they're on.

The "WE" at the end of D.E.W.

At the end of the period we have called D.E.W. (Discovery; Encounter; Witness), the "WE" seems to have started to form.  People have started to identify themselves as colonists or people of the land they have colonized.  It's not too major of a view yet, but it is beginning.  Based on the writings that we read, the "WE" seems to be the Puritans or the Christians who live in the colonies.  But, if you go more into it, it seems to be the white people who came to the colonies or whose families came to the colonies and work together.

Intro to the Enlightenment

The enlightenment is kind of a crazy period in time when you think about it.  The primary belief system in the colonies (Puritanism) began to be challenged.  This is specifically shown in those in the field of science and philosophy.  They began to say things like: "There is a creator, but all he did was create things to have a certain order and then the rest of what happens is left up to us.  He's not actually intimately involved in our lives."  That was insane at the time!  Think about it, everything up to that point said that God was controlling everything intimately and we really had no control of what happened.  Now, they still did not see this as heresy, but the churches and those who saw themselves as puritans saw this as wrong.  So most of the writings we will probably encounter in this period are dealing with this new "Deist" idea and what this new viewpoint believes.  We will also eventually encounter political documents because the second half of the enlightenment dealt with the formation of the United States of America.

Beginnings to 1700

So I'm posting this at the end of the week instead of the beginning of the week... if I get sued, that's cool.  But seriously, though, I just forgot about the whole blogging thing until yesterday and I would've done this (as well as the Mary Rowlandson one) yesterday, but I didn't have time.

What I found intriguing from the first readings we had to do (the introduction thing, Christopher Columbus, and First Encounters - I read Hernan Cortés) is just how much most of it is in the same genre.  That genre is nonfiction.  It's nonfiction because most of the early American writings were letters sent back and forth from explorers and the monarchs who sent them, journals of the explorers or their crew members, documentations of colony life, and other things of the sort.

Was it all nonfiction?  No.  It's just that a vast majority of it (or at least what we've read) was nonfiction.  The main stuff that isn't nonfiction would be the Native American folk tales/legends/creation stories, which to them were actually nonfiction.

One thing that really stuck out to me, though, was that I didn't think about most of this stuff being American literature.  I didn't consider American literature to have actually started until the Revolutionary War time period, mostly because when I think "American," I think of the United States of America and it's history.  So it was slightly surprising to me that we started with the early explorers and that some of the early explorers (or at least Cortés) said that the Natives were even aware that they had come from other lands and didn't know what they used to believe so they had to come up with their own stories about what to believe and how they came about.

Review of Mary Rowlandson

Mary Rowlandson's writing was pretty intriguing.  It's amazing to think what she probably endured and went through, but still stayed faithful to God (or saw His faithfulness to her).  Of course, there is also the possibility that she has slightly fabricated her story as she did write it after it was over.  I will, however, choose to believe that her story is true.  Since I believe her story is true, I don't know what I would have done in her situation.  I'd like to think that I'd never have given up my hope in God, but I can't for sure say that I would have been able to be like Mary was.  The only way to know that for sure is to go through a similar situation.  The two biggest things that stuck out me about her story, though, were the only two things that I could remember when I tried to think back on it the next day in class.

The first thing is when she received the Bible from one of the Native Americans.  The fact that she was reading and fell into despair because she thought she was cursed, but then she kept on reading and saw that she would be blessed in the end and that God was with her is the first thing.  The reason this stuck out so much is because she didn't just stop reading when she felt like she was being told she was cursed.  Rather, she kept on reading to find the true meaning in what God was trying to tell here, and that is that He's always there, even when it seems like He's not.  Also, it reminded me as I was reading it that, as a Christian, you can't just read one passage in the Bible and jump straight to the conclusion that what you just read was what God wanted you to get out of your reading, but instead you need to keep on reading until you know for sure if what you thought He was saying to you is actually what He was saying.

The second thing that stuck out to me is how she kind of changes throughout her writing.  She goes from calling the Native Americans all sorts of mean and racist remarks to being practically sympathetic to them and kind to them in her writing.  At least, she does until the very end when she kind of just says that their purpose is to be evil in a way.  That just struck me because it shows that no matter what you may think about someone or something, your view could change if you would just get to know them a little more.