Reflection- Henry

I actually do believe that Patrick Henry's speech is an example of what a rationalism period literature piece would be like. The Rationalism period is very different from it's previous period, of puritan writing. The main characteristics Rationalism writing exemplifies is they just simply state what things are really like. These use facts and data to get the point across, instead of using just believing god would take care of it, or going on pure emotion and no factual information to back things up. Also in the Rationalism period they do not just jump around and doil around the point, they get right to it. I like the Rationalism period a lot more because I like having some data and facts to prove something to me. When I read a story I like to know the events and the facts and data instead of seeing some pointless pictures or reading all the details that do not really matter. It is really annoying when an author takes four chapters to even set up the plot.

I think that the speech of Patrick Henry was a good example of the rationalism period because I think that he was think logically and not purely on his emotions. A famous quote by Patrick Henry is "Give me Liberty, or give me death." By stating this he is saying the war was well under wat before the actual war was even fired, because not everyone was on the same page, not everyone agreed. Many things leading up to the actual war had already happened. He shows that the colonies opinions do not really matter(Henry 118). Nothing they could really do was going to change where they were headed. At the Convention Henry makes everyonhe aware that if we are going to keep doing what we are doing then things are going to keep going how they are going...unless someone steps up and does something about it(Henry 116). The war was basically inevitable at this point. There was not really a way out of it, and I think Henry maybe did not even want to have this war but he was using his logic knowing that they were too far in to get out now. They had to fight this especially if they wanted to get what they wanted.

Because Henry uses logic in telling people at the convention that they are going to have to prepare for a war even if that is not want they want because they need to get liberty or they are going to keep living unhappy, that makes it a rational piece of literature in my opinion. I do not even think that Henry wanted the war because let's be honest, nobody really wants war, however Henry needed to be logical in order to have himself prepared for the war, as well as convince others that they needed to prepare for it because he knew that if they did not prepare it would all be for nothing. If they did prepare then maybe they would finally get what they had been wanting this whole time, liberty and freedom.

Henry, Patrick. "Speech to the Second Virginia Convention." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 114-118. Print.

Reflection- Declaration of Independance

The Declaration of Independence was a very confusing piece of literature for me to read. It was probably so difficult because it is more of a historical piece, and I am not really into not good at history.

In our previous class period of English we learned about faulty logic and the use of propaganda. By definition propaganda is are the methods and approaches used to spread ideas that further a cause - a political, commercial, religious, or civil cause(Recognizing Propoganda). In many arguements made people use these faulty logic and uses of propaganda. The most common are name calling, which is using negative labels or names to call someone, card stacking, which is when you only present information about one side so the reader does not really have a chance to form an opinion on the other, and generalizations, where you group everyone together in their opinions and thoughts.

The Decleration of Independence did in fact use a lot of good logic and did a good way of getting their point accross in a non faulty manor. In the Decleration they list the many things that King George did, calling together legeslative houses repeatedly for invasions, making people uncomfortable, refusing to pass laws, and refusing elections(Jefferson 123). They list the many things that the King did in a factual manor and that is a good use of logic.

However, there are also quite a few forms of faulty logic and propoganda in the Decleration of Independence as well. The Decleration says "He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people"(Jefferson 124). This is a form of a bias opinion and is also an extreme exageration. The king did not literally burn the towns, ravage the coasts, or literally destroy lives of the people. This is just an exagerated opinion on how they feel which is a use of faulty logic.

There was quite a big technique that is faulty that I also picked up on. It says in one part of the Decleration of Independence that all mean are created equal and their rights cannot be taken away(Jefferson 122). They say that men are all equal, but then they spend almost the whole entire Decleration of Independence tearing the king to shreds basically and just bashing him the whole time. If all men are equal I do not think that they should sit there and right about how awful of a person he is. I also think that if Jefferson and his co-writers of the Decleration had their way they would not want the King to have rights because they talk of how awful of a person is. This is a bit of a contridiction if you ask me because if a man is as equal as everyone else, then there should not be so many awful things to say to an equal of you(Regocnizing Propoganda). Many arguements and famous documents use these. Even the Decleration of Independence uses a few of these examples and even a few other faulty logic and propoganda example.


Jefferson, Thomas. The Declaration of Independence. Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 120-124. Print.

"Recognizing Propaganda--Guide to Critical Thinking--Academic Support."Academic.cuesta.edu. Cuesta College. Web. 27 Sept. 2011.

Journal #10

Mr. Langley,

We should postpone the vocabulary assignment due date until Wednesday for many reasons. The main reason being students are more likely to succeed if we take it next Wednesday. We have just recently completed our last Vocabulary Test from Unit two this morning, only about ten minutes ago. If we were to start Unit 3 Vocab then all of the student's brains may still be focused on the words from unit two. Also today is Friday. On Friday none of the students really want to do anything therefore they are not going to put forth the effort on the vocab that they would be putting forth if it was Wednesday. This week is also mid-term. With it being mid-term students are loaded with other homework and have many tests. As a student Vocabulary is on the bottom of my list of priorities because I have so many other larger point assignments to worry about. If we wait until Wednesday to start Unit three vocab then I will not have as much homework and I will have already completed the tests that I am worried about currently. Waiting until Wednesday also gives us much more time to complete the assignment! The more time we as students receive to do the assignment, the better we are going to do on the assignment. Postponing the Vocab until Wednesday just takes a little bit of stress off of us because we are already so worried about all the other assignments and tests we have this week. If you give us until Wednesday to do the assignment I can assure you that my brain will be fully shifted from Unit two Vocab words such as exonerate, propitious, heinous, and a few others to the new fascinating words in Unit 3. Right now I just can not focus on unit three because I was up so late studying for my Unit two test that those words will just not get out of my head. We just need a little bit of a resting period in between to make the shift and become a little destressed from all the other worries in school. It would make the scores better for all of the students in the class.

Journal #9

There are many emotional situations that I have been in. During an emotional situation it is very easy to not think rationally and go purely based on your emotions. However, usually it works out better if you use a raional approach to solve the problem. About a year ago, the best dog in the whole world, Harley, became very sick. My whole family loved Harley. He was really the best dog in the whole world. We came home from work and school and Harley just would not get up from where he was laying. We all knew it just was not right. Harley always came to the door and jumped and licked all over is. We decided to take him to the vet because we just knew that something was wrong. The vet ended up telling us that Harley had cancer and it was going to be almost impossible to cure and that he would be in extreme pain. Of course we all wanted Harley to stay with us and keep playing with us and keep being the best dog in the world. Of course if we lead with our emotions then we would have had Harley stay with us. However, we had to think of what was best for him. What would be the rational thing to do. We decided that we had to put Harley to sleep. It was one of the hardest things that I have had to do because he was like my best friend, but it just would not be okay if we did not put him down because he would be suffering all the time. It was a horrible thing for my brother, my mom, my dad, and I but it had to be done. There are many times when I look at the pictures in my house and think God I miss that dog. He was perfect. I just have to force myself to remember what we did was the right thing for him and he is no longer in pain, even though we all might be emotionally.

Journal #8- Autumn

Autumn is the best season of the whole entire year. Well besides we have to be in school. Weather wise it is the best. It is after summer where it is too hot to even go outside and enjoy yourself because all you do is just sweat and you are extremely uncomforatable. Also, it is before Winter where it is frigid freezing. When you can not even go outside because it is freezing and my parents will not let me drive in the snow because they do not trust my little mini cooper to do well in the ice and snow, which actually I do not blame them. The clothes you get to wear in autumn are the best of the whole entire year. I get to break out my beautiful UGG boots that I love ever so much, and no they are not snow boots. You also get to wear cardigans, and hoodies, and jeans, and sweatpants. It is the best wardrobe you get to wear all year long! The leaves are all so pretty too when they are yellow, orange, red, and brown. They just make the atmosphere so pretty. In autumn you also get to carve pumpkins! The Apple Barn and the Farm in Petersburg are open and you may go and get some nice pretty pumpkins to carve with your best friends. It is just such a good time. Another fabulous thing about Autumn is Halloween. Halloween is quite possibly the most fun holiday there is. YOu get to dress up as whatever you want and get a lot of yummy yummy candy. Also, it is an excuse to have my parents extend my curfew. Best of all is a certain event in august that only comes once a year. That would be my birthday. My birthday is October twenty seventh. Best day of the year of course. October will be a fun month. It is homecoming, I am going to visit mizzou for their homecoming, my birthday, and there are two four day weekends. I could not really ask for a better month.

Reflection-Crucible Act 4

Throughout reading the two puritan writings the Crucible and Hands of an Angry God, which was actually a sermon, but never the less they have some extreme coincedinces in them. In Hands of an Angry God the pastor or speaker is yelling at the audience saying that they are all sinners and fake puritans. They sit in church and act all perfect high and mighty and like they are great puritans when in all actuality they are not such good people. He says that god knows and he sees that they are not good puritans and that they will be punished by going to hell and it could be soon. They are using fear and intimidation to try and talk the people of the church into being good puritans because they are basically posers as a good puritans. In the book the Crucible, they are supposed to be good puritans just like the audience of Hands of an Angry God is supposed to be. However, some of the Puritans in the Crucible are not very good. They are commiting extreme sins. There is adulty occuring with Proctor and Abigail. That is a sin for many reasons. There is lying, cheating, and non maritial sex. Also there is practicing of witchcraft. Um Hello that is obviously a sin. Witchcraft is supposedly having to do with the devil. It is obviously a sin if you are dealing with the devil. People also are accusing them of witchcraft which they never really know for sure. They accused so many women and a few men of doing witchcraft, that they did not even think about the repercussions that would come from them doing that (Miller 48).Im sure that some of the people being scolded in Hands of an Angry God were either commiting adultry, or doing some of the other smaller sins involved in adultry such as lying, cheating, or having sex with out being married to the mate. Who knows some of the individuals listening to that sermon that day could of even been practicing withcraft back then. People actually do not know what other sins that their fellow church goers commit. People do things every single day that they would not ever want a soul to find out. They know it is bad, but people do it because they think they will not get caught. And sometimes you do and sometimes you do not. In church you could be sitting next to a murderer and not even know it. It is actually really scary that some people as bad as they are go to church and they act like they are perfect and act like they are living their whole life to god when in all reality, they are committing some serious sins and are really not living their life for god nor how god would want you to live your life. The fact that people in the Crucible were practicing withcraft, no matter what their intentions were, is a little freaky. It is just wierd that people would actually even want to do that. It has to do with the devil. Personally, I would not want to do any of the things that are with the devil. I do admit I have been present during an Ouji Board and I was freaked out and just wanted it all to end and be done with it. Nobody there was trying to sin or contact or worship the devil or whatever. But it was definitley a little creepy and wierd.

Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. New York, NY: Penguin, 1996. Print.

Journal #7

Bullying by definition is the act of a blustering, quarrelsome, overbearing person who habitually badgers and intimidates smaller or weaker people. This could mean a number of things. It could be the bully that you always see in the movies where the bully pushes the small little nerd into the locker or gives him wedgies or sticks the nerds head in the toilet and gives them a swirly. That is the kind of bullying you always see in the movies. However, this is not really how bullying is in school. Most bullying is verbal. People say mean things and recently with the technological advances with social networking sites such as twitter or facebook, people do cyber bullying where they say mean things by typing them out. This can have seriously awful effects for the both of the people involved. With cyber bullying some of the victims have gone as far as taking their own lives or some victims have even gone as far as bringing a weapon to school and going on a rampage. this happened in columbine. The student who brought a weapon to school and took the lives of students at columbine was a bit of an outcast who had been bullied a lot in his life. If the victim took it as far as death, whether it be their own or some other people. The bully would then have to live with the guilt of knowing you were partially to blame for the deaths of somewhat innocent people. Bullying is actually a really sad thing. Nobody deserves to come to school every day or work or anywhere being scared and being afraid to bully. Likewise it is also sad that some people feel the need to come to school, work, or anywhere else and feel the need that they have to be mean to them. A lot of life would be a lot lot easier if bullying did not exist, but that is pretty much impossible so people are going to have to learn to deal with bullying as it evolves.

Reflection 5- Human Nature

Human nature has been relavent throughout the whole entire play, The Crucible. I took the class psychology this year because it is actually really really interesting. We learn a lot about human nature and behavior. We have not got to far in reading into human nature, but I am very excited to get to that farther into the school year. In the book the crucible the women are practicing witchcraft, even though pretty much everyone in society knows that it is wrong. When they practice witchcraft, the husbands defend them. A husband defending his wife is human nature. In the Crucible all of the husbands defend their wives of their wrongdoings(Miller III). When you care about someone and you are on their team then you are going to defend them, even sometimes when you know that they are wrong. Also throughout the whole book people are defending themselves. This is definitley human nature. Everyone needs to learn to defend themselves because if you do not then you are going to get walked over your whole entire life. Plus if you can not even defend yourself then how could you expect others to defend you?? Also in the book the crucible Abigail is looking out for herself and defending herself but she does it in a negative way. When Proctor defends himself he is not being shady and lying when doing so(Miller 117). So in my opinion Proctor is in the right. However, Abigail is in the wrong here because she is lying. She is lying to look out for herself and only herself. There is a lot of human nature with defending in this book because a lot of people are doing things wrong and they need to defend themselves because they are not doing the right thing. Perhaps if they were doing the right thing, then they would not need to defend themselves whether it be positive or negative. the whole concept of human nature is actually extremely interesting. People do things every single day and just do them without even thinking about it. If you someone calls you a liar immediatly you want to fight them on that point and prove that you are not. It is human nature to want to be right. People could call you that and without even thinking about it you could get super defensive really quick. It is just so interesting to me that your brain processes things and reacts this way so fast. You do not even have to process some things yourself before human nature takes over and you get defensive. That is exactly what many characters like Abigail, Proctor, husbands of their wrong doing wives do in the play the Crucible. People tell lies throughout the crucible. This is also a form of human nature because not all human nature is good. Some people lie in real life to watch out for the feelings of people that they love that they do not want to hurt. Or some people lie because they want to save themselves and do not really care what happens to other people. Abigail is a liar in this book and it is for the wrong reasons. She is only trying to save herself.

Miller, Arthur. The Crucible: a Play in Four Acts. Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1976. Print.

Journal #6

There are many reprecussions that could come with blaming someone for something that he or she did not do. If you blame people for things that they did not do then they could have some serious punishments even if they were innocent . What if you murdered someone and blamed and framed somebody else for it. That person would go to jail and possibly get something as bad as the death penalty. Now how bad would you feel if you killed someone and blamed someone else for that and then they had to die for you doing something absolutley awful. Then you would not just have one death on your hands, you would then have two deaths on your hand. If you had two deaths on your hands then you would probably have a lot a lot of guilt. If that was me I would always be thinking about how bad and awful I felt about what I did. If you felt really really bad then you would not be able to concentrate on your every day life. You would always be just too worried about the things you did. Basically you should never blame someone for something that they did not do because that is very bad. Or you should never do something super bad that you would have to blame on anyone else then you would never even have anything to worry about. Something that could happen to you in school and you blamed on someone else could seriously screw up their future. Maybe college would not accept them because they were blamed for something they did not do. It is just a bad situation .So seriously just do not do anything that you have to blame on anyone else, but if you do do something that is really bad, own up to it. Take the responsibility for your own actions and you need to have to deal with the consequences.
Just grow up and be responsible.

Crucible Act 2 Reflection

The characters in the book the Crucible are all very interesting people because pretty much none of them are good christians. When people are not perfect, it makes them more interesting characters because it adds some spice to the story. Nobody wants to sit there and read about boring characters that never do anything wrong because they all would be going around being perfect doing the exact same thing. The bad things they do have to do with god and sinning. They all go to church acting like they are perfect christians and go every single sunday and sit there and worship god and act like they are all perfect(Miller 42). Then, some of the people that sit there all high and mighty in church and act perfect go out and they sin. In the book there is adultry, which is a sin becacuse in the ten commandments you should not have sex without marriage and obviously if he is commiting adultry he is sleeping with someone other than his wife. That is a huge sin in the eyes of god. Also, there is a lot of practicing of the witchcraft in the forests and they are doing some wierd freaky things. This could be looked at in two ways. You could look at it like they were just messing around in the forest and not meaning anything by it. Or you could look at it like they are completing a huge sin and going against god's wishes because witchcraft has to do with the devil(Miller 27). I think it is somewhere in the middle because I do not think they are purposfully wanting to sin and go against god.

We did an activity in class about the colored personality you have. I was a green meaning I was a thinker. The characters in the story the Crucible are all very different, but similair too. I will start with Abigail. I think Abigail is an orange. This means that she is a doer. She did not really think about her actions and how they could affect her, she just went with her gut and hoped Proctor would come back to her. She is the opposite of a green because she did not think this whole situation through before she did what she did(True Colors). I think that Gooody Proctor is her opposite because I thinkt hat he is a green. He is a thinker. He thinks before he does things unlike Abigail who just does them. She has a plan for everything because she thinks it all out before she does it. think that Parris is probably in the gold category. I think this because he has a plan for everything and he just seems to be very organized. When he first found out better was "sick," he sent for a doctor(Miller 59). He thinks very logically and keeps everything in control. He is a leader among the group from what it seems because he took charge and got a doctor and thought logically not just freak out like someone might do if someone they knew was very sick. He was logical not emotional in that sense.

Miller, Arthur. The Crucible: a Play in Four Acts. Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin, 1976. Print.

"True Colors." Web. 11 Oct. 2011.

The Crucible Act 1 Reflection

The Crucible is actually quite an odd story beccause it does a lot of things that people would not think that "god" would agree with. All of the other puritan writings we read were all about how great the god was and how everyone followed him and they were all praise god and the heavens above. Act one of the Crucible is completely different. It was actually more similair to the short thing we read in class called hands of an angry god, which was actually a sermon of a preacher who was very angry and said god was angry too. In act one of the crucible, there is practices of witchcraft which is very odd to be in Puritan writing. There are some examples of the normal puritan writing in the crucible. At the begenning Parris is kneeling against his bed and is praying to God(Miller 13). God is the only ruler in the town, and a lot of people do worship him. He is the idol of the story to most people. But it is just still different than all the other Puritan writings because of the witchcraft. Witchcraft islike exploring the devil and trying to contact the dead. That is actually a sin. Having characters practice sin is a contradiction to God. It gives it a little mystery and a dark twist to the normal boring Puritan writing. In all the other stories the worst thing that happened was the bad things that happened to them and then they still were worshipping god having him be the absolutle best and praised him for everything. The bad things that happened in this story is things that were in control of the characters and they were doing bad things, such as the witchcraft(Miller 27). It was just a very different feel and tone than the other Puritan stories.

We also see somethign different in this story because in the other Puritan writings they just knew god was taking care of them like when the woman's house burnt down in the other story i read she knew god was taking care of her because she was still alive and she did not die even though she lost the rest of her things and everything else she had in life. In the Crucible, they are not just relying on god to be there for him but they are asking for his forgiveness for doing some sins such as the practice of witchcraft(Millwer 27). With sins of witchcraft going on it is taking away from the message and main theme of god because there are thigns god would not want you to do going on. It is still Puritan writing because god is a main messge and they do worship him, but there are all the contridictions of god with all the sins. I actualy liked this story better because it had some dark secrets with the adultry and there was some twists to the story it was not just god is so high and mighty and that he was the only thing the story was about. With the twists and dark secrets to the story it just makes it so much more interesting.

Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. New York, Penguin, 1996. Print.

Journal #5

Some parents take away cell phones, make their kids delete their facebooks, ground them from things like online games and the computer. Before we had so many technological things parents would legitemiditley ground their child by making them stay home and stay in their rooms, not allowing them to go out with their friends. I do not really know how I feel about the punishment of children. It is actually a grey area. There is not a black and white way of how you should punish your child. It actually really depends on what the child did. If they did something absolutley horrible and awful such as trap their little brothers in an oven and turn the oven on. If a person did something that bad then yes, they should be grounded from a phone, the computer, the tv, their friends, and everything else that they enjoy doing because trapping a younger sibling in an oven is not ok! Believe me this actually happens. I was watching the show super nanny on oxygen tv, channel fifty eight, and a boy who was thirteen years old, obviously old enough to know better than to do this to his sibling. The thirteen year old actually did this to his younger brother, who was a young little guy. He was only about four. Shockingly enough the parents did not even punish the thirteen year old. This would probably be why he thought it was okay to stick his younger brother in the drawer under the oven and turn the oven on. He thought it was okay because his parents never had taken anything away from him before, so he had nothing to be afraid of. If I knew I was going to lose my phone, facebook, computer, television and all the other technological things that I enjoy, then I would never do some of the things that would get that taken away from me. Some parents are just over the edge with taking this stuff away however. If the kid gets a little lippy or misses their curfew by one minute then the parents go crazy and ground their kid from everything. Now that is just a little excessive.

Journal #4

Vacations for the Engle family have both good and bad impacts on me...Some of them have made me never ever ever want to have children. Vacations where we went on a family reunion were the all time worst. We went to Colorado on Vacation to see my dad's family for a family reunion a few years ago. I have a lot of smaller cousins who are the biggest brats in the world. I was stuck babysitting and dealing with them, and that made me never want to have a child of my own because those children were so awful. However, some vacations or trips have been good. When I was in middle school, every year my mom, brother, and I would go down to Marco Island, Florida to visit our old neighbor's and stay in their time share down there...the best part was room and board was free! Being on the beach with not a worry in the world but if I was gonna get tan or not for a whole entire week was a great week. It was a week to get away from everyone, everything, and just relax. I also got to spend some time with my mom and brother away from home. Being away from home made us not fight and get along actually for a week. Vacations are always a good time. Sometimes they are difficult, but sometimes they are fun too. Actually in every one of the vacations I have been on have had at least some good times to it. I have got to go on top of a mountain in the middle of summer where I had flip flops and shorts and a tank top on, but when I got to the top there was snow on it. I have also got to see dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico. I have seen some awesome things on all of our vacations. I also got to see Mt. Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Monument which was a history lesson during the summer.

Reflection 2

Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford is very similar to the other two stories we read, Upon the Burning of our House and A Narrative of Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson. They were all so similar because they were obviously all Puritan writings. Of Plymouth Plantation was not a very fun story, it was very boring, but it was pretty short. It was a very straight foward story. The author basically just told you what happened and then told you his opinion about what just happened in the story. It just got old quick. At the begenning of the story I noticed the obvious red flag of a Puritan story, and that was the center focus of God. Awful things could be going on such as death, murder, divorce, and other awful things, but people are always just focused on god and how important he is(Bradford 64). In the story When the pilgrims first step off of their ship and onto the land, they are so overwhelmed and happy that they drop down to their knees to pray and thank the Lord (Bradford 65). The very fist thing the pilgrims do upon arrival into this new land is drop down to the ground and just praise god. The pilgrams had many struggles throughout everything, but they always knew that it was going to be okay and left everything into the hands of god. During a voyage such as this it was completely different than it is now. There was no technology, actually they never even really had proof that they were sailing the right way and going to where they were headed. A trip like this would be extremely difficult and nothing like it is today. They knew it would be difficult but they also knew that god would take care of them and get them there.

The pilgrims believed that this whole entire trip was to please god and to live for him. This story completely resembles the regular puritan writing style. Even though when they were at sea the pilgrims were facing many troubles, they always had faith in God and trusted things were going to be okay. Voyages on the sea of the time period were very dangerous (Bradford 63). The whole entire thing is about god. The story gets really old after awhile because it seems like they just keep reinstating the point over and over and over and over again. Dont get me wrong, I believe in God and believe in everything with him and know he would be there for anyone and actually almost completely agree with a lot of the Puritan's feeling about how important god is, but that does not mean that I want to read about it over and over again when I already understood it a long time ago. This kind of literature is not really my style, but we are being forced to read and reflect on it. So I will do that much, but I do not enjoy this type of writing. One because it is boring and two because I understand the point of it already and it keeps reinstating the point. Like come on I get it already. I just do not really like these types of stories. They are just not for me.

Bradford, William. "From Of Plymouth Plantation." Glencoe Literature. Ed. Jeffery D. Wilhelm, PhD. American Literature ed. Columbus: Mc-Graw Hill, 2009. 64-67. Print.

Reflection 1

After I had read Upon the Burning of our House and A Narrative of Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, I actually found many similarities in the writing style that was used in both of the stories. Both of the stories were examples of Puritan Writings. Puritan is a very religious word. I looked up the definiton and it pretty much told me that Puritan meant living a pure life of religion and god(Puritan).

We read upon the burning house. This is a story where her house burns down and she loses everything she has. She seemed a little bit snotty, but she says that Burning of the house, she wanted freedom for the harsh effects of daily life (Bradstreet 90). She actually found the silver lining in something as awful as your house burning down. When her house burnt down she lost everything she had. Her house, all her belongings, and everything in her life she had up to that point. However, she still had one thing, and that thing was her life. Mrs. Mary Rowlandson had god to thank for this. She had god to thank that she was still alive. This is a very typical Puritan trait, that in happy moments praise god, but in said moments praise god as well. It was very obvious that both stories wanted to glorify god. I actually think that both the stories did quite a nice job of glorifying god and showing that he was the higher power and you had to thank him for everything. They both looked up to god for some advice in their times of needs, and asked for his help and wanted him to heal them. In the narrative of Mary Rowlandson, she sat there and held her ill son in her arms and asked that god would heal her son. In the other story, the main character, sent all of her worries and cries to God. She wanted God to help her with all of the problems that she was currently going through in her life. Anything that was wrong with either one of the main characters in the story, they would just send their cries to god in hopes that he would give them what they wanted and needed.

These stories were a little boring. It was like they were not really happy but I guess they were not that sad. This was probably because they were trying to get their point accross about God being everything and wanted the reader to concentrate on that. Puritan writings are all very religious writings because back then religion was the most important thing in their life. Religion was everything to the Puritans, and it was all they had ever known. They had to write about that. Because this was all that they knew, all the Puritan writings have to do with religion and are all similair in that aspect. Even though I did not really like the woman who's house burnt down as a character, because she seemed kind of rude, I did like that she found the silver lining with something as tragic as a house burning down. She still somehow found the good in that. I just do not think I would be able to look at it as positive as she did. However, I respect that she left it all up to god. It was a very Puritan thing to do, and was a very good thing to do. I did like Mary Rowlandson because I thought she was a good hard worker. She worked for pretty much everything she had(Rowlandson 83).


Bradstreet, Anne. "Upon the Burning of Our House." Glencoe Literature. Ed. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph. D. American Literature ed. Columbus,: McGraw Hill Co, 2009. 91. Print.

Puritan | Define Puritan at Dictionary.com." Dictionary.com | Find the Meanings and Definitions of Words at Dictionary.com. Web. 11 Oct. 2011.

Rowlandson, Mary. "A Narrative of Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson." Glencoe Literature. Ed. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph. D. American Literature ed. Columbus,: MrGraw Hill Co, 2009. 82. Print.

Journal #3

Personally I think that being held hostage would be one of the worst things in the whole entire world. It would just be so scary. I think of the Jaycee Dugard story. I guess she was not really held hostage, but she was kidnapped and had to live in a shed for over ten years. The kidnapper did awful things to her, and I just can not even imagine how she had to have been feeling through all of the years she was trapped in there.

I know the whole time that I was being held hostage or kidnapped I would just be plotting a way for me to escape and become free again. I would also probably be panicing majorly, and hyper ventalitating and sweating worried about if I was going to die. I would probably be having asthma attacks and anxiety attacks as well. It would obviously just be an awful situation. Actually when I was little and I would be the last one awake in my house and play all these scenarios in my head and I would think about getting kidnapped and things like that. I would actually worry about being held hostage, as silly as that sounds, I really did. Hopefully this never ever ever happens to me or anyone I know.

If a friend or somebody I knew was being held hostage with me, that would make the situation a little bit better. It would still be really tough obviously, but better. I really do not know how people like Jaycee Dugard could do being kidnapped by an awful family for that many years. After watching her story I was shocked, she was actually very normal for what she had gone through. I really respect her for being able to overcome the trauma she must of gone through. She is actually a very remarkable person. I can not believe that being held hostage and getting kidnapped actually happens to real people in this world, and that they actually have to go through awful things like this.