The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell is a witty account of the puritans immigrating into New England after leaving their homes in jolly old England. This blog is going to have more than one post and will be labled as parts 1, 2, 3, 4, ect. The whole point of this is to talk about the pieces in Vowell's book that, even though they happened in the 1600's, they can relate to the 2000's.
Let me start by saying that the puritans were some of our ancestors, Vowell, on page 57, actually calls them " our medieval people." Since we evolved from them, we still keep some of the same ways of life. A big thing that stayed from the puritans is religion. Although we do have lots of people that still worship God in America, one way we have changed is that he isn't the only one. We have many people that worship other gods or no god at all. This wouldn't have been allowed back in the 1630's. I have something to say about religion. It caused the puritans to leave their home, as well as cause many wars through out all of time, especially now in the 21st century. Religion can be great, but it can be awful. Religion can be a gateway to power for some people. Power hungry individuals can take control of religion. Like Vowell points out in her book, Henry VIII made a separated church so he could be free of the Pope and get divorced from his wife. This is also the thing going on with today. Religion isn't just about you and your God anymore. With the climbing rate of divorce, people have been defying the sanctimony of marriage. Refering back to the power hungry, religion is causing wars over in the Middle East. Think back to the Crusades that was over religion and the Church. Religion can be a beautiful thing if worshiped correctly, but if it is misused, it can create monstrosities.
For these blogs I have decided to take it in an organized way. I am just going to go through the book in order, and whatever I feel needs to be talked about, I'll say something. After getting through with religion (which for puritans is BIG), there was something partially funny. Vowell started making references to what she called "the sitcom puritans." She talked about how sitcoms made episodes about puritan life and used a tone of what she calls "Boy, people used to be so stupid." She talks about an episde of Bewitched when the main character brings a pen into the Salem Witch Trials and they want to execute her, "Check out those barbarian idiots with their cockamamie farce of a legal system, locking people up for fishy reasons and putting their criminals to death. Good thing Americans put and end to all that nonsense long ago." (pg. 20). That statement hit me. Of course we still do that (which I believe was her point), that's excatly what we are doing now with all of the "terrorists" that we confiscate.
Another thing that was brought up was when Vowell talks about Calvinism (the category the puritans fall into), "... Max Weber to coin the term "Protestant work ethic" to describe the Puritans' legacy of rolled-up sleeves." (pg. 44). It is true that puritans were hard workers. You can say the same about America, and then you can't. You can say the same about America because some people in this country will work their hands to the bone, yet you also have the lazy people who would rather sleep than work. Personally, in Vermont, I have seen examples of both of these. This is the issue with all of the healthcare topics going around. Healthcare sounds great for everyone, but for the people who don't work, where does that money come from? The people who are working their hardest would have to pay taxes so the people who don't do anything all day get their "free" healthcare. It would just be easier if everyone work their hardest, what John Winthrop wanted.
Tune in next time for, What could the Wordy Shipmates have to do with America today: Part 2
No comments:
Post a Comment