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English 207

Midterm Essay

03 October 2016

Analysis of John Winthrop’s and Phillis Wheatley’s works to depict the American values in

their times

The book Norton’s Anthology, presents its readers with a wide variety of poets and

writers who present different ideas about the contemporary America came into being and the

different authors and poets shaped it with their thoughts and actions. The America in those

times in turn shaped the America of current times and hence it is very important that the

cultural vivacity of vast last be understood from the very perspective of those literary

champions. Most of the authors in those times were settlers who came in from England and

the continent of Africa, some as slaves and some s free men from been granted freedom by

their owners. During the course of this essay we will look at the perspectives presented by

authors, John Winthrop, a white man and a lawyer by profession who migrated from England

and Phillis Wheatley, who was a young black poet also from England but originally hailing

from Africa. These authors present different ideas from their writings and hence showcase a

plethora of thoughts that shaped the culture of America with different religious and political

ideologies.

A Model of Christian Charity by John Winthrop was a discourse conveyed by

Winthrop, the forthcoming governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, to his companion

Puritans on the way to Massachusetts. This sermon was in line of his puritan influence which
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came into his life during his early living in England but he was not of the view of

separationist ideologue and could not express his thoughts on Puritanism freely in England

(Baym, Fraklin, Gura and Krupat, 93). It was not a legal document but did essentially outlay

the norms and societal expectations that were supposed to be followed by the people of the

state of Massachusetts. There is a substantial stress on assistance and particularly towards

openness, as Winthrop commands his addressees to guarantee that, in the new-fangled

civilization they were determined to construct, "every man might have need of others, and

from hence they might be all knit more nearly together in the bonds of brotherly affection."

(The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 94) The colony was to be a Christian

nationality, spontaneously amalgamated, Winthrop hoped, in Christian love, which he

associated himself with. In the way to make this materialize, each participant of the society

had to be enthusiastic to incorporate his or her cloistered comforts which were nonetheless

imperative to the communal virtue. Winthrop spoke of a promise concerning the Puritans and

Divinity, and if the planters subsisted up to their end of this arrangement, they would not fail

to accomplish achievement. Winthrop originates by perceiving the disparities contemporary

amongst human beings and proposing some explanations why God might have designed

those dissimilarities. Some are rich, and some are poor. Some are mighty, and some are in

humble circumstances. Because God has intended those dissimilarities, human beings at the

uppermost tier have no intention to pretention in their individual aptitudes or endeavors and

human beings on the lowest have no purpose to criticize.

The concluding passages are the most celebrated parts of the discourse. Winthrop

opines that if the people with him carefully reach Massachusetts, God would have sanctioned

the convention. If that happens, the weight is on. Now the solitary approach to circumvent

this ruin, Winthrop elucidates, commissioning a most apposite comparison, is for the

colonials to essentially endure being “knit together, in this works, as one man.” (Winthrop
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qtd. in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 101) The puritan view of life in

current times is not popular and sparks doubt in the minds of readers and non-followers alike.

But the sermon in itself presented ideas of unity, though not essentially equality, but of

servitude to be done by each member of the community without distinctions to be done by

every member of the community which happened to have white people at the very top and

black people as slaves, at the very bottom. But nevertheless during the discourse of the whole

sermon, Winthrop does not delve into specifics of color or race, but makes the distinctions on

religious lines that service my every man and woman of the covenant will be what brings

upon God’s love and non-committal will be what would bring wrath. This in essence forms

the base of Christianity and cannot be considered as a biased thought but actually relevant in

those times, when religion was a powerful tool towards uniting the people to coexist

peacefully in a community.

Phillis Wheatley, was a young black woman originating from Africa, brought by a

wealthy man in England and then migrated into America, bringing with her ideas woven by

her experiences in life with powerful prose in action to depict her thoughts and emotions. Her

ideas about Christianity are apparent in any of her works in a clear and precise way. They

show that she believed in mercy being her vehicle that made her in roads into the religion and

why she accepted it while many people of her race did not agree with her train of thoughts. In

her poem, On Being Brought from Africa to America she states that “mercy” was the primary

influence that acquired her from her household, her “Pagan land,” (Wheatley qtd. in The

Norton Anthology of American Literature, 403) and transported her to a realm positioned

upon “redemption neither fought nor knew.”(Wheatley qtd. in The Norton Anthology of

American Literature, 403) The consequence of her movement, the speaker says, was her

becoming conscious of the virtue “That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too.” (Wheatley

qtd. in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 403) This subsequent empathetic, no
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misgiving, ricochets the justification that many who carried slaves to the new-fangled realm

used to justify their travels.

In her poem, To the Right Honourable William, Wheatley explains her longing and

gratefulness for self-determination from domination as ingrained in her suppression and

enslavement. She brings up the “cruel fate” (Wheatley qtd. in The Norton Anthology of

American Literature, 403) of being abducted from her African motherland and of the

suffering it would have inflicted on her parents in their forever lost “babe belov’d.”

(Wheatley qtd. in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 403) as a slave, she truly

knows the value of liberty. She uses the elegy as a stage to express her anticipation in the

Earl’s capacity to encourage the independence not only of the migrants, but of African

American loyalists in their fight against slavery. In both of these works of Wheatley, it can be

seen that she imposes herself as the person who believes in the religion, Christianity and its

tenets but also towards her plight from being removed from her motherland and how it can be

a vehicle of change or rather is the vehicle of change that can bring about truth for the people

of her leanings. She tries to portray albeit successfully that God is above all discriminations

and can belong to the all people without any inherent biases towards them and it’s the people

who create the biases and whose actions bring about problems in others’ lives.

In conclusion, it can be observed that both the writers viewed religion as an

absolution, specifically Christianity and did not propagate hatred towards any race, color or

any kind of vice but rather aimed at bringing people together as a community albeit with a

bent towards Christianity as they happened to be believers in the faith, while John Winthrop

was aligned towards the service side of the faith which furthered his political goals while also

bringing people together as a community and Phillis Wheatley’s prose to show the mercy side

of the religion to bring people of her race into unison and understand compassion as a means

of togetherness and as a vehicle that could end racism in the world. She thought that religion
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is also her dais to promote freedom from slavery, equality for women and breaking the ties of

oppression that plagued those times. These thoughts still prevail in the modern times and also

became a chariot of change in those times. These two authors shaped the future of America

by bringing people together under the idea of one religion and through their writings showed

people the way forward by their thoughts albeit John Winthrop’s thoughts losing voice

slowly and Phillis Wheatley’s voice gaining pitch steadily over time.
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Works Cited

Wheatley, Phillis. "On Being Brought from Africa to America." The Norton Anthology of

American Literature. 8th ed. Vol. 1. N.p.: W. W. Norton, 2012. 403. Print.

Wheatley, Phillis. “To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth." The Norton

Anthology of American Literature. 8th ed. Vol. 1. N.p.: W. W. Norton, 2012. 403.

Print.

Winthrop, John. "A Model of Christian Charity." The Norton Anthology of American

Literature. 8th Shorter ed. Vol. 1. N.p.: W. W. Norton, 2012. 93-102. Print.