English 131: American Literature Advanced Summer Requirement I Mrs. DePietro ([email protected]), Mr. O’Connor ([email protected]), and Mrs. O’Sullivan ([email protected])
What is the purpose? The summer reading assignment serves multiple purposes. First, it keeps our critical and analytical reasoning sharp. Summer reading also prepares us for the first weeks of fall semester when our teachers will use this material in class. What do I do? Print this document. (One-sided or two-sided pages are equally acceptable). Read the articles in sequential order, from first to last. As you read, annotate the articles in blue or black pen by underlining important material and by writing explanatory notes in the margins. Why do we annotate? Annotations document our reading experience. They act as a record of our deepening understanding of the material: our observations, insights, and commentary. Annotations are the way we have a conversation with the material we read.
How do we annotate? We underline sentences we consider important in some way. All underlined text must be accompanied by an explanatory note in the margin. As we annotate, we record fully expressed ideas in the form of complete sentences, not shorthand that only we can understand. Consider these guiding questions as you annotate:
❏ Which reading material reveals something especially new to me about the Puritans and related topics? What exactly does the material reveal to me that I did not fully understand before? ❏ What connections can I make between the reading material and what I already know? How is the material related to my knowledge of religion, the law, politics, geography, the arts and sciences, psychology, and so on? ❏ What connections can I make between current events and the reading material? Is the material somehow relevant to what I see online or hear on the news? ❏ How do I react emotionally to certain passages? Where do I experience the emotions of regret, inspiration, sympathy, obligation, and so on? ❏ How is the reading material useful in some way? How might this information prove useful as I interact with the world and the people who share it with me? ❏ What are the implications of the reading material? How is the material important in some way? Why does it matter? ❏ What questions occur to me as I read? What questions might illuminate this material even further? Avoid summary! Your annotations should NOT summarize or state the obvious. Your annotations should document your ongoing conversation with the material. Use the guiding questions above to help you. The material includes footnotes. You should consider those footnotes part of the assigned reading and include them in your annotations as well.
Page 1 English 131: American Literature Advanced Summer Requirement I Mrs. DePietro ([email protected]), Mr. O’Connor ([email protected]), and Mrs. O’Sullivan ([email protected])
How will my annotations be evaluated? Please read the following rubric to better understand how your annotations will be evaluated: 100 -- These annotations are exemplary. Not only does the student consistently follow all directives of the assignment but the student executes them exceptionally well. The approach is tenacious, and the work reveals an uncommon reading ability. This student makes meaningful connections and observes things other students fail to see, and articulates it exceptionally well. 93 -- These annotations are strong. Not only does the student follow all directives of the assignment but he/she executes them reasonably well. The approach is persistent, and the work reveals an attention to detail. But these annotations lack some degree of sophistication found in the finest annotations. 86 -- These annotations are successful. While the student follows the assignment directives, some directives are more thorough and more developed than others. The approach is unbalanced; some annotations are more detailed, precise, or more perceptive than other annotations. The student might summarize, at times, or state the obvious, but generally the annotations are fruitful. 79 -- These annotations are limited. While these annotations are technically “finished,” the student does not follow all assignment directives closely enough. The approach is disorganized and unfocused in places. These annotations tend to summarize, state the obvious, or perform a superficial reading of the text. 72 -- These annotations are fundamentally lacking. While these annotations might include flashes of concentrated effort, they are generally marked by a lack of focus on the directives and a disordered reading of the text. The approach is haphazard. These annotations are marked by inconsistency or gaps in the reading experience. 65 -- These annotations are substandard. While some annotations exist, they are too unfocused, sporadic, or incomplete to present a thoughtful reading of the text. The approach is scattered. The teacher has reason to wonder whether the student read the assigned material. 0 -- Zeros are sometimes awarded for a lack of participation, submitting the work too far past the deadline to be reasonable, or some other serious flaw, such as academic dishonesty. It is possible for a student to submit annotations that are so sparse, so disordered, and so incoherent that they warrant a zero.
Page 2 English 131: American Literature Advanced Summer Requirement I Mrs. DePietro ([email protected]), Mr. O’Connor ([email protected]), and Mrs. O’Sullivan ([email protected])
TRANSFER STUDENTS As a general rule, students who transfer to Blessed Trinity on or after the July 4 holiday are not accountable for summer reading and are not expected to complete the requirement. These students, however, might choose to finish the assignment and will be evaluated in the same manner as their classmates. Students who transfer to BT prior to the July 4 holiday are responsible for the summer reading requirement.
HONOR PLEDGE Keep in mind that we have an honor pledge at our school. As you complete the summer requirement, keep this honor pledge in mind:
On my honor before God, I pledge that I have neither given nor received aid on this assignment.
FIGURES AND ILLUSTRATIONS The following picture demonstrates the scope and expectations of the assignment. The images should give you a better idea of how to complete the three major parts of your annotations.
Page 3 English 131: American Literature Advanced Summer Requirement I Mrs. DePietro ([email protected]), Mr. O’Connor ([email protected]), and Mrs. O’Sullivan ([email protected])
Fig. 1: Note how the annotations are complete sentences aimed at underlined portions of the text. Also note how the annotations do not summarize.
Page 4 English 131: American Literature Advanced Summer Requirement I Mrs. DePietro ([email protected]), Mr. O’Connor ([email protected]), and Mrs. O’Sullivan ([email protected])
The following article appeared on the The organ and all musical instruments were website GPB (Georgia Public forbidden. Puritans sang psalms a cappella. Broadcasting), which is sponsored by The Puritans were strict Calvinists, the Public Broadcast System. or followers of the reformer John Calvin. Calvin taught that God was all-powerful and People & Ideas: The Puritans completely sovereign. Human beings were depraved sinners. God had chosen a few Like the Pilgrims, the Puritans were English people, "the elect," for salvation. The rest of Protestants who believed that the reforms of humanity was condemned to eternal the Church of England did not go far damnation. But no one really knew if he or enough. In their view, the liturgy was still she was saved or damned; Puritans lived in a too Catholic. Bishops lived like princes. constant state of spiritual anxiety, searching Ecclesiastical courts were corrupt. Because for signs of God's favor or anger. The the king of England was head of both church experience of conversion was considered an and state, the Puritans' opposition to important sign that an individual had been religious authority meant they also defied saved. the civil authority of the state. Salvation did not depend on outward In 1630, the Puritans set sail for behavior, but on a radical undertaking that America. Unlike the Pilgrims who had left demanded each individual to plumb the very 10 years earlier, the Puritans did not break depths of his heart and soul. This "Covenant with the Church of England, but instead of Grace" contrasted with the "Covenant of sought to reform it. Seeking comfort and Works," which stressed the importance of reassurance in the Bible, they imagined righteous behavior. Faith, not works, was the themselves re-enacting the story of the key to salvation. The experience of Exodus. Like the ancient Israelites, they conversion did not happen suddenly; it were liberated by God from oppression and proceeded in fits and starts punctuated by bound to him by a covenant; like the doubt, as divine power worked its way on Israelites, they were chosen by God to fulfill fragile human material. a special role in human history: to establish But it was not only individual a new, pure Christian commonwealth. salvation that mattered; the spiritual health Onboard the flagship Arbella, their and welfare of the community as a whole leader John Winthrop reminded them of was paramount as well, for it was the their duties and obligations under the community that honored and kept the covenant. If they honored their obligations covenant. The integrity of the community to God, they would be blessed; if they failed, demanded religious conformity. Dissent was they would be punished. tolerated, but only within strict limits. Arriving in New England, the John Winthrop understood that Puritans established the Massachusetts Bay people were bound to disagree and was Colony in a town they named Boston. Life willing to tolerate a range of opinion and was hard, but in this stern and unforgiving belief. But he also recognized that if dissent place they were free to worship as they were not kept within bounds, it would chose. The Bible was central to their undermine the community. And that is worship. Their church services were simple. precisely what happened. Two members of
Page 5 English 131: American Literature Advanced Summer Requirement I Mrs. DePietro ([email protected]), Mr. O’Connor ([email protected]), and Mrs. O’Sullivan ([email protected]) the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, challenged the religious authority of the Puritan commonwealth and threatened to destroy Winthrop's vision of "a city upon a hill." The colony survived, but over time its religious fervor diminished. Scholars disagree about when and why this happened. The Puritans themselves found it difficult to maintain a society in a state of creative uncertainty. In 1679, a Puritan synod met to deliberate the causes of widespread spiritual malaise. Blame was assigned to an increase in swearing; a tendency to sleep at sermons; the spread of sex and alcohol, especially in taverns, where women were known to bare their arms and, upon occasion, even their breasts; and, most telling, the marked increase in lying and lawsuits.
Page 6 English 131: American Literature Advanced Summer Requirement I Mrs. DePietro ([email protected]), Mr. O’Connor ([email protected]), and Mrs. O’Sullivan ([email protected])
The following article is adapted from one Puritans and their descendants, such as the that appeared on a blog sponsored by Minutemen of Concord, who form the the University of California. popular image of America’s early settlers. Ronald Reagan, for example, famously Pilgrims, Puritans, and the ideology borrowed the wish that “we shall be a city that is their American Legacy upon a hill” – to be a “new Jerusalem,” By Claude Fischer, Professor of Sociology God’s light to the nations – from the speech Much of what we know about the roots of leader John Winthrop gave aboard the Arbella, the ship taking the first Puritan American values arises from what we know 2 — or, don’t know – about the dissident settlers to the New World. Protestant sects that settled Massachusetts, Thanks to the records the colonists the Pilgrims and the much more numerous left behind, the influence of Massachusetts, Puritans. The fourth Thursday in November and the visibility of their descendants commemorates the earliest event in our (Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Adams, national holiday calendar, the Pilgrim’s and so on), we know a lot about the Puritans thanksgiving for barely surviving their first of the 17th century, more “than any sane winter in 1621. Many a Thanksgiving Day person should want to know,” according to speech-maker hearkens back to these early historian Edmund Morgan. We know that New England settlers to understand America they were atypical of Early American and to seek guidance for the American settlers. For example, they lived in compact future. villages rather than spread out in Historians warn, however, that the homesteads; they were relatively isolated Puritans were a strange group; they were from world commerce; they were perhaps more a cult than a community. homogeneous; and they were sternly Scholars have, in the words of one, “long religious. Most distinctively, they lived in since abandoned any interpretation tightly-controlled communities, in what grounding the American nation in historian Michael Zuckerman has called “a Puritanism.”1 Yet the Puritans may have left totalitarianism of true believers.” us something enduring besides the holiday In the mid-1600s, at the zenith of and tourist sites: not a model for American their culture, Puritan villagers held land in community but an ideology for American common, belonged to a single and strong culture. church, and resisted the intrusion of outsiders. They controlled individual True Believers behavior by fierce gossip, defamatory and The Mayflower‘s Pilgrims in Plymouth and often obscene billboards, and court suits. In the Boston-area Puritans, often confused, one town, 20 percent of the adults in each were two different colonizing groups. The decade found themselves charged with an Puritan settlers in the Massachusetts Bay offense, usually a morals violation. Colony outnumbered Plymouth’s Pilgrim Magistrates compelled Sabbath attendance settlers by about 10 to 1 and eventually absorbed them in 1691. It is mainly the 2 Ronald Reagan first borrowed John Winthrop’s vision of Puritan America as a “city upon a hill” in a 1 Fisher is referring to the words of Adam B. speech he delivered in 1974, and continued to do so Seligman, Professor of Religion at Boston University. throughout his political career.
Page 7 English 131: American Literature Advanced Summer Requirement I Mrs. DePietro ([email protected]), Mr. O’Connor ([email protected]), and Mrs. O’Sullivan ([email protected]) and suppressed religious alternatives, to the nor a model for America that most point of executing dissident Quakers. Jack Americans today would want. Yet they did Greene has explained that the Puritans leave us with an important legacy – an used mutual surveillance to . . . ideology of individual choice and social suppress individual deviance and contract. sin, exert tight control over the Much of Puritan theology rested on unruly forces of the market, the idea of covenants, one between God and diminish acquisitiveness and the man and one between man and man. Central covetousness or frivolous to those covenants was the principle of free indulgence it engendered, locate choice. As the great scholar of every person in an appropriate Puritanism Perry Miller wrote, “The calling . . . and achieve a degree of individual voluntarily promised to obey civil communal unity virtually unknown and scriptural law, for the in the fluctuating world of early seventeenth-century Puritans believed that modern England. meaningful obedience could only grow out Colonists almost everywhere else in 17th of voluntary consent, never out of coercion.” and 18th-century America lived in far more Even birth into the Puritan village did not unorganized, disorderly, and diverse places. guarantee full membership; choice did. In Moreover, these Puritan societies did the early decades, churches required people not last long. As the towns grew and to have and to describe a conversion connected to the outside world, residents experience before they could join the became more divided and less deferential to congregation. The coercive quality of the elites – a trend that exploded in, for Puritan life ran against their explicit example, the Salem witchcraft trials of the ideology and theology. As the grip of the 1690s. Puritan elite on townsfolk weakened, the Within a century of their practice of religious freedom expanded and communities’ founding, residents turned to doctrines emphasizing personal belief and export trade, watered down the standards for individual routes to salvation became even church membership, accepted more religious more important. diversity, fought over a variety of issues, These developments brought increasingly eluded community punishment 18th-century Puritans, for better or for for their sins, and left town. By the late worse, closer to the culture of other northern 1700s, the churches became, as one colonists, a culture that stressed individual scholar shows, open “centers of worship that self-reliance, voluntary association, and could maintain a measure of peacefulness resisting authority and hierarchy. But the simply because the discontented could leave Puritans brought with them an explicit, and join, or form, another group [church] religiously-based ideology of choice and whenever they pleased.” contract that justified that American culture. Ideological Inheritance Americans have in the centuries since the So, the Puritans formed short-lived, first thanksgiving followed more the authoritarian religious communities that preaching than the practices of the early were atypical for their times – hardly the Pilgrims and Puritans. prototype for the America which emerged
Page 8 English 131: American Literature Advanced Summer Requirement I Mrs. DePietro ([email protected]), Mr. O’Connor ([email protected]), and Mrs. O’Sullivan ([email protected])
The following article appeared on the Massachusetts; colonial Salem Town Smithsonian website. became what's now Salem.) The displaced people created a strain A Brief History of the Salem Witch on Salem's resources. This aggravated the Trials: One Town’s Strange Journey existing rivalry between families with ties to from Paranoia to Pardon the wealth of the port of Salem and those By Jess Blumberg who still depended on agriculture. Controversy also brewed over Reverend The Salem witch trials occurred in colonial Samuel Parris, who became Salem Village's Massachusetts between 1692 and 1693. first ordained minister in 1689, and was More than 200 people were accused of disliked because of his rigid ways and practicing witchcraft—the Devil's greedy nature. The Puritan villagers believed magic—and 20 were executed. Eventually, all the quarreling was the work of the Devil. the colony admitted the trials were a mistake In January of 1692, Reverend Parris' and compensated the families of those daughter Elizabeth, age 9, and niece Abigail convicted. Since then, the story of the trials Williams, age 11, started having "fits." They has become synonymous with paranoia and screamed, threw things, uttered peculiar injustice, and it continues to beguile the sounds and contorted themselves into popular imagination more than 300 years strange positions, and a local doctor blamed later. the supernatural. Another girl, Ann Putnam, Salem Struggling age 11, experienced similar episodes. On Several centuries ago, many practicing February 29, under pressure from Christians, and those of other religions, had magistrates Jonathan Corwin and John a strong belief that the Devil could give Hathorne, the girls blamed three women for certain people known as witches the power afflicting them: Tituba, the Parris' Caribbean to harm others in return for their loyalty. A slave; Sarah Good, a homeless beggar; and "witchcraft craze" rippled through Europe Sarah Osborne, an elderly impoverished from the 1300s to the end of the 1600s. Tens woman. of thousands of supposed witches—mostly Witch Hunt women—were executed. Though the Salem All three women were brought before the trials came on just as the European craze local magistrates and interrogated for was winding down, local circumstances several days, starting on March 1, 1692. explain their onset. Osborne claimed innocence, as did Good. In 1689, English rulers William and But Tituba confessed: "The Devil came to Mary started a war with France in the me and bid me serve him." She described American colonies. Known as King elaborate images of black dogs, red cats, William's War to colonists, it ravaged yellow birds and a "black man" who wanted regions of upstate New York, Nova Scotia her to sign his book. She admitted that she and Quebec, sending refugees into the signed the book and said there were several county of Essex and, specifically, Salem other witches looking to destroy the Village in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Puritans. All three women were put in jail. (Salem Village is present-day Danvers, With the seed of paranoia planted, a stream of accusations followed for the next
Page 9 English 131: American Literature Advanced Summer Requirement I Mrs. DePietro ([email protected]), Mr. O’Connor ([email protected]), and Mrs. O’Sullivan ([email protected]) few months. Charges against Martha Corey, dissolved the Court of Oyer and Terminer on a loyal member of the Church in Salem October 29. Phipps replaced it with a Village, greatly concerned the community; if Superior Court of Judicature, which she could be a witch, then anyone could. disallowed spectral evidence and only Magistrates even questioned Sarah Good's condemned 3 out of 56 defendants. Phipps 4-year-old daughter, Dorothy, and her timid eventually pardoned all who were in prison answers were construed as a confession. The on witchcraft charges by May 1693. But the questioning got more serious in April when damage had been done: 19 were hanged on Deputy Governor Thomas Danforth and his Gallows Hill, a 71-year-old man was assistants attended the hearings. Dozens of pressed to death with heavy stones, several people from Salem and other Massachusetts people died in jail and nearly 200 people, villages were brought in for questioning. overall, had been accused of practicing "the On May 27, 1692, Governor William Devil's magic." Phipps ordered the establishment of a Restoring Good Names Special Court of Oyer (to hear) and Following the trials and executions, many Terminer (to decide) for Suffolk, Essex, and involved, like judge Samuel Sewall, publicly Middlesex counties. The first case brought confessed error and guilt. On January 14, to the special court was Bridget Bishop, an 1697, the General Court ordered a day of older woman known for her gossipy habits fasting and soul-searching for the tragedy of and promiscuity. When asked if she Salem. In 1702, the court declared the trials committed witchcraft, Bishop responded, "I unlawful. And in 1711, the colony passed a am as innocent as the child unborn." The bill restoring the rights and good names of defense must not have been convincing, those accused and granted £600 restitution because she was found guilty and, on June to their heirs. However, it was not until 10, became the first person hanged on what 1957—more than 250 years later—that was later called Gallows Hill. Massachusetts formally apologized for the Five days later, respected minister events of 1692. Cotton Mather wrote a letter imploring the In the 20th century, artists and court not to allow spectral scientists alike continued to be fascinated by evidence—testimony about dreams and the Salem witch trials. Playwright Arthur visions. The court largely ignored this Miller resurrected the tale with his 1953 request and five people were sentenced and play The Crucible, using the trials as an hanged in July, five more in August and allegory for the McCarthyism paranoia in eight in September. On October 3, following the 1950s. Additionally, numerous in his son's footsteps, Increase Mather, then hypotheses have been devised to explain the president of Harvard, denounced the use of strange behavior that occurred in Salem in spectral evidence: "It were better that ten 1692. One of the most concrete studies, suspected witches should escape than one published in Science in 1976 by innocent person be condemned." psychologist Linnda Caporael, blamed the Governor Phipps, in response to abnormal habits of the accused on the Mather's plea and his own wife being fungus ergot, which can be found in rye, questioned for witchcraft, prohibited further wheat, and other cereal grasses. arrests, released many accused witches and Toxicologists say that eating
Page 10 English 131: American Literature Advanced Summer Requirement I Mrs. DePietro ([email protected]), Mr. O’Connor ([email protected]), and Mrs. O’Sullivan ([email protected]) ergot-contaminated foods can lead to muscle spasms, vomiting, delusions and hallucinations. Also, the fungus thrives in warm and damp climates—not too unlike the swampy meadows in Salem Village, where rye was the staple grain during the spring and summer months. In August 1992, to mark the 300th anniversary of the trials, Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel3 dedicated the Witch Trials Memorial in Salem. Also in Salem, the Peabody Essex Museum houses the original court documents, and the town's most-visited attraction, the Salem Witch Museum, attests to the public's enthrallment with the 1692 hysteria.
3 Elie Wiesel (1928-2016) was a Romanian-born American Jewish writer, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor.
Page 11 English 131: American Literature Advanced Summer Requirement I Mrs. DePietro ([email protected]), Mr. O’Connor ([email protected]), and Mrs. O’Sullivan ([email protected])
The following document is the transcript Cheever’s Notes: And others doe now of Brigit Bishop’s examination before the charge her to her face with hurting of Salem court in the spring of 1692. Two them. Magistrates (or judges) of the Harthon: What doe you say now? You Massachusetts Bay Colony, John see they charge you to your face. Harthon and Jonathan Curren, conducted the examination, which was Bishop: I never did hurt them in my recorded by Clerk of Court Ezekiel life. I did never see these persons Cheever. Mercy Lewis and Ann Putnam before. I am as innocent as the child were also present, as well as other unborn. accusers, such as Jonathan and Mary Curren: Is not your coat cut? Walcot. Ultimately found guilty of witchcraft, Bishop would be executed on Cheever’s Notes: Answers no, but her June 10, 1692, the first victim of the garment being looked upon they find it trials. cut or toren two ways. Jonathan Walcot saith that the sword that he strucke at The examination of Bridget Bishop goodie Bishop with was not naked but before the Worshipfull John Harthon was within the scabberd, so that the rent and Jonathan Curren, Esquires4 may very probablie be the very same that Mary Walcoat did tell that Cheever’s Notes: Bridget Bishop being now shee had in her coat by Jonathan’s comeing in to be examined relating to her stricking at her apperance.5 The accusation of suspicon of sundry acts of afflicted persons charge her, with witchcrafts, the afflicted persons are now having hurt them many wayes and by dreadfully afflicted by her as they doe say. tempting them to sine the devil’s Booke, Harthon: Bishop, what doe you say? You at which charge shee seemed to be very here stand charged with sundry acts of angrie and shaking her head at them witchcraft by you done or commited upon [the accusers], saying it was false. They the bodyes of Mercy Lewis and Ann Putnum are all greatly tormented (as I conceive) and others. by the shaking of her head. Bishop: I am innocent. I know nothing of Harthon: Good Bishop, what contract it. I have done no witchcraft. have you made with the devil? Curren (Addressing accusers Lewis Bishop: I have made no contract with and Putnam): Looke upon this woman the devil. I never saw him in my life. and see if this be the woman that you Curren: Ann Putnam sayeth that shee have seen hurting you, Mercy Lewis calls the devill her God. What say you and Ann Putnum. to all this that you are charged with?
5 Cheever is not referring to the physical body of Brigit Bishop. Jonathan and Mary Walcot claimed Bishop’s spirit, or “likeness,” appeared in their home one night, and that Jonathan defended the family with 4 The title Esquire denotes a person with education a sword. Bishop’s torn coat is interpreted as evidence and training in the law. of this struggle.
Page 12 English 131: American Literature Advanced Summer Requirement I Mrs. DePietro ([email protected]), Mr. O’Connor ([email protected]), and Mrs. O’Sullivan ([email protected])
Can Mary Walcot: How came you into my you not find in your hart to tell the bedchamber one morning then and truth? asked me whither I had any curtains to Bishop: I doe tell the truth. I never hurt sell. these persons in my life. I never saw Curren: Shee is by some of the them before. afflicted persons charged with murder. Ann: Oh, goode Bishop, did you not Harthon: What doe you say to these come to our house the last night, and murders you are charged with. did you not tell me that your master Bishop: I am innocent. I know nothing made you tell, more than you were of it. willing to tell? Cheever’s Notes: Now shee lifts up her Harthon: Tell us the truth in this eyes and they are greatly tormented matter. How comes these persons to be again. thus tormented and to charge you with doing? Harthon: What doe you say to these things here, horrible acts of witch craft? Bishop: I am not come here to say I am a witch to take away my life. Bishop: I know nothing of it. I doe not know whither be any witches or no.6 Harthon: Who is it that doth it if you doe not. They say it is your likenes that Harthon: No. Have you not heard that comes and torments them and tempts some have confessed? them to write in the booke. What Booke Bishop: No. I did not. is that you tempt them with? Cheever’s Notes: Two men told her to Bishop: I know nothing of it. I am her face that they had told her here. innocent. Shee is caught in a plain lie. Now shee Harthon: Doe you not see how they are is going away, they are dreadfully tormented? You are acting witchcraft afflicted. Five afflicted persons doe before us. What doe you say to this? charge this woman to be the very Why have you not an heart to confese woman that hurts them. It is a true the truth? account of what I have taken down at her examination according to best Bishop: I am innocent. I know nothing understanding and observation. I have of it. I am no witch. I know not what a also in her examination taken notice witch is. that all her actions be great Harthorn: Have you not given consent influence upon the afflicted persons and that some evill spirit should doe this in that have ben tortered by her. your likenes? *Ezekiel Cheever. Bishop: No. I am innocent of being a witch. I know no man woman or child here. 6 Bishop is expressing a doubt in the existence of witches.
Page 13 English 131: American Literature Advanced Summer Requirement I Mrs. DePietro ([email protected]), Mr. O’Connor ([email protected]), and Mrs. O’Sullivan ([email protected])
This interview, published on the admiration. This DNA of ours has been Smithsonian website, originally aired as rather apparent the last few years. part of the public radio program This How so? American Life. Here, producer Ira Glass Well, I'd been thinking about Winthrop a lot interviews Sarah Vowell, author of The because of the war in Iraq. And I really Wordy Shipmates, a book that takes a started working on the book after watching contemporary look at the Puritans and Ronald Reagan's funeral on TV. [Former their influence on American society. Supreme Court Justice] Sandra Day Vowell published her book in 2008. O'Connor is reading "A Model of Christian Charity," because of Reagan's affinity for the Sarah Vowell on the Puritan’s Legacy "city on a hill" sound bite, and she gets to Why did you decide to write about the part where Winthrop writes, "The eyes Puritans? How have people reacted to this of all people are upon us." choice of topic? And it was right after the Abu No one really gets excited about Puritans! Ghraib photos came out. I thought It's just: "Um, why?" But I guess that's one [Winthrop's sermon] was such a perfect of the reasons I wanted to write the book. thing to read—kind of for the wrong People seem to have no respect for the reasons. The eyes of the world were upon Puritans. Sure, there are a lot of horrible us, and what they saw was: An American things about them, as with any human military police officer, standing next to a beings, but I do admire their love of pile of naked prisoners, making a thumbs-up language and learning and knowledge. I sign. wanted to stick up for them a little bit. To Winthrop, when he said, "the eyes I specifically write about the of all people are upon us," he meant: They'll founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, be waiting for us to fail. And if we do fail, and in particular, John Winthrop, who was then everyone will be able to have a really their first governor. He also wrote my good view of our failure. And Winthrop was favorite Puritan sermon, "A Model of afraid of that, because they would fail their Christian Charity,"7 where we get the image God. of New England as a "city on a hill." Who are some of the other main These people are where we as characters in your book, besides Americans get our idea of ourselves as Winthrop? exceptional, as chosen, and as an object of I also like Roger Williams, especially in relation to Winthrop. Williams was this 7 John Winthrop delivered his famous sermon “Model rabble rousing young theologian. He's the of Christian Charity” to the first group of Puritans who sailed aboard the Arbella from Yarmouth to the Puritan all the other Puritans wished he coast of Massachusetts. The general purpose of the would calm down about religion a little bit, sermon was to express the purpose behind the you know? Puritan’s migration to the New World, for those Winthrop and his fellow magistrates taking the treacherous journey as well as for those eventually ban Williams from friends and family left behind. Historians disagree as Massachusetts, and he goes on to found to when exactly Winthrop delivered the sermon, whether on the docks before the passengers embarked Rhode Island. Williams is able to escape or during the dangerous sea voyage. before the Massachusetts militia comes to
Page 14 English 131: American Literature Advanced Summer Requirement I Mrs. DePietro ([email protected]), Mr. O’Connor ([email protected]), and Mrs. O’Sullivan ([email protected]) put him on a boat back to England—and the what she believes is very blasphemous. person who warned him was John Winthrop! Like, she believes she hears the voice of Publicly, Winthrop thought Williams God. She believes she's filled with the Holy was disturbing the peace and needed to be Spirit. removed—but he was still his friend, so he A lot of what she's saying, warned him. And they kept up this modern-day evangelicals would probably correspondence for the rest of Winthrop's recognize as the kind of Protestantism they life. I thought it was just a great story that practice, but for the Puritans it was way too their friendship could live on after one guy emotional. To say that you heard the voice banished the other. It made me interested in of God was not to be believed. finding out more. So she gets kicked out, and also goes Tell us about Anne Hutchinson, another to Rhode Island, as Roger Williams before strong character. How did she end up her. And Rhode Island becomes a place of getting banished from the Massachusetts refuge, where not just Puritans who get colony? kicked out of Massachusetts seek solace, but Anne Hutchinson was the groupie of John all kinds of religious outcasts. Cotton, who was the most important If there were a ship full of people sailing Protestant minister in England. So when off for a new colony today, would you join John Cotton immigrates to New England, them? she and her husband and their 15 children Well, no. I like where I live (laughs)! follow him to Boston. I mean, what they did was pretty remarkable She is a midwife, so when she gets to and brave. And just, one thing I love about Boston she meets a lot of women very Winthrop's and Cotton's sermons, is they are quickly. And she starts having these prayer both these pep talks given almost at the meetings in her home for the other women. dock, as these people are about to embark, At first she's just talking about Cotton's and what they're embarking on is really sermons, but eventually she starts preaching terrifying. The fact that they would do it on her own, and attracts these huge crowds exhibits an enormous amount of bravery and to her house. Not just women, men came optimism. too. She became really influential, really And . . . I also hate boats and can't fast. swim. She and her followers were causing You write about having some American an enormous amount of discord and trouble Indian heritage yourself. Did that in the colony, so the magistrates of the Bay influence your research and writing at all, Colony haul her into court and put her on in terms of how you felt as you were trial for disturbing the peace. reading about this? She's probably about to get Well, it influences who I am in terms of my acquitted, because she really refutes all of relationship with American history. I their arguments against her, but the thing wouldn't exist if not for the failure of the about her is: She couldn't shut up. And she constitution. I wouldn't exist if the Indian liked the sound of her own voice. She uses removal policies of Andrew Jackson hadn't this opportunity to just go off and start kind forced my Cherokee ancestors on the Trail of preaching what she believes—and a lot of of Tears at gunpoint. Knowing that, at such
Page 15 English 131: American Literature Advanced Summer Requirement I Mrs. DePietro ([email protected]), Mr. O’Connor ([email protected]), and Mrs. O’Sullivan ([email protected]) an early age . . . has sort of clouded my view disagrees, anyone who does stand up, of American history. It doesn't just influence anyone who does criticize the magistrates or how I look at American history, it influences ministers—they are banished. how I think about the world—that you That's why the first line of the book always have to be aware of who is telling a is: The only thing more dangerous than an story, and how a story is told. idea is a belief. Because every beautiful I think that very little biographical belief has this flipside, has this dark side. detail makes me naturally suspicious. But And certainly I think that's true in this the other thing it does it makes me naturally country. This idea of ourselves as special interested. and God's chosen people, it inspires us to The same thing with the Puritans. think better of ourselves, and try harder and Before I tell you about all of the horrible strive farther ... but it also makes us less things Winthrop and his fellow magistrates likely to question our own motives. in the Bay Colony did...I tell you what I love about them, and I present their best selves. It makes the horrors they perpetrated all the more horrific, because you know they're capable of this great idealism and Christ-like love, at the same time as you know they're capable of this just vicious physical violence. And even though that makes them seem not as likeable, it also makes them seem more interesting. You refer to this short passage from Winthrop's sermon as "one of the most beautiful sentences in the English language:" [Glass reads the Winthrop’s sentence quoted by Vowell in her book]: “We must delight in each other, make other's conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body.” Can you talk about what these words mean to you? The thing that's beautiful about the Puritans is their almost selfless insistence on interdependence, and on togetherness, and on agreeing to agree. But then, you know, the dark side of that is that anyone who
Page 16 English 131: American Literature Advanced Summer Requirement I Mrs. DePietro ([email protected]), Mr. O’Connor ([email protected]), and Mrs. O’Sullivan ([email protected])
The following article was published by A better parallel to “witch” is the The Guardian, a newspaper of the word “whore”. Both are time-honoured tools United Kingdom, in April of 2018. for policing women, meant to shame them into socially prescribed behaviour. A whore From Circe to Clinton: Why Powerful transgresses norms of female sexuality; a Women are Cast as Witches witch transgresses norms of female power. By Madeline Miller Witches are often called unnatural because During the 2016 US presidential election, of their ability to threaten men. With her American social media was flooded with spells, a witch can transform you into a pig, images of Hillary Clinton wearing a black or defeat you in battle. She can curse you, hat and riding a broom, or else cackling with blight your crops, ignore you, refuse you, green skin. Her opponents named her The correct you. Punishing witches accomplishes Wicked Witch of the Left, claimed they had two things: it ends the threat and makes sources testifying that she smelled of others afraid to follow in the unruly sulphur, and took particular delight in woman’s footsteps. depictions of her being melted. Given that Yet, despite all the attempts to stamp the last witch trial in the US was more than out witches, they are as strongly with us as 100 hundred years ago, what are we to make ever, from Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet of this? Witch in the Avengers movies, to the recent In the late 19th century, the film The Love Witch, to the television suffragette Matilda Joslyn Gage asserted series American Horror Story, to non-fiction something revolutionary. The persecution of books such as Stacy Schiff’s The Witches: witches, she said, had nothing to do with Salem, 1692. The stereotypical image of the fighting evil or resisting the devil. It was witch – green skin, pointed hat, warts, black simply entrenched social misogyny, the goal cat – has become entrenched, but beneath of which was to repress the intellect of that surface lies a dazzling variety; a rich women. A witch, she said, wasn’t wicked. diversity of women who have frightened, She didn’t fly on a broomstick naked in the possessed and inspired us over the centuries. dark, or consort with demons. She was, Let’s start with the classic: the evil, instead, likely to be a woman “of superior aged crone. This image took firm root in the knowledge”. As a thought experiment, she Christian era, when witches were women suggested that for “witches” we should read who consorted with the devil; but old and instead “women”. Their histories, she ugly witches predated Jesus. Roman intimated, run hand in hand. literature portrayed witches as pathetic Obviously, she was on to something. creatures with false teeth and grey hair, who When we say witch, we almost exclusively dug in the ground by moonlight, tore mean woman. Sure, men have also been animals with their teeth and used the organs accused of witchcraft, but they are by far the of boys they starved to death for their spells. minority. Further, the words used to describe They had two main pastimes: making love men with magical powers – warlock, magus, potions, and casting curses. The poet Ovid sorcerer, wizard – don’t carry the same blamed a disappointing sexual performance stigma. on a witch using a sort of Roman voodoo
Page 17 English 131: American Literature Advanced Summer Requirement I Mrs. DePietro ([email protected]), Mr. O’Connor ([email protected]), and Mrs. O’Sullivan ([email protected]) doll to take away his potency. (Sure Ovid, Argonauts came to claim the Golden Fleece that was my first thought, too.) from her father, Medea fell in love with The most famous of this type must Jason and aided him with her spells, so that be Shakespeare’s weird sisters he and the Argonauts were able to seize the from Macbeth. They are repulsive “midnight fleece and escape. In gratitude, Jason hags”, with skinny lips, chapped fingers and married Medea, but back home in his beards. Their spells – eye of newt and toe of kingdom she was shunned, her witchcraft frog – are as disgusting as their appearances and foreignness merging into a single and curse anyone who crosses them. The undesirable trait. The idea seems to have classic fairytale witch, like the one in the been: no wonder she’s a murderous story of Hansel and Gretel who eats sorceress, she’s from the east. children, also fits into this category, as does This type of nativism also pops up in the Slavic Baba Yaga, and the Wicked Witch Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Sycorax, the of the West from L Frank Baum’s Oz series, witch mother of Caliban, is from Algiers, made famous by actor Margaret Hamilton. and though she never appears in the play, The role was originally offered to the she is a harrowing, hideous figure, a glamorous Gale Sondergaard, but she turned “blue-eyed hag”, who is hunched over with it down because she didn’t want to appear “age and envy”. She was cast out from ugly. Algiers (the implication is that she was too And ugliness, of course, is key. The wicked even for them), and came to the haggish outsides of these witches are meant island, where she “litter[ed]” her deformed to match their evil insides, and testify to son, practised her magic and worshipped her their unnaturalness, since women are pagan-sounding god, Setebos. Towards the supposed to be as neat, attractive and young end of the 17th century, the slave Tituba, as possible. But the association with age also who may have been South American, was contains a kernel of truth: many of the blamed for leading the innocent (white) girls women accused of witchcraft were so-called of Salem into evil. Her experience as an “wise women”, older figures, often poor outsider among the witch-hysterical Puritans widows, who scratched out a living in the is brilliantly imagined in Maryse Condé’s community with their experience as novel, I Tituba, Black Witch of Salem. midwives, herbalists and hedge-doctors. Fears of witchcraft grounded in Their solitary, vulnerable status and unusual racism persist even today. The Roma, knowledge made them perfect targets for longtime outcasts in Europe, have frequently people’s rage and fear when crops failed or been accused of evil magic. And babies died. African-influenced voodoo is routinely used Foreign women were also vulnerable by Hollywood as a horror movie plot point. to accusations of witchcraft, and the But it wasn’t just vulnerable women association between immigrants and sorcery who drew accusations of witchcraft. It was goes back at least to Greek mythology. The also women with serious political power. witch Medea was the princess of Colchis, on Joan of Arc led the French to victory against the eastern edge of the Black Sea, which to the English and was renowned in France for the notoriously xenophobic ancient Greeks her purity, cleverness and faith in her was alien and suspect. When Jason and his “voices”. When the English leadership
Page 18 English 131: American Literature Advanced Summer Requirement I Mrs. DePietro ([email protected]), Mr. O’Connor ([email protected]), and Mrs. O’Sullivan ([email protected]) couldn’t beat her, they undermined her, Odysseus and his crew have washed up on crediting her success to demonic means, her island, exhausted and grieving for the since, of course, a young woman could loss of their comrades. They go searching never perform such wonders on her own. for inhabitants and find a palatial house with When she was captured, they tried her for tame lions and wolves lolling around in the witchcraft, citing as partial proof of her garden. A shining goddess comes to the unnaturalness the tremendous bravery she door, and invites them in. She gives them showed in battle, and her ability to outwit food and wine which she has drugged with her examiners in debate. spell-herbs, then lifts her wand and turns Cleopatra and Anne Boleyn were them into pigs. likewise accused of witchcraft, with rumours Circe’s story brings together many that Anne even bore physical marks of her classic witchy motifs: a skill with herbs and compact with the devil, such as a third potions, a magic wand, control over animals. nipple, moles and a sixth finger on her right But what is most notable is her moral hand. Such accusations were a clever and ambiguity – though she begins the episode effective way for a woman’s political as a figure of menace, after she and enemies to smear her since, as countless Odysseus become lovers, she transforms his other women accused of witchcraft learned, men back and offers vital resources and it is impossible to offer definitive proof that advice to Odysseus for his journey home. one is not a witch. Perhaps what is most Not all seductive witches show a similar shocking about this catch-22 is the way in ambiguity (CS Lewis’s White Witch which it continues to be played out today. certainly does not), but Morgan le Fay, Aside from Hillary Clinton, who has been Morticia Addams and Melisandre called a witch since she was first lady, there from Game of Thrones all fall into this was also the case of Julia Gillard, first category. female prime minister of Australia, who met This brings us to our last type: the with taunts of “ditch the witch” from good witch. Before we get to the famous protesters. Nancy Pelosi, the minority examples, let’s start with the unknown ones speaker of the US House of Representatives, – the countless women of history who used has faced similar witch-related insults, and their knowledge of herbs, healing and recently Theresa May was filmed laughing midwifery to serve their communities as de loudly, and her so-called “witch’s cackle” facto doctors and chemists. In times when quickly went viral. The misogyny of all this reliable medical treatment was scarce and is obvious. Debating and defeating these expensive, they offered the first, and often leaders politically isn’t enough – as women only, help a suffering person would receive. who show ambition, they are abominations Matilda Joslyn Gage, in her treatise Woman, who must be deemed evil and cast out. Church and State, hailed this local The tradition of the sexy witch, who herb-woman as “the profoundest thinker, the lures men with her beauty, is beloved by most advanced scientist” of her age. Gage’s modern-day adult costume-makers, but goes name is largely unknown now, but her work all the way back to the first witch in western lives vibrantly on: she was the literature: the divine sorceress Circe. She mother-in-law of Baum, and directly first appears in Homer’s Odyssey, after influenced his creation of Glinda, one of the
Page 19 English 131: American Literature Advanced Summer Requirement I Mrs. DePietro ([email protected]), Mr. O’Connor ([email protected]), and Mrs. O’Sullivan ([email protected]) most iconic good witches in popular culture. coming to light every day, and more of the Glinda is a sparkly, memorable presence in perpetrators are being removed from power. the 1939 movie, and plays a meaty role in Despite this progress, there is also the books, protecting the good people of Oz sobering news. In the last decade, United with passion and wisdom. We may likewise Nations officials have reported a rise in see Gage’s spirit in Gregory Maguire’s women killed for witchcraft across the novel Wicked, which reimagines the Wicked globe. In India the problem is particularly Witch of the West, Elphaba, as a heroic, well-documented, with older women being misunderstood character. targeted as scapegoats or as a pretext for Of course no discussion of good seizing their lands and goods. In Saudi witches can be complete without the Arabia, women have been convicted of superlative Hermione Granger. Throughout witchcraft in the courts, and in Ghana they JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series, have been exiled to so-called “witch Hermione’s intellect, kindness, sense of camps”, an injustice movingly addressed in justice and determination make her a role the award-winning film, I Am Not a Witch. model for young girls – and boys – And in the United States, a Gallup poll everywhere. And she’s only one of dozens found that 21% of people believed in of fascinating witches Rowling created, who witches (and not the Hermione Granger run the gamut from good (Minerva kind). McGonagall) to cruelly wicked (Bellatrix We stand therefore at a crossroads – Lestrange). which is fitting, since crossroads are sacred Which brings us back to the to Hecate, Greek goddess of witchcraft. Will multiplicity and diversity of witches. The we continue to fear and punish women with truth is that witches cannot really be power? To call them evil? Or perhaps we contained by types; they leap over can at last celebrate female strength, boundaries, bursting out of categories as fast recognising that witches – and women – are we make them. They are constantly not going away. changing as we change, reflecting our ideas about women back to ourselves. If this is so, then there is much to feel encouraged by. The image of the good witch is ascendant in popular culture (aside from Hermione, as exemplified by the Scarlet Witch, Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the new A Wrinkle in Time movie, prominently featuring Mrs Which, Mrs Who and Mrs Whatsit). Women have made powerful strides towards equality, and we are seeing an unprecedented awareness of sexual harassment, assault and the silencing of women. More of these secret abuses are
Page 20 English 131: American Literature Advanced Summer Requirement I Mrs. DePietro ([email protected]), Mr. O’Connor ([email protected]), and Mrs. O’Sullivan ([email protected])
Following the famous witchcraft trials of and distressed in our minds, and do therefore Puritan Salem, a number of jurors who humbly beg forgiveness, first of God for had been instrumental in the Christ's sake for this our error. And pray that condemnations of their fellow God would not impute the guilt of it to townspeople declared their apologies ourselves nor others. And we also pray that publicly with the following document. we may be considered candidly and aright The Apology of the Salem Jury by the living sufferers as being then under the power of a strong and general delusion, 1697 utterly unacquainted with and not Some that had been of several juries have experienced in matters of that nature. given forth a paper, signed with our own We do heartily ask forgiveness of hands in these words. We whose names are you all, whom we have justly offended and underwritten, being in the year 1692 called do declare, according to our present minds, to serve as jurors in court in Salem, on trial we would none of us do such things again of many who were by some suspected guilty on such grounds for the whole world, of doing acts of witchcraft upon the bodies praying you to accept of this in way of of sundry persons. satisfaction for our offense, and that you We confess that we ourselves were would bless the inheritance of the Lord that not capable to understand, nor able to He may be entreated for the land. withstand the mysterious delusions of the powers of darkness and prince of the air, but Foreman, Thomas Fisk Thomas Perly, were for want of knowledge in ourselves Senior and better information from others, prevailed with to take up with such evidence William Fiske John Peabody against the accused as on further consideration and better information, we John Batcheler Thomas Perkins justly fear was insufficient for the touching the lives of any, Deuteronomy 17:6, Thomas Fisk, Junior Samuel Sather whereby we fear we have been instrumental with others, though ignorantly and John Dane Andrew Elliott unwittingly, to bring upon ourselves and this people of the Lord, the guilt of innocent Joseph Evelith Henry Herrick, Senior blood, which sin the Lord saith in Scripture, he would not pardon, 2 Kings 24:4, that is we suppose in regard of His temporal judgments. We do, therefore, hereby signify to all in general (and to the surviving sufferers in especial) our deep sense of and sorrow for our errors in acting on such evidence to the condemning of any person. And do hereby declare that we justly fear that we were sadly deluded and mistaken, for which we are much disquieted
Page 21 English 131: American Literature Advanced Summer Requirement I Mrs. DePietro ([email protected]), Mr. O’Connor ([email protected]), and Mrs. O’Sullivan ([email protected])
The following editorial appeared in the solved more anagrams with salvation on the New York Times in August of 2012. mind. They worked harder. Professor Uhlmann and his Still Puritan After All These Years colleagues also conducted an experiment to By Matthew Hutson see if Americans shared the prudishness of the Puritans. They found that American “I THINK I can see the whole destiny of students judged promiscuous women more America contained in the first Puritan who harshly than British students did. landed on those shores,” the French political In a third experiment, the researchers thinker Alexis de Tocqueville8 wrote after asked Asian-Americans to rate their support visiting the United States in the 1830s. Was for a school principal who had canceled a he right? Do present-day Americans still prom because of sexually charged dancing exhibit, in their attitudes and behavior, and also to rate their support for a school traces of those austere English Protestants that had banned revealing clothing. But first, who started arriving in the country in the the researchers primed the participants with early 17th century? thoughts of either their Asian or their It seems we do. Consider a series of American heritage, as well as with thoughts experiments conducted by researchers led by of work or another topic. They found that the psychologist Eric Luis Uhlmann and the participants showed increased approval published last year in the Journal of of the prudish school officials when primed Experimental Social Psychology. In one with thoughts of work — if they had also study, they investigated whether the work been primed with their American heritage, habits of today’s Americans reflected the but not when primed with their Asian so-called Protestant work ethic. Martin heritage. These results suggest a tight Luther and John Calvin argued that work Puritanical intermingling of work, sex and was a calling from God. They also believed morality in the American mind. in predestination and viewed success as a In none of these studies did the sign of salvation. This led to belief in results hinge on the participants’ religious success as a path to salvation: hard work and affiliation or level of religious feeling. good deeds would bring rewards, in life and Whatever these Americans explicitly after. believed (or didn’t believe) about God, In the study, American and Canadian something like Puritan values seemed to be college students were asked to solve word guiding their moral judgments. puzzles involving anagrams. But first, some Protestant attitudes about work may were subtly exposed to (or “primed” with) also influence how Americans treat their salvation-related words like “heaven” and co-workers. Calvin argued that socializing “redeem,” while others were exposed to while on the job was a distraction from the neutral words. The researchers found that assignment God gave you. The psychologist the Americans — but not the Canadians — Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks has found that Protestants — but not Catholics — become less sensitive to others’ emotions when 8 Alex de Tocqueville was a French political scientist and historian who famously toured the United States reminded of work, possibly indicating a in the 1830’s and wrote an examination of American tendency to judge fraternizing as society and culture titled Democracy in America.
Page 22 English 131: American Literature Advanced Summer Requirement I Mrs. DePietro ([email protected]), Mr. O’Connor ([email protected]), and Mrs. O’Sullivan ([email protected]) unproductive and unprofessional. He and collaborators have also found that Americans have a culturally specific tendency to view family photos and other personal items as unprofessional presences in the office. Not all of the legacy of Puritanism suggests moral uprightness. Studies since the ’70s have also found that Americans who score high on a Protestant Ethic Scale (emphasizing self-reliance and self-discipline) or similar metric show marked prejudice against racial minorities and the poor; hostility toward social welfare efforts; and, among obese women, self-denigration. Why the persistence of Puritanism in American life? “New England exercised a disproportionate influence on American ideals,” the historian John Coffey says, “thanks to a powerful intellectual tradition disseminated through its universities, its dynamic print culture and the writings of its famous clergy.” He also notes the power of Evangelicalism as a carrier of Puritan values and America’s resistance, compared with other largely Protestant nations, to secularization. It’s hard to say for sure that any given element of the American psyche results from our Puritan founders. “The direct lines are few,” stresses David D. Hall, a professor of New England church history, “mostly because of industrialization and immigration” and other factors that have led to immense social change. But were Tocqueville to land on our shores today, with a bit of squinting he would probably see some of the same evidence of our Puritan destiny as he did nearly two centuries ago.
Page 23 English 131: American Literature Advanced Summer Requirement I Mrs. DePietro ([email protected]), Mr. O’Connor ([email protected]), and Mrs. O’Sullivan ([email protected])
The following editorial appeared in the Puritans understood they were part of one New York Times in March of 2017. covenant and had ferocious debates about what that covenant meant. The Unifying American Story During the revolution, the founding By David Brooks fathers had that fierce urgency too and drew One of the things we’ve lost in this country just as heavily on the Exodus story. Some is our story. It is the narrative that unites us wanted to depict Moses on the Great Seal of around a common multigenerational project, the United States. Like Moses, America too that gives an overarching sense of meaning was rebinding itself with a new covenant and a new law. and purpose to our history. 10 For most of the past 400 years, Frederick Douglass embraced the Americans did have an overarching story. It Exodus too. African-Americans, he pointed was the Exodus story. The Puritans came to out, have been part of this journey too. “We this continent and felt they were escaping came when it was a wilderness . . . . We the bondage of their Egypt and building a leveled your forests; our hands removed the new Jerusalem. stumps from the field . . . . We have been The Exodus story has six acts: first, a with you . . . in adversity, and by the help of life of slavery and oppression, then the God will be with you in prosperity.” revolt against tyranny, then the difficult The successive immigrant groups flight through the howling wilderness, then saw themselves performing an exodus to a the infighting and misbehavior amid the promised land. The waves of mobility — stresses of that ordeal, then the handing from east to west, from south to north — down of a new covenant, a new law, and were also seen as Exodus journeys. These then finally the arrival into a new promised people could endure every hardship because land and the project of building a new they were serving in a spiritual drama and Jerusalem. not just a financial one. The Puritans could survive hardship In the 20th century, Martin Luther because they knew what kind of cosmic King Jr. and other civil rights leaders drew drama they were involved in. Being a on Exodus more than any other source. Our chosen people with a sacred mission didn’t 20th-century presidents made the story make them arrogant, it gave their task global. America would lead a global exodus toward democracy — God was a God of all dignity and consequence. It made them 11 self-critical. When John Winthrop used the peoples. Reinhold Niebuhr applied Puritan phrase “city upon a hill” he didn’t mean it as thinking to America’s mission and warned self-congratulation. He meant that the whole of the taint of national pride. world was watching and by their selfishness The Exodus story has many virtues and failings the colonists were screwing it as an organizing national myth. It welcomes up. in each new group and gives it a template 9 As Philip Gorski writes in his new 10 Frederick Douglass was an escaped slave who book, American Covenant, which is became a social reformer and voice of the abolitionist essential reading for this moment, the movement. 11 Reinhold Niebuhr was an American Reformed 9 Philip Gorski is a professor of sociology at Yale theologian, ethicist, and professor at Union University. Theological Seminary.
Page 24 English 131: American Literature Advanced Summer Requirement I Mrs. DePietro ([email protected]), Mr. O’Connor ([email protected]), and Mrs. O’Sullivan ([email protected]) for how it fits into the common move from Americanness by blood and want to create a oppression to dignity. The book of Exodus is Fortress America keeping the enemy out. full of social justice — care for the We have a lot of crises in this vulnerable, the equality of all souls. It country, but maybe the foundational one is emphasizes that the moral and material the Telos Crisis, a crisis of purpose. Many journeys are intertwined and that for a people don’t know what this country is here nation to succeed materially, there has to be for, and what we are here for. If you don’t an invisible moral constitution and a fervent know what your goal is, then every setback effort toward character education. sends you into cynicism and selfishness. It suggests that history is in the shape It should be possible to revive the of an upward spiral. People who see their Exodus template, to see Americans as a lives defined by Exodus move, innovate, and single people trekking through a landscape organize their lives around a common of broken institutions. What’s needed is an eschatological destiny. As Langston Hughes act of imagination, somebody who can tell 12 famously put it, “America never was us what our goal is, and offer an ideal vision America to me / And yet I swear this oath — of what the country and the world should be. / America will be!” The Exodus narrative has pretty much been dropped from our civic culture. Schools cast off the Puritans as a bunch of religious fundamentalists. Gorski shows how a social-science, technocratic mind-set has triumphed, treating politics as just a competition of self-interested utilitarians. Today’s students get steeped in American tales of genocide, slavery, oppression and segregation. American history is taught less as a progressively realized grand narrative and more as a series of power conflicts between oppressor and oppressed. The academic left pushed this reinterpretation, but as usual the extreme right ended up claiming the spoils. The people Gorski calls radical secularists expunged biblical categories and patriotic celebrations from schools. The voters revolted and elected the people Gorski calls the religious nationalists to the White House — the jingoistic chauvinists who measure
12 Langston Hughes was an African-American poet of the 20th century who wrote extensively about racism, segregation, and the Jim Crow Laws.
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