Year taken: 2013-2014
Professor: Nereida Prado
Class: INGL3231
University: University of Puerto Rico, Cayey Campus
Grace H. Rodríguez Cruz
843 09 6818
ENGL3251- American Literature I
Prof. N. Prado
“…The
land of the free and the home of the brave.” The Star-Spangled Banner
definitely bursts out the label of the United States of America. From the first
steps the Puritan settles placed in the new world to the battle for
independence against England. However, in the battle for expression of the
population, the fight for freedom and equality transformed in favor to the
advantages of the white male puritan population with the excuse to expand the
“good deed” of the religious culture. The margined group became the authority
to margin in fear and panic and the label of “freedom” comes down to be
question and to rewrite history.
The purpose
to invade American territory was to create a holy land for the “pure” outcasts
of Europe. William Bradford quotes well how the purpose was to “recover their
primitive order, liberty, and beauty”. This was decided when the Puritan
population noticed how “many of their children by…the great licentiousness…were
drawn away by evil examples into extravagant and dangerous courses…” The
creation of Heaven on Earth begun by adapting the Pilgrims to the new primitive
life. The Natives made a home to those in need and the myth of “Thanksgiving”
began the symbol of peace between diversity and a fresh start in God’s glory.
This only lasted so long before the white repressed the red skin people with
the excuse of “savage devils” influence by a dark force against God’s way.
Chief Logan’s lament is a fine example of the treaty
given to the natives compared to the one they gave to the white population: “I appeal to any white man to say, if ever
he entered Logan's cabin hungry, and he gave him not meat; if ever he came cold
and naked, and he clothed him not… Col. Cresap, the last
spring, in cold blood, and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not
sparing even my women and children.” The horrible idea of
bringing the red men to extinction because the land they arrived in was
destined to become a pure place for the settlers but not for others. The love
for freedom came with an urge to clean the earth from what was believed as
unholy and not human. “Manifest Destiny” was the movement driving the Puritans
and many of its figures to fulfill the exclusion of the natives to the border
and away from their land to give the whites the expansion they so desperately
wanted. When the hopes of the red people started to leave and wanted to rise,
Speckled Snake convinced his people to move farther in order to save them by
promising the ending of their suffer: “I have listened to his[Great Father]
present talk. He says that the land where you now live is not yours. Go
beyond the Mississippi; there is game; and you may remain “while the grass
grows or the water runs.”… Brothers! Our great father says we must go beyond
the Mississippi. We shall be there under his care, and experience his kindness.
He is very good! We have felt it all before…” While the natives were
margined out, the Puritans were starting to feel more free and less threaten to
“evil” But, for how long this paranoid population was to experience the peace
without a new rising doubt?
The fight
to maintain the land had begun and with it came drastic and strict culture. The
dancing was forbidden, the sermons were law and those who didn’t follow this
were a threat. Without any logical and concrete proof, others could be blamed
for disturbance and evil just by the simple act of telling out loud. This had
never been out of control without the rising of Witch Trials in Salem. Any
suspicion and/or confirmation that blamed a man or woman as non-puritan or involved
in any other act shunned upon the religious council was sentenced to be
dehumanized and punished. The deeds were made with the excuse to "overturn this poor plantation, the
Puritan colony"[ Cotton Mather’s Wonders of the Invisible World]Thomas Morton gives a description
about how Endecott, a cruel puritan leader, treated those accused: “made
Fairecloath’s innocent back like the picture of Rawhead-and-Bloody-Bones, and
his shirt like a pudding wife’s apron. In this employment Shackles (the
executioner) takes great felicity, and glories in the practice of it.”
Hawthorne explains how the puritans were ruthless to the physical harmless
people in the story of the “Maypole of Merry Mount” by the acts of destroying
the Maypole from the dancing and laughter, shooting down a dancing bear the
people were venerating and the punishing
the habitants because of the non-puritan ways of free thinking. In the play
“The Crucible” we can see the desperation of John Proctor, a man who was forced
to confess while innocent and how he refused to sign his name as the devil and
the wrong doing that was being accused in town: “Because it is my name!” he
explains “Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign
myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them to hang!
How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!”
The marginal image comes to haunt those who out-casted the different with a
greater impact. In the end, is freedom real? Was it worth the seclusion in the
Puritan idea of being free?
The
embarrassing chapter of the Puritan chaos needed a closure to give space to the
new revolutionary ideas for the better of the people. Even with the margin of
blacks and gays as an example of recent decades, the United States have tried
to leave behind the paranoia and began to depict itself better in the
literature and history records. Just like Hawthorne did with Endecott’s figure
and remade a strong, manly ruler to
be forever engraved as the stereotype of the man of history; America has
reassured the world of their liberty by passing it from spoken words to written
ones. The new era had begun.
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