Of Plymouth Plantation Analysis Essay Example

a large sense of meaning and importance of colonial history. Creating an awareness of history while the colonists were yet engaged in the process of establishing their society gave colonial America a cultural foundation.In addition, he offers the colonists a written document ("The Mayflower Compact") as a conerstone of government, and he associates their origins with sacred rebirth, typologically interprets events as signs of connection with a higher authority, and , in the later chapters of Book II, conveys a sense of prophecy that serves to link his own historical text with the colonists' future. The earlier sections from Of Plymouth Plantation help us to visualize the combined practical and spiritual concerns of the earliest colonials. Bradford's account reveals the necessity for self-reliance among the first Puritan settlers.

We are surprised to discover how secular and pragmatic the Puritans had to be in the process of crating their spiritual New World. Among the excerpts from Of Plymouth Plantation, "The Mayflower Compact" (Book II, Chapter XI) deserves close analysis. Bradford writes that the document was "occasioned partly by the discontented and mutinous speeches that some of the strangers [non-Puritans aboard the Mayflower] amongst them had let fall from them in the ship. " Putting their first agreement into written form was an act of major significance for the Puritans--who believed in the Bible's literal truth and authority.Written words, from the beginning of American culture, carry the associative power of God's word.

The writing of "The Mayflower Compact" has significance for the Puritans' need for divine authority. From the point of landing in the New World, the Puritans were already setting into motion the necessity of inventing for

themselves solutions to material concerns that the Bible does not address. In "The Mayflower Compact," we see them trying to create other documents that would, like the Bible of their covenant theology, possess the power to compel respect and obedience.In later chapters of Book II, Bradford's hopeful vision breaks down.

In his "endeavor to give some answer hereunto," he ends by raising an unanswerable and prophetic question: "And thus, by one means or other, in 20 years' time it is a question whether the greater part be not grown the worser? " Do the selections from Book II in particular suggest a less-than-optimistic view of our colonial origins? Social problems existed from the beginning--corruption, dissent, falling away from the "ancient mother," abandonment, lack of fidelity. From Marjorie Pryse