Headline

Religion, Persecution, Family, and Hypocracy:


Have you ever wondered what America was like before industrialization and capitalization? What this place was like before it was the U.S.A., let alone America? Well, the Puritan’s should know because they were the first to live in colonies on the land that is present-day U.S.A. The first thing you should know about the Puritans are, is that they are original from England. The Puritans were exiled from England to the Netherlands, where they re-grouped and finally made a beeline to the new world. In this new world the Puritans sought a life free of religious persecution. Puritans established themselves in places all around the eastern coast, such as Boston, Plymouth, and Georgetown.

After the Puritans made the pilgrimage to the Americas is where everything seems to change for them. They are now their own power with religious freedom and a control on almost all social aspects. The first thing that you should know about the Puritans is that they were a very strict and intolerant people. They are the people who made the strict conservative rules, that if you broke them, it could mean banishment for you and your family into the wilderness where starvation, beasts, and Indians awaited you. Many of us may or may not be relatives of these original pilgrims to the Americas. An acronym for these people who uphold the same values as the Puritans’ did are known as W.A.S.P.’s or White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

Now onto the authors of this time period. No, we did not have any J.K. Rowling’s or J.R. Tolken’s emerge from this time period. Actually, the opposite came from the writers in this Puritan society. This was because anything that wasn’t done for and or about God was blasphemous. Such as decorations or singing within the holy church. A perfect example of the literature of the time was a woman named Anne Bradstreet. She was both a mother and a poet. Her poetry focused on various topics such as thanking god for her husband and her love for her children being at one with God’s eternal love. This is obviously poetry that would not be appealing to the mainstream in today’s culture, but during the time of the Puritans, this type of “subliminal-messaging”, as it would be called today, was the types of literature that the Puritans fed off.

Opinion

The Colonial Witch Trial:


The colonial era (1700’s to early 1800’s) was a troublesome time for the world. Art did do its job well to reflect the truth of the times; the zeitgeist if you may. During and before these times we had encountered many things, from new world landmass discoveries to a new sense of direction. In a social aspect this was a very hypocritical period within the history of America. It was indeed a nation of immigrants and dissenters who persecuted and destroyed those who were not of their caliber or breeding.

It is obvious, that throughout history the black people have gotten the short end of the stick. This actually was not so until the triangle trade routes began, which was where African natives were trading their own for money, gold, and the most powerful buying power at the time, rum. In America there were Africans as slaves and many slurs were put upon the once thriving groups of people who were now reduced to mere pack mules. With so many bad things that were happing towards the African Americans, you’d think that they had committed some horrible crime or something of the equivalent!

But through the smokes of oppression, taken from his homeland of Africa, there was a man whose voice was heard. But his voice was not heard over microphones and he did not give oratories to large assemblies. No. He gained power that many white Americans at the time didn’t even attain. He had conquered the power of writing and he used the pen and paper to tell anyone who would listen, and it was everyone, about his story and his journey to the man he was. This man’s name was Olaudah Equiano. What he had done that had never been done before through any medium. It was that he exposed the horrors and tragedies that were caused by the middle passage.

It seems that the words that were put to verse through this man’s documents were never applied to the life of Olaudah Equiano. There was no true freedom for him or his people at this time of history. There was no equality for all men in this time of tragedy. There was barely even any equality between neighbors. A man who fought to cede from oppression, which at the time was that of the king of Great Britain and his unjust taxation, was unlike Olaudah. This man was wealthy, white, and had far more freedoms than any black slave that he could’ve known. But unlike many people who were slave owners, he was known for his humane and kindred heart towards his slaves. This man was Mr. Thomas Jefferson, the author of “The Declaration of Independence”. Enough said.

There were many patriotic Americans during this time of rebellion and revolution. A true sense and hunger for justice and freedom from the oppressors was seemingly in every, and any, place you looked. However there was one man that many of these activists looked up as their idol. There was one man who basically wrote the work that was all the rage at the time of the American Revolution. This man was Thomas Paine. He wrote a very famous pamphlet titled “Common Sense”. The stirring thought that England (the motherland) has lost sense with the colonies was disgusting to many people. But this disgust, lead to a realization. And the realization, lead to a cause. And this cause, lead to change; and that my friends was the American Revolution.
However, even though there was this revolution, there was still much time before these “others”, these dissenters, would be a part of society. Yet it was before the time of the American Revolution, during the Colonial Era, there was a horrible mishap that mostly everyone nowadays knows about. Knowledge of it is almost as common knowledge as the Holocaust, but on a smaller scale. The Salem Witch Trials, was held within this time period. It was 1692 when they occurred in none other than the small town of Salem, Massachusetts. The trial was basically where the term “witch-hunt” was coined. It was a small group of county officials who caused mass hysteria to have various dissenters executed. They blamed these dissenters and claimed that they were guilty of conspiring with the devil and practicing the devil’s magic, black magic. No one knew for sure who was right, but the local governing powers had played so well into the fears of it’s citizens, that there was no way that they could be found wrong on their “Holy Cleansing” of their homes from the black magic of Satan. "The Crucible" by Arthur Miller is an accurate depiction of the torment and unfair justice that the victums of the Witch Trials must have recieved during this time of my hysteria and paranoia.

Life and Times

Romanticism: Our Modern-day Romance…With Ourselves?:


The Bohemian lifestyle, the oneness of a Buddhist, and the expression of an artist. Why are all of these things that a large subculture of American’s focused on in this new age? Could it be because we have a new uprising of a hippy subculture? Or is it that history’s ideas, themes, and motifs are repeating and reoccurring in a newer mainstream form of culture and philosophy? I believe that it is so; thoughts of the Romantic era in America are reoccurring in today’s society.

The Fireside Poets were poets who were widely read around the symbolic fireside, or any other place where many people would congregate to exchange stories and other means of communication. They were not only filled with themes that were very relative to the people of the time, but it was so widespread that both the aristocracy and the poor knew of these poets and their works even better. One thing that each of these poets themes shared was that they were about timeless concepts, such as death and preservation of those who have departed. Even though they shared themes of that arena, they were very rarely depressing to where you would see it as an epitaph. Today’s culture reflects this in the way of these Fireside poets reincarnated as such inspirations as Bono.

There was one Romantic poet who didn’t stray to the light of the style. This man’s name is associated with morbidity and many unpleasant memories made up his life. Edgar Allen Poe is this man. Most would look at his work’s and not ever see how it could ever be labeled as “romantic” but his form of Romanticism was indeed the most grand of them all. Wherein other writers of the time would be focusing on how so many good things can happen within a story, Poe was a rebel. He looked at the worst case scenario and through that point of view he explained to us the human’s existence, being based on a fear of some sort or another. This was destined for him to do, being a very unfortunate fellow himself. Misfortune was laden in Poe’s path. Modern-day rappers and various Alternative rock bands show very similar attitudes towards life as Poe did through their lyrics and music; each of which talking about the misfortune of the poor or ghetto life, along with un-requited love. Each of which were the basis of Poe’s themes.

The hippies and other types of new-age versions of hippies are now becoming a part of the main-stream that we have all come to know and love through moderated art and expression. Even though, during the time of the original Romantics there was no true money incentive, there were indeed thriving Romantics. One of them was not Henry David Thoreau. While others were living happy and healthy lives in their mansions and three bedroom houses on main-street U.S.A., Henry was living in the woods writing his historically groundbreaking book in a small cabin near Walden’s Pond. “Walden” was the name of the book and it was a book that contained to story or plot. The book contained the basis for the branch of Romanticism called Transcendentalism. Transcendentalism was a theory in which everything that goes on with society is just a larger recreation of what goes on within our very own Mother Nature. Thoreau is basically the man that sparked environmentalist movements, but he didn’t do it through work, he did it through plain and simple observations of the world around him.

All of these great men and philosophers have influence the thinking of you and I without even noticing it. Yet unlike the Romantics of those times, the Romantics for our times are mass-produced and widespread. Though, some of them are mocking an annoyance such as a mosquito. Each of them are seemingly driven towards the rewards of becoming a celebrity of some sort, and when that happens, that is when the message leaves the music and it just becomes a show with very little substance whatsoever. I am not saying that all of the artists today have that same envy-driven aspiration of stardom. What I am trying to convey is that the line between a good show and a true artistic form of expression is being defined clearer and bolder each day.