Whitman’s “The Sleepers” and the Paradox of Waking Dreams

 I want to run with a thought that Meg raised in our last discussion and see where it leads. She suggested that Whitman’s description of the narrator “[b]ending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers” tugs on the Transcendentalist thread of awakening the masses through poetry. The paradox that we couldn’t quite unravel in discussion is roughly as follows.

In “The Sleepers,” Whitman’s narrator achieves a state of enlightenment through sleep. The slumbering society that he observes has achieved a state of equality and innocence that represents his epiphanic vision. On the one hand, this seems to reinforce Emerson’s notion that the poet “stands among partial men for the complete man.” On the other, Whitman’s narrator does not awaken any of the sleepers, as Emerson’s vision of the poet would require. If the poetic persona in “The Sleepers” is to achieve the Transcendentalist goal of waking the masses, he/she will do so by inviting the reader to imagine the egalitarian vision witnessed in a dream as the principle to live by in the waking hours.

Dreams can be seen as either illusions or as prophecies. “The Sleepers” can be read as either, though as a Transcendentalist text it aspires to be prophetic.

If the poem is a prophetic dream, its omens are not eminently hopeful. The “beautiful gigantic swimmer” (who could be the nation or the writer trying to save the nation, or both–likely both) gets dashed against the rocks, Washington kisses his troops goodbye in a scene that predates national independence, a Native woman appears and disappears, and a slave warns, “I hate him thatoppresses me, / I will either destroy him, or he shall release me.” What follows is a reverse chronology, almost as if American history is being rewound, as all of the immigrants return to their native lands, and “[t]o every port of England and France and Spain enter wellfilled ships.” The poem begins to reconcile opposites at this point, until all “are averaged…one [being] no better than the other,” and the narrative concludes with rhapsodic language about darkness as both mother and lover, giving birth and giving death in a conceptual loop that finds solace (if it does) in both the beginning and end of things.

For a nation scarcely eighty years old at the time of the poem’s publication, Whitman’s vision is sobering. His reverse chronology suggests that the racial and political conflicts he faced in 1855 might best be resolved by unraveling the social fabric that created them: turning back the clock to a precolonial time. The egalitarian vision that his narrator enjoys is charming while it invites a panoramic view of the sleeping nation, but alarming when it suggests the relationship between sleep and death. “The sleepers,” Whitman writes, “are very beautiful as they lie unclothed, / They flow hand in hand over the whole earth from east to west as they lie unclothed.” This is the introduction to another sequence of reconciled opposites, which include racial opponents, fathers and sons, teachers and scholars, and so on, who “flow and unite” as corpses.

Whitman’s vision is far more complex than Bryant’s notion of Earth as the “great tomb of man.” There are meditations in “The Sleepers,” but they are surrealistic, and the metaphorical relationship between sleep and death is suspended long enough to create an ironic conclusion. Whitman’s rhythmic and lyrical innovations are less predictable than Bryant’s stylistic formalism, anticipating many of the artistic conventions that would characterize Modernism. Yet, despite the fact that the narrator of “The Sleepers” is dreaming, his/her vision also achieves the epic scope that Emerson envisioned for the artist (albeit not quite in the fashion that Whitman delivers).

In the final image of returning to night and death, Whitman “apprises us not of his wealth, but of the commonwealth,” as Emerson would have it. The irony is that the commonwealth (as Melville’s narrator finally understood) is death: the decline and fall of nations, the historical unraveling of conquest, the ruin of the City upon the Hill.

Melville’s “Bartleby” as Parable

Whereas Hawthorne needed to subtitle his story “The Minister’s Black Veil” as a parable, Melville was content to nuance the metaphorical dimension of “Bartleby” by alluding to the Bible and expecting readers to connect the dots.

Perhaps the most obvious reference is to Matthew 25, where God acknowledges the righteous by associating their kindness to the downtrodden as kindness to him. For this reason, the narrator is tormented by guilt that he has not done right by Bartleby, who is the “forlornest of mankind,” or (according to Matthew) the “least of these.” The notion that ignoring Bartleby’s fate might be the equivalent of ignoring God is reinforced by the narrator’s denial of responsibility for his former employee. When a lawyer asks what he ought to do about Bartleby’s refusal to vacate the premises of the narrator’s old office, the narrator replies: “I am very sorry, sir,…but, really, the man you allude to is nothing to me–he is no relation or apprentice of mine, that you should hold me responsible for him.” As the footnote in our text observes, this denial resembles Peter’s denial of Christ, driving home the principle of Matthew 25 that kindness or indifference to the poor carries moral or ethical weight.

And, not surprisingly, Melville finds American Christianity wanting on the question of morality.

The narrator would not follow Bartleby to the prison house if he were not consumed with guilt. He would not meditate on the book of Job in his reference to Bartleby’s death if he felt that this miserable scrivener’s plight were not somehow the plight of all. “Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!,” the elegiac punch line of the story, suggests that Bartleby’s death has archetypal significance.

What is the meaning of the closing line? It may invite readers to consider death as an equalizer that carries everyone back to the earth, which William Cullen Bryant styles as “the great tomb of man.” Certainly the narrator’s reference to “kings and counsellors” as Bartleby’s companions indicates as much. But the notion of dead letters is perhaps the most sobering theme in the conclusion. The narrator extends Bartleby’s former occupation in the “Dead Letter Office” to the profession of writing itself in his sad acknowledgement that ”[o]n errands of life, these letters speed to death.” The writer might be speaking into the void, as Parson Hooper was preaching to a sea of terrified faces that refused to hear his message or take it to heart.

And the narrator, after all of his legalistic moralizing, realizes that he will join Bartleby. They are both “sons of Adam,” not only the in Calvinistic sense of depravity, but also as mortals who must face a bitter end. The narrator will reap what he has sown, and what he has done to Bartleby will be done to him, which is the reason why he trembles as he denies any knowledge of or responsibility for the ”forlornest of mankind.” 

Clues and Sleuthing in “Young Goodman Brown”

While Edgar Allan Poe is generally credited with inventing the detective story, the rational thrust of narratives based on logically connected clues is the mature outgrowth of the Enlightenment period, so it should come as no surprise to find glimmerings of this style in other narratives. While Hawthorne wished for readers to imagine his stories as “romances,” where the “Actual and Imaginary may meet,” the effect of his romances requires a reader to do some sleuthing. In other words, if the reader is not trying to make coherent sense out of Hawthorne’s elusive nuances, then he/she is missing the dramatic effect that Hawthorne hoped his ambiguity would have. Perhaps the most essential difference between Poe and Hawthorne is that the former provided satisfactory punch lines to his tales that tied up loose ends for the reader, whereas the latter preferred to leave the puzzles unsolved.

Evidence of clues, or invitations to rational thinking, is sprinkled throughout “Young Goodman Brown.” Hawthorne provides a rational transition out of Goodman’s hallucinatory vision in the forest, describing a plausible scenario in which “he found himself amid calm night and solitude, listening to a roar of the wind, which died heavily away through the forest…, while a hanging twig, that had been all on fire, besprinkled his cheek with the coldest dew” (2266). But the close reader realizes that there was no sudden transition INTO the dream, which sends him/her searching back to the beginning of the text, where evidence of supernatural events (the speedy travel of his companion from Boston to Salem, the pink ribbons falling out of the sky) seems to cast doubt on the narrator’s reliability from the very beginning.

Aside from one innocuous passage where Goodman leaves the village and walks alone in the forest (suggesting that there would have been no other eyewitnesses to corroborate his vision), Hawthorne sweeps the reader almost seamlessly into the dream. The nuances are subtle. Brown is on a “dreary road” that is as “lonely as could be,” and “there is this peculiarity in such a solitude, that the traveller knows not who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the thick boughs overhead; so that, with lonely footsteps, he may yet be passing through an unseen multitude” (2259). Ichabod Crane was also disturbed this way while walking alone at night, though he resorted to singing hymns in order to cope with his fear. Ichabod is a dismissable fool. Goodman Brown becomes downright dangerous, more “hideous” than the devil himself. But in both cases, the rational reader is invited to piece together evidence of the protagonist’s delusions.

Irving does this through hyperbole, either insisting so vehemently on the story’s “scrupulous accuracy” or defending the unquestionable authority of the text so urgently that a reader grows suspicious. But Hawthorne does it with a little sleight of hand here and there. When Brown meets Satan in the forest, Hawthorne reminds the rational reader that this could all be a dream when he interjects to explain that the slithering staff, which “might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself, like a living serpent,” should probably be regarded as “an ocular deception, assisted by the uncertain light” (2259). When Brown imagines Faith flying overhead, he hears “a confused and doubtful sound of voices” (2263), and at the climax of the story, when Goodman Brown and the woman who is ostensibly Faith are about to baptized into sin in an ironic twist on the Edenic fall from grace, Hawthorne interjects once again to describe a mysterious liquid in a rock basin: “Did it contain water, reddened by the lurid light? or was it blood? or, perchance, a liquid flame?” (2266). And later he invites the reader to consider whether or not Goodman Brown had simply “fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild dream of a witch-meeting” (2266), which sends him/her back to the beginning of this causal chain of doubt.

The thing to notice here is the tension between superstition and reason, which is an outgrowth of Enlightenment thinking. Might Hawthorne be inviting the reader to question appearances here? Certainly Goodman Brown does. However, a more serious challenge to the reader is to establish careful judgments. This is a muted message in Hawthorne’s story, and his wish to merge the Actual and the Imaginary in romance often frustrates cold logic, but one implication of “Young Goodman Brown” is the warning implicit in the conclusion. To avoid becoming like Brown, Hawthorne suggests, one ought to rely on more than just the imagination to construct one’s reality. Perhaps if Brown had stopped to ask some of the questions that Hawthorne embeds in the narrative, he could have had his epiphany about human nature without so thoughtlessly judging others without evidence.

Perhaps Brown’s silent judgments of everyone else are no better than the superstitions that led to the judgment of accused witches in the “real” Salem? The fact that Brown becomes the “chief horror of the scene” (2263) is significant. One might wish, at least, to avoid becoming such a horror oneself and inquire into the ways by which such a gloomy fate might be avoided.

Rip Van Winkle and American Mythology

 Washington Irving was credited with introducing the short story as a new genre in American literature, as William Hedges observes, yet I find it surprising that this story could have been taught as utterly original. As Emerson and the Transcendentalists were able to synthesize the mystical aspects of Puritan thought with the rational and secular facets of Enlightenment thinking, so Irving weaves a new tapestry out of many existing threads of American experience. “Rip Van Winkle” is a mature version of Franklin’s short fictional sketches, such as “The Speech of Polly Baker,” and if one were to read isolated passages from Irving and Franklin aloud, it could be difficult to identify the source, as both develop a muted sarcasm and rely heavily on irony to develop their narratives. Perhaps more surprising, however, is the fact that Irving is most indebted to the older tradition of Native American literature that he references in the postscript to “Rip Van Winkle.” It might be either ironic or entirely unsurprising (depending on one’s frame of reference) to learn that American literature comes of age (as Irving is poised at the beginning of the American Renaissance) by deliberately embracing the mythological tradition as its thematic base.

The obvious difference between “Rip Van Winkle” and an oral narrative like “Wohpe and the Gift of the Pipe” is the gratuitous and satirical preface, which claims that the narrative is characterized by “scrupulous accuracy” and must be read as an historical account with “unquestionable authority” (2154). These are the first nuances of sarcasm, alerting the reader to differences between Irving’s text and the explicitly historical documents of the Puritan and Enlightenment tradition, such as Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation and Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia. Whereas earlier texts commingled myth and history without acknowledging the interface between the two genres, Irving deliberately toys with these ironies in order to prepare the reader for a symbolic, rather than literal, reading of his text. It might not be too radical a conclusion to suggest that reading “RVW” like literal history is like trying to stick to the literal six-day creation interpretation of Genesis: the narrative undermines the literalist view at every turn.

The mythical elements of the narrative are most obvious when Gothic elements begin to creep in. As Rip hears his name echoing in the woods, but can “see nothing but a crow winging its solitary flight across the mountain,” Irving tugs gently on the thread of the Salem trials, suggesting that the supernatural is afoot in the woods. The crow sighting is not incidental here, either, as Crow or Raven would signal the onset of a trickster narrative in oral literature. Irving nudges readers toward the mythical reading, in part, by endearing them to Rip, who could hardly be accused of witchcraft. The choice, in other words, that Irving forces readers to confront is whether to make fools of themselves by trying to explain the entire episode as factual history (thus perpetuating the Salem nonsense) or sink into the metaphorical complexities of the story. And, like a good myth, the story doesn’t really leave much choice in the end, but casts its own spell that carries the reader where it will.

From the postscript, readers know that the narrative is a synthesis of German folklore and Indian legends. Irving explicitly demonstrates knowledge of the Trickster figure by citing the “Manitou or Spirit…who kept about the wildest recesses of the Catskill Mountains, and took a mischievous pleasure in wreaking all kinds of evils and vexations upon the red men.” Based on such a clear articulation of his debt to Native literature, it is difficult to see how Irving can be classified as the sole innovator of the short story anymore than Emerson can be credited with introducing the idea of non-conformity that Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, and Thomas Morton had championed much earlier, and with more at stake. What we find in “RVW” is typical of many other developments in colonial and post-colonial culture: as European ideas mature, they begin to take on characteristics of the indigenous culture that Europeans originally sought to replace. Linda Hogan explains this in “The Department of the Interior,” as she cites James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis (the notion that the Earth is unified as a large self-regulating organism named for the mythical goddess of the earth) as an example of Indian ideas touted as “genius” when they are reitereated in scientific terms.

Why was Irving touted as a “genius” in the literary tradition? His subtle humor, playful metaphors, and evocative descriptions surely play a role, but I would argue that the truly distinct elements of “RVW” come from Irving’s reappropriation of very old literary techniques. He borrows and steals from the tradition of myth, and this is what gives his writing authority. Such a fact does not diminish Irving’s stature as a writer; on the contrary, it elevates the oral literature significantly and suggests, as Craig Womack has argued, that there is no American canon without Native American literature.

Extending the mythical reading of “RVW” is not difficult for the reader well versed in the colonial and Enlightenment texts. There are subtle allegorical references to Salem in many places, most specifically in Rip’s reappearance in the town square, where people are “seen to wink at each other, and put their tongues in their cheeks” while listening to his tall tale. Had the average American not made the transition from literalism (or fundamentalism) to the metaphorical view of the world that Deism invited in the Enlightenment period, Rip would surely have been tried and hanged as a witch after returning from the “howling wilderness” with such a suspicious story.

Irving’s description of the players of nine-pins invoke Puritan characteristics, since “they maintained the gravest faces” while going about their sport. It is as if the countryside is haunted by these forbears, who remind Rip “of the figures in an old Flemish painting, in the parlor of Dominie Van Shaick, the village parson, and which had been brought over from Holland at the time of settlement.” The magic of the narrative here is that Irving doesn’t spell out the Puritan connection for readers, but invites thought experiments about the implications of this comparison. Why would Puritans be playing at ninepins in the wilderness? Could this be a dig at colonial America, a miniature history of those sober folk condensed into one satirical metaphor? What might the irony of his bewitchment suggest, if this is the case? Irving invites readers to ponder such questions, and as a good myth invites the hearer to make meaning of it actively by participating in the narrative, so Irving provides room for more than mere entertainment here, particularly for readers who know something about the historical allusions and can play with their implications.

The scene in the woods is also reminiscent of Thomas Morton’s famous maypole celebration, since Rip helps the stranger hoist a flagon of liquor up the mountain. The Kaatskill mountains here are larger than Merry Mount was, but the associations are possible. It is as if Rip meets the combined version of Morton and Bradford in this paradoxical party on the mountaintop.

Another irony to consider is the ways in which Irving anticipates many of Thoreau’s ideas. Long before the retreat to Walden Pond, Irving introduces Rip Van Winkle as “one of those happy mortals, of foolish, well-oiled dispositions, who take the world easy, eat white bread or brown, whichever can be got with the least thought or trouble, and would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound.” When Thoreau later urges readers to cultivate “[s]implicity, simplicity, simplicity” and to “keep [their] accounts on [their] thumb nail[s],” he is not suggesting anything that Rip does not represent. And Rip’s Transcendental hike to “one of the highest parts of the Kaatskill mountains” anticipates Thoreau’s claim to be “the monarch of all [he] survey[s].” Rip is an unwitting Transcendentalist, yet Irving grants him the mountaintop view, the interaction with the sublime (via his transformation), and the characteristics of a thoroughgoing non-conformist all before Emerson popularized these ideas in “Self-Reliance.” Surely Rip is not the mythical ego-in-isolation (Emerson and Thoreau added much more arrogance to non-conformity than Irving did), and he does not represent the ambition of Fuller’s project for social reform. The world changes without Rip’s intervention. He is not a poet come down from the mountain to emancipate the masses with knowledge of the sublime, as per Emerson’s later call for just such a poet. His farm is in a pathetic state of disrepair. It would seem that Rip represents everything the American is not or should not be, and yet a close look sees that Rip’s character and the entire story develop a mosaic of themes that were already thriving when Columbus made contact. It just took four hundred years for European culture to realize that “archetypal” was more a more appropriate moniker than “savage” for these indigenous traditions, though even then it is debatable whether Irving is giving credit where it is due in his postscript or attempting to subordinate Native tradition to his own bid for literary greatness.

Harriet Jacobs and the Tightwire of Reform

When I first read Jenny’s response to Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, which stressed her impatience with the apologetic tone and her desire for a stronger protagonist than Linda Brent, my first reaction was to think of all of the exceptions to that rule: Linda Brent crawling around in an attic for seven years, lying there silently suffering the torture of fire ants to be near her children without exposing her hiding place, Brent’s refusal to simply give in to Dr. Flint’s sexual advances, and so on. My first thought was that if Mary Rowlandson is “ridiculously strong,” as a former student put it, then Linda Brent is moreso. She is, in the words of another student, “legit.”

There is a submissive tone throughout the narrative. Brent refers to herself more than once as “poor,” and includes phrases such as “I know I did wrong” in order to placate her more judgmental readers, who might have looked askance at her affair with a white man as a way of avoiding the lecherous Dr. Flint. But this is not the first time we’ve heard language of this sort, is it? Cabeza de Vaca bemoans his fate repeatedly throughout La Relacion, stressing the fact that sacrifice and service are the only things he has left to offer after returning “naked” from his failed expedition. Bradstreet strokes the fragile egos of her male readers by reassuring them that they are the “high flown quills” who deserve the prestigious laurels or “bays,” whereas she asks only “thyme or parsley wreath,” since her “mean and unrefined ore” will only enhance the “glist’ring gold” of her male counterparts by comparison. We have only a brief interlude of references to Greek mythology in Bradstreet’s “The Prologue [to Her Book]” to signal her subversive purpose, which is to gain a place at the literary table (a feat in itself for the 1600s).  On the contrary, Jacobs embeds much more powerful language throughout her narrative to counterbalance the obsequious portions. Double voicing is no hidden message in this text when we read that Linda Brent “pitied Mrs. Flint” (the slave pitying the master!) or that her grandmother described Dr. Flint, her stony master, as a “[p]oor old man” after his death (2036, 2050). Jacobs allows Brent to vent openly about the ironic necessity of a Christian slave avoiding churches where she might be discovered and returned to her owners. We get her rational yet poignant observation that she was not as capable as her grandmother of simply forgiving Dr. Flint’s “odious” crimes against her (2050).

In the end, I’m not convinced that Linda Brent is necessarily passive as a character; in fact, we have more evidence of her strength than we do for many of the other writers in the American tradition who have sought to address a resistant audience. Cabeza de Vaca groveled more thoroughly before the Spanish crown in an attempt to win respect after his mission of conquest failed, and Anne Bradstreet prostrated herself more pathetically before male readers, certainly, than Linda Brent does before her intended audience of white Christian women. However, we have the dismal image of the conclusion to consider, because for all of Linda Brent’s strength, she still ends up as a servant who feels obligated by moral shackles, if not literal chains, to devote her attentions to her “liberator,” the venerable Mrs. Bruce, who was able to secure Jacobs’s freedom for the paltry sum of $300–admittedly a greater sum in the late 1800s, but still not even as great as the $1,000 fine imposed on those who interfered with the Fugitive Slave Act. If Linda Brent is so strong, why does she still end up as a servant? The text’s conclusion suggests that we ought not be satisfied with the notion that freedom is won so easily.

In considering this question, it occurred to me that a troubling thread runs throughout the history of American reform. The truly courageous souls, those who stood up and refused to couch their true message (or double voice) in a subversive tone of apology, have rarely achieved the reforms they sought as effectively as those who have nodded in some way to the majority. Anne Hutchinson was a groundbreaking figure for her outspoken opposition to the theology of Puritan ministers like John Winthrop, more courageous than any one of us, yet her earnest efforts simply got her banished from Massachusetts Bay. What good could she do as a reformer if she was shut out of the very society that she wished to reform? In fact, one might argue that as noble as Hutchinson’s aims were, she contributed nothing to the eventual downfall of Puritan New England: rather, it self-destructed through the Salem trials. Likewise, Thomas Morton had the right idea with his egalitarian society at Merry Mount, which liberated servants before the slave trade even began. However, he was too saucy for his own good in satirizing the “precise Separatists” and brought down the wrath of the uncompromising Miles Standish upon his head, as Hawthorne so comically illustrates in “The May-pole of Merry Mount,” where he maintains that ”jollity and gloom were contending for an empire.” Roger Williams left a mark on Providence, Rhode Island that remains to this day; he might be seen as one of the few reformers of this period that really made a difference in his own time. Despite the enticing imagery of defiant and self-reliant non-conformists in the mythology of the American West, the most successful reformers in the American tradition have often been those who found compromise more effective in getting the attention and sympathy of their audience than outright defiance.

Case in point: whom do more Americans remember and celebrate as a hero, Martin Luther King, Jr. or Malcolm X? The obvious answer to this is no coincidence. MLK, Jr. was an advocate of nonviolence, and as such was much less threatening to his white audience than was Malcolm X. Spike Lee begins his biopic Malcolm X with the audio of one of Malcolm X’s speeches (read by Denzel Washington), which provides indirect commentary on video clips of white police beating Rodney King nearly to death. In one line, Malcolm X declares that the history of America is not democracy, but hypocrisy. It’s hard to disagree when I think about Winthrop and Bradford and even Thomas Jefferson. All of the so-called liberators were, themselves, guilty of some kind of oppression. But that is not a popular message. The “I Have a Dream” speech was more palatable to its audience because it did not directly confront the grave injustice of white America. It invited, but did not force, the audience to introspect. Does this mean that MLK, Jr. was more effective as a reformer merely because he now has a national holiday in his honor? Maybe he was simply mainstreamed, like a band that has signed a million-dollar record contract that undermines its principles. Maybe there is more integrity on the fringes. But too much truth, as Christ himself discovered, can make people tune out the prophet.

Crevecoeur gives us another glimpse of this pattern of mob resistance against the aggressive reformer as Farmer James witnesses a minister trying to convince his hearers that they ought to be more compassionate toward their slaves. Aside from the obvious irony that real compassion would amount to liberation, the minister is trying to speak up against cruelty (a baby step toward justice perhaps). He is silenced by one of his hearers, who says, “Sir…we pay you a genteel salary to read to us the prayers of the liturgy and to explain to us such parts of the Gospel as the rule of the church directs, but we do not want you to teach us what we are to do with our blacks” (938). Never mind that slavery is utterly incompatible with Christ’s teachings. James informs us that from that point onward, the minister “found it prudent to withhold any farther admonition” (938). Another would-be reformer silenced. So what was Jacobs’s alternative? If she had grown one decible louder in her opposition to hypocrisy, she could have been dismissable to her audience, which in turn could have rendered her utterly powerless as a reformer. How does a person with a message make sure that it gets not only aired, but actually heard?

In some of the journals this past week, I wrote that I often feel some sympathy for the minister that Farmer James describes, because many of my attempts to apply the readings from early American history to our present time inspire resentment. Reform is one of the themes that I think is the most encouraging in American history, perhaps even a central facet of American identity. The day that we stop reforming is the day that we stop caring about liberty, because caring about liberty requires the sense of urgency inherent in the famous line from Rousseau’s essay “The Social Contract”: “Man was born free; and everywhere is in chains.” To me, the true patriot is the American who is never satisfied with the existing state of freedom and never stops asking the question “Who is still in chains in our nation, and what can be done to set them free?”

Perhaps this extends to Darfur, as well, but we have an ongoing battle to fight at home with immigration reform, ongoing indifference toward Native American reservations (the fact that we still have legally recognized ”reservations” is shameful, I think, and a sign of cultural degeneracy), racial profiling in criminal justice, the exploitation of domestic laborers and the outsourcing of social injustice through international sweatshops, and on and on. When students want to say that we’re so much better than we were in the nineteenth century, I think, “Well, yes, it’s good that we’re not literally selling people on the auction block. But isn’t the point of Jacobs’s conclusion that winning legal freedom is just the start? What about our present society suggests that we have achieved universal justice or that we ought to simply give up on the pursuit of it?” To me, it is no stretch to read Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl as a parable for our time.  It is a small stretch to substitute words like “insurgent” for “savage” in Columbus’s diary and entertain the notion that the same patterns of conquest in the name of democracy/salvation are ongoing. Yet those are aggressive statements of dissent, and I often wonder if they have as much effect as more cautious statements might. How can I, as an educator, get the attention of my audience about issues that I believe are ethically urgent without falling off the tightwire of reform? Do I not have a civic obligation to voice arguments against war, to ask Christian students what evidence exists in the New Testament to support the use of violence for any cause (and how it is that so many churches support the war effort), and to expect that all students might recognize the potential for contradictions in present-day ideology by reading a text like Jacobs’s? I see it as my patriotic duty to perform some acts of dissent, since this is perhaps the oldest assertion of national ethos that we have. Dissent is not the same as complaint. Dissent has as its goal cultural reform; that is, it is an attempt to make a difference, to do something.

It is also crucial to defend freedom of speech, which is why the personal views articulated above are more productively expressed in a forum like this, where other views are not directly stifled or subordinated to the power structure of a classroom. My purpose is not to tell students what to think, but to encourage them to consider provocative questions and grapple toward their own answers. In the end, the reformer’s ideas are useless if the audience does not have an internal aha that makes the notion of reform an individual truth and not a top-down mandate. So, we carry on with open forum discussions, and I do not lead marches around the town square in Pella, because I recognize the principle that Harriet Jacobs was fully aware of, which is the necessity of some caution while tiptoeing over the tightwire of reform.

I close with an admonition from Thomas Jefferson, which is that the effect of coercion has been “[t]o make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites” (1008). Rather, he argues, “Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free enquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves” (1008)? This is why the classroom must be centered on dialogue. This is why the open forum, which we try to foster in this class, is so important. If I believe that I have the final truth, that my understanding of cultural reform is so thorough and impenetrable that I have nothing to gain from hearing anyone else’s perspective, then I cannot expect others to respond charitably or receptively, because I myself have become miserly and unreceptive. Thomas Paine risks this very characterizaiton when he begins to deride the “Christian mythologists” for their misguided perceptions, because Paine comes across as if he has the corner on truth. I have watched class after class tune him out and immediately shift into defense mode because of his confrontational tone, which is a shame, since Paine’s application of reason to the discussion of religion is one of the most thorough and courageous projects that we have in American literature.

Perhaps this is what Jacobs has to teach us, not to grovel before a resistant audience, but to suspend impatience for a time and try to wedge one’s foot in the door so that the conversation with the audience keeps rolling, because if the audience slams the door, the project of reform is utterly lost. And if the reformer is incapable of experiencing mental and personal reform him/herself, then the cause is in jeopardy. Is some element of humility not also essential to Jefferson’s notion of “free enquiry”? Might the tightwire of reform be the tenuous space between the void of conformity and the pit of deafness to others?

Freneau and Guilt

Philip Freneau’s “To Sir Toby” and “The Indian Burying Ground” may represent an encouraging shift in views of race within the American tradition, but they also raise questions about the ways in which pity for the oppressed can compound the problem of oppression. I am confident that readers of these two poems will immediately recognize examples of Freneau’s sympathy for slaves and admiration for Natives, so my purpose here is to push some of these ideas a bit further by pointing out the ways in which both poems redefine racial hierarchy rather than eliminating it.

The slaves on Sir Toby’s plantation are in hell–that much is clear. They are “driven by a devil, whom men call overseer” and chafe under “the monster’s reign” (lines 34, 17). In the final two stanzas, Freneau associates the arrival of slaves in America with the arrival of the damned in Hades, a powerful redefinition of national identity designed to remind readers, and rightly so, that independence from Britain was merely a baby step toward freedom. Well and good.

However, the “black herd” (line 14) that Freneau describes (unfortunately reinforcing the association of minorities with animals) seems powerless to save itself, and if the slaves are in hell, then they are ostensibly in need of saviors. White abolitionists could thus take on the role of messiahs come to overthrow the diabolical slaveowner. The danger of metaphor is evident here in the ways that Freneau’s metaphor of hell suggests that slaves either serve the Christ-like master or the Satanic one, rather than saving themselves. Some readers may object that this is holding Freneau to an unfair standard of social justice, and such readers would likely consider our time to be more advanced than the era described in the poem. So it is. Yet, Freneau’s distorted vision remains with us.

Guilt allows us to overlook the annoying complexities of the race problem, because it encourages pity, and pity gives rise to the Messiah complex. A friend of mine repeated this pattern frequently in relationships. He sought out women who had baggage of some sort from a previous marriage or from emotional distress of some sort, and it gave him great pleasure to become a kind of caregiver. This, however, is a poor basis for love, because part of what he enjoyed was the sense of superiority that accompanied his position as caregiver. In every case, he would eventually grow frustrated by his inability to respect his partner, and the entire liaison would crumble.

Freneau’s hell metaphor is dangerous precisely for these reasons. The ghetto may well be a hell, a present-day version of the cotton field, but guilt and pity will not make it disappear. The oppressed must become their own saviors, and those more fortunate can facilitate this liberation without perpetuating the condescension implicit in Freneau’s otherwise well-meaning lines.

Much of “The Indian Burying Ground” similarly seeks to assuage guilt, only instead of pity Freneau relies on nostalgia, which is also a dangerous way of evading the root of the race problem. Freneau begins the poem by imagining the Indian released from life and “seated with his friends” in the spirit world, where he “shares again the joyous feast” (lines 6, 8). Native culture is conveniently celebrated in the present tense only in the afterlife, where the “fancies of a ruder race” live on (line 24). While the “hunter still the deer pursues,” they do not do so in the flesh and blood, but as “a shade,” or as “shadows and delusions” (lines 35, 36, 40). The lovely language in the poem paints a seductive picture, but the enticements of this romanticized view of Native tradition are significantly corrupted when one remembers that Native culture was still thriving on the Great Plains and in the American West when the poem was written. Freneau thus assuages his guilt by sighing over the relics of a lost culture that is, in fact, not lost at all and whose demise need not have been an inevitable outcome of western expansion.

It is thoroughly refreshing to read a counterpoint to Rowlandson’s caricature of the Narragansetts as “hell-hounds,” but the end result is ultimately the same. Scarcely ten years after “The Indian Burying Ground” was published, Lewis and Clark wrote their first journal entries on the long trek into the West, a journey that was touted as the same sort of discovery mission that the conquistadores of seventeenth-century Spain had undertaken. It would not be long before the U.S. Cavalry was sweeping across present-day Nebraska and South Dakota, working its way toward Little Bighorn, where Custer died as a result (surprise!) of his vision of conquest, as if America had learned nothing at all about the race problem since 1492.

On _The Crucible_

I’ve appreciated the many thoughtful comments to the discussion forum. Some have written impassioned justifications for the use of poetic license; others have pointed out that the film may be less useful as a learning tool in discerning causes and effects. Here are some additional thoughts on the matter.1) One post argued that we don’t really know what happened historically with Richard II or any of Shakespeare’s other historical figures. This is misinformed–there is a very large body of historical scholarship devoted to tracing the exactness of his representations of characters. However, the spirit of this comment was interesting, because it suggested that literature is not identical to factual history, but rather more of an interpretation of history and perhaps even an exaggeration of the essential details to reinforce their meaning. One might conclude that literature is essentially mythological at its core and that its purpose has nearly always been more symbolic than literal. Metaphors and fictional scenarios all breathe life into inanimate facts. But, lest we forget, even histories that claim to stick to the bare bones of the facts, such as Mather’s discussion of Salem, are at work on their own mythologies. I find the relationship between myth and history to be extremely fluid–both are forms of storytelling and both are concerned with different approximations of truth.

2) Some argued that the love interest between Proctor and Williams clouds the true causes and effects of the Salem event. I agree with this view, in part. Abigail Williams becomes a kind of caricature in the film, particularly when she is shouting at Judge Danforth. In a society that perceived Jewish law as a basis for theocratic social order, it would not be unthinkable to stone a child for dishonoring his/her parents, so the insolence that Williams shows in the film, as well as her open contentiousness with Elizabeth Proctor is, I think, an unnecessary historical gloss on Salem. Compare this with the extremely effective dramatization of land disputes as a catalyst for witchcraft accusations. This plays out extremely well as a story and is also very consistent with the documentation of the period. Giles Corey was, indeed, pressed to death in the fashion depicted. His arguments with Thomas Putnam are both gripping and historically authentic. Likewise, Miller does an excellent job of showing how contraversial something like dancing might be and how linked this may be to suspicion.

Where the love interest gains the most power as a literary exaggeration is in its symbolic power for the fraudulence of the court. Miller gives John Proctor some extremely weighty lines, such as his claim that the accusations amount to “a whore’s vengeance” and that by believing Abigail Williams the court is “pulling down heaven and raising up a whore.” Through the despicable manipulation of spiritual literalism that Abigail Williams enacts in the film (highly exaggerated from her historical prototype, who may have been dramatic and disturbed, but could hardly have been as bold as Wynona Ryder’s character and so willfully exploitative of adults), we get a more metaphorical representation of Puritan hypocrisy.

Miller tries to drive this point home when Judge Danforth says, of those about to hang, ”Who weeps for these weeps for corruption.” The irony, of course, is that the court is most corrupt. Danforth’s insistence in the film on “legal proof” of Proctor’s confession indicates that his concern is less with truthfulness and more with legal ass covering in order to preserve the integrity of the proceedings. Admitting error would be admitting to spiritual relativism, and the literalistic Puritan mind was so convinced of its uprightness that it could not budge, even when faced with overwhelming evidence.

The message of the film, as I see it, is summed up well in John Hale’s admonition to Elizabeth Proctor before she speaks alone with her husband about whether or not to confess to what he has not done. Hale suggests something to the effect that “no principle, however weighty, can justify the taking of [life].” Throughout the film, we watch Hale’s transformation from a fundamentalist Puritan (who believed that the marks of witchcraft were as “definite as stone,” when he first arrived in Salem) into a rational thinker who can see the human motivations leading up deliberate falsehoods and can distinguish between these falsehoods and devilry. Hale gains a more metaphorical view of the world. He becomes something much more like a Deist, like those who were influenced by the Enlightenment, and that transformation from conservative stubbornness to a more fluid understanding of human nature is, perhaps, a change that Arthur Miller hoped to see in the American culture of the 1950s. He got the 1960s as an answer, but that is another subject.

Letter to Anne Bradstreet

Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, Summer 2005 

My crewmates

snore in their tents,

two young men

 

full of lentils and rice.

The day’s work

echoes in my legs.

 

Soon I, too, will sleep. 

A breeze washes down

the bare back of the ridgeline

 

like a memory

of the one I love

beside a lifeless fire,

 

where all is at rest but one hand

on the page, the whisper of paper

and skin, the faint hiss of heat.

Taylor and Bradstreet: Spiritual vs. Social Humility

 

In Albert Bierstadt’s painting “The Landing of Columbus,” one of the most striking juxtapositions is the contrast between the kneeling sailor and the kneeling natives. The sailor has the posture of a football player who has just scored a touchdown, clearly kneeling to give thanks to God for the safe passage over the sea. The natives, on the other hand, are bowing to Columbus and his little army. A similar juxtaposition occurs in the poetry of Edward Taylor and Anne Bradstreet, suggesting that while both poets might be characterized as exceedingly humble in their verses, Taylor’s spiritual humility more closely resembles Bierstadt’s kneeling sailor, while Bradstreet’s self-effacement is much more akin to the kneeling natives, who are showing social humility.

To examine these contrasts more specifically, we might turn to Taylor’s “Prologue” from Preparatory Meditations and use it to make sense of Bradstreet’s “The Prologue,” which prefaced her collection The Tenth Muse. Taylor begins, as a good Calvinist should, by expressing his unworthiness as a vessel of divine sovereignty. “Lord,” he writes, “Can a Crumb of Dust the Earth outweigh, / Outmatch all mountains, nay the Chrystall Sky?” (lines 1-2). By the third stanza, we see that Taylor is speaking of himself, as he claims, “I am this Crumb of Dust which is design’d / To make my Pen unto thy Praise alone” (lines 13-14). Such spiritual humility springs from the Calvinist’s belief that after the fall from grace in Eden, human nature is completely and utterly corrupt without the intervention of irresistible grace. Taylor, as a poet, has thus been “design’d” by Providence, crafted by grace to be a vessel of praise.

Bradstreet seems to begin her prefatory poem similarly, since her emphasis is also on self-effacement. Epic struggles such as war and epic themes such as history, she claims, are “too superior things” for her “mean pen” (line 3). Thus, she resolves not to “dim their worth” with her “obscure lines” (line 6). The major difference here is that Bradstreet is not apologizing for her poetic defects to God, but (like the kneeling natives in Bierstadt’s painting) is instead apologizing to men, particularly male poets who might find her poetic vocation to threaten their own. “Men still have precedency and still excel,” she writes, as if consoling an irate male counterpart. “Men can do best, and women know it well… / Yet grant some small acknowledgment of ours” (lines 38, 40, 42). Conspicuously absent from Bradstreet’s “Prologue” is any mention of God, and while one could argue that within the patriarchal structure of Puritan society Bradstreet would be assumed to be worshiping God by honoring her husband (as the Church ought to honor Christ), her humility is obviously social rather than spiritual.

The parallels continue in each poet’s admission of unworthiness as a literary artist. Taylor apologizes for his “dull Phancy,” which he would “gladly grinde / Unto an Edge on Zions Pretious Stone” in order to sharpen his poetic consciousness (lines 15-16). Similarly, Bradstreet frets that her “foolish, broken, blemish’d Muse” constitutes a “main defect” in her art, which cannot be remedied, since “nature made it so irreparable” (lines 15-16, 18). However, the primary contrast here is the referent of each poem. Taylor’s poem is addressed to God and is designed to serve a meditative purpose, essentially functioning as a prayer, whereas Bradstreet’s poem addresses men, hence the distinction between spiritual and social humility. Perhaps more importantly, Bradstreet substitutes talk of Christian faith with allusions to Greek mythology. While she does not claim to oppose Christianity (a position that would have been socially devastating to her), she surprisingly appeals to Greek tradition as evidence that women have a place in the poetic tradition. The presence of the nine Muses in mythology, she argues, reflects the Greeks’ respect for women and suggests that the Puritan social order has not been the only model for gender relations in history.

One might think of other mythological figures, such as the Lakota deity Wohpe, as additional alternatives to the Puritan denigration of women. Wohpe brought the ceremony of the pipe to the Lakota, serving as an authoritative figure within their own mythical tradition, as Bradstreet now stands out in American history as a prophetic and progressive voice. A major irony in this comparison of Bradstreet’s humility and Taylor’s is that Taylor seems to believe that in order to assume the proper state of humility, he must adopt a groveling posture that would otherwise have been expected of women. His prayer concludes as follows:

Thy Crumb of Dust breaths two words from its breast,

That thou wilt guide its pen to write aright

To Prove thou art, and that thou art the best

And shew thy Properties to shine most bright.

And then thy Works will shine as flowers on Stems

Or as in Jewellary Shops, do jems. (lines 25-30)

As lyrical as these lines are, with the priceless puns (“write aright”) and alliteration, Taylor unwittingly reveals the dark side of Puritan spirituality. By abasing themselves thus before God, Puritan men constructed a model that they then imposed on their wives, their children, and their servants, who were expected to show appropriate honor to the patriarchal head of the household. John Winthrop sums up the expected social order in his sermon on Christian charity, where he claims that the “variety and differance” among various members of society (which I am here comparing to the two genders and children) exists so that God might give “his guifts [sic] to man by man” (309). In the same manner, the male patriarch was expected to represent Christ and to imitate the dispensation of grace and blessing that Christ was thought to shower upon the Church, which was metaphorically associated in the social sense with women, children, and servants. That is, before God, all were equal and all constituted the female Church, the Bride of Christ. In the home, however, or in the public square, the male figure then took on Christ’s role as spiritual leader.

What emerges from this contrast of spiritual humility and social humility, then, is not ultimately a contrast so much as a causal relationship. The spiritual humility that Taylor represents becomes the model for the social humility that we find in Bradstreet. By abasing themselves before God, Puritan men were ironically reinforcing an extremely hierarchical social order that helps explain Bradstreet’s genuflection toward male poets like Taylor.

Making Sense of the Merrymount Debachle

Many of the disputes that the Puritans (including Bradford’s Separatists and Winthrop’s Congregationalists) had with dissenters are buried in court transcripts, as per Anne Hutchinson’s trial at Newton, or have been preserved in texts written by Puritan leaders, who naturally had their own interests in preserving history. If one begins with the assumption that the Puritan leaders were not only interested in defending themselves personally, but were also committed to interpreting history according to Calvinistic theology, then there is a clear basis for reading against the grain of historical documents.

But does this mean that a reader of American literature ought to believe the dissenting viewpoint without question? It is often fashionable to do this, perhaps because rebels are more appealing than those in power, and there is some satisfaction in tearing down figures of authority. However, it is crucial to investigate the claims of those whom the Puritans punished as aggressively as a reader may investigate the logic of the punishment itself.

What reasons, then, might a reader have to believe Thomas Morton over William Bradford, or vice versa, about the events of May 1, 1638?

Bradford’s account is prefaced by a string of slanderous claims about Morton’s character, styling him the “Lord of Misrule” and asserting that Morton sought to inaugurate a “School of Atheism” in his community at Merrymount (334). The bitter personal nature of such remarks, coupled with Bradford’s disapproval of the “dissolute life” (334) led by the inhabitants of Merrymount, cast doubt on the accuracy of the text, suggesting that Bradford’s ideological differences with Morton have begun to cloud his comprehension of the May Pole celebration. Morton explains that this was an “old English custome” affiliated with an Anglican holiday that has a long history (301). Naturally, Morton’s festivities and his association with the Church of England represented the sort of religious and social philosophies that Bradford had attempted to escape by coming to the New World. Morton’s presence in North America was thus a challenge to the utopian visions that Bradford and Winthrop cherished for their communities. In this light, Bradford’s motive for distorting the facts would be clear: to eliminate a rival colonists and purge the new colonies of the “corruption” that he was already facing among servants like Thomas Granger.

What motive would Morton have for slandering Bradford? Revenge might factor into the equation, since both accounts were written after Morton had already been overthrown and sent back to England. Morton points out that the “precise separatists” (301) misunderstood the symbolism of the May Pole, “not knowing that it was a Trophe erected at first in honor of Maja, the Lady of learning,” rather than a “whore,” as the Puritans ostensibly claimed (303). However, he is unable to resist a petty dig at Bradford, painting him and his colony as anti-intellectuals who see university education as “unnecessary learning” and do not realize that “learninge does inable mens mindes to converse with eliments of a higher nature than is to be found within the habitation of the Mole” (303). The exchange of insults like this discredits both figures to some degree.

Morton’s economic interests as a competing colonist also fuel his opposition to Bradford, since the primary disagreement between the two communities (Plymouth and Merrymount) hinges on the question of whether or not to sell guns and ammunition to the Native Americans. Morton would clearly benefit from this, and Bradford’s involvement in the Pequot War would have already placed his colony in jeopardy without the additional firepower added to the opposition.

So, both figures have a motive to distort the claims of the other. Whom to believe?

1) Morton does not deny Bradford’s most incendiary claims about a “dissolute” lifestyle. Rather, he argues that the Pilgrims were “troubling their braines more than reason would require about things that are indifferent” (303). Since some of Bradford’s chief complaints are drinking and dancing, seemingly harmless occupations by contemporary standards, Morton seems more reasonable on this count.

2) Weapons sales to natives are a more troubling matter. Bradford’s emotional outbursts about the “horribleness of this villainy” seem to undermine his credibility, since Morton was not openly allied with a neighboring tribe against the Plymouth colony (336). Furthermore, Bradford’s decision to take Morton by force on his own property in order to remove the threat of his personal corruption and financial negotiations from the area suggests far more aggressive behavior than Morton’s. However, Morton claims that the Puritans were jealous of the “prosperity and hope of the Plantation at Ma-re Mount,” which implies that he misunderstands the military predicament that Bradford had gotten himself into through the Pequot War (303). Clearly, he brought some of the hostility from Bradford upon himself. As Kenneth Hovey and Thomas Scanlan point out, New English Canaan was meant to be read as a “mock-heroic epic,” where caricatured names might reinforce the satirical themes of the narrative (295). Morton seems to have willfully provoked his neighbors, which reinforces some of Bradford’s claims about his arrogance. However, the fact that he did not explicitly attack them or openly threaten them with an opposing military alliance suggests that Morton’s sense of justice was more consistent than Bradford’s. If justice is any measure of credibility, one might conclude that Morton is the more reliable of the two.

Morton’s project at Merrymount is compelling by contemporary standards for several reasons. He offered servants a much more egalitarian living arrangement than Winthrop’s fixed caste system at Massachusetts Bay. His sympathy for Native Americans obviously positions him well for recognition as a progressive thinker for his time. He seems aware of the difference between metaphor and fact, as per his characterization of Miles Standish as “Captaine Shrimpe” (306); consequently, his purpose in the New World was significantly more modest than that of the Puritans, who frequently equated the metaphors of Old Testament stories with their own experience. This distinction made Morton much less dangerous. He sought economic freedom and social egalitarianism. He might be said to have been the first American capitalist, though he would likely have been horrified if he could have anticipated the rise of institutions like Enron and Wal-Mart that have bullied local economies and short-changed laborers.

Would it be too much of a stretch to hold Thomas Morton up as an American hero? Maybe his colonists wouldn’t have lasted too many winters on their party mountain, and maybe it would be embarrassing now to try explaining to children why dancing around a May Pole is more honorable than killing the “enemy” tribes, but many of the attributes that the U.S. now claims as a free-market democracy were much more evident at Morton’s Merrymount than they were at Massachusetts Bay or Plymouth.

Winthrop and the Beginning of the American Dream

One of the noteworthy contrasts between Puritan ideology and the polytheism that dominated much of the North American continent before the Arbella’s arrival at Massachusett’s Bay is Winthrop’s sense of urgency to create a difference between his band of believers and everyone else. He argues in “A Model of Christian Charity” that the biblical narrative “teacheth us to put a difference betweene Christians and others” (310), just as “the Israelites were to putt a difference betweene the brethren of such as were strangers though not of the Canaanites” (311). While indigenous tribes were often at war with one another and accepted similar distinctions between tribal identities, they were not unwilling to consider the spiritual beliefs of other traditions and even to combine those traditions with their own. Roger Williams observes in his Key into the Language of America that the Native Americans he encountered in the seventeenth century would “generally confesse that God made all: but then in speciall, although they deny not that English-mans God made English Men, and the Heavens and Earth there! yet their Gods made them and the Heaven, and Earth where they dwell” (356). The monotheism of the European Christians, on the other hand, impressed upon them the need to convert Native Americans to the one “true” faith, and their identification with the Israelites of the Hebrew Bible led them to view the natives as enemies standing in the way of Canaan, or the promised land. Whereas indigenous tribes developed sacred stories based on the landscape that they had inhabited for centuries, the Puritans were making their sacred story up as they went along. There is great irony in the fact that English settlers would claim Jewish history as their justification for settling in New England. In fact, the great sense of urgency that motivated the Puritans to tame the wilderness and purge it of the pagan tribes living there might be said to derive from their need to create a place for themselves in the world.

Winthrop’s sense of entitlement to the “promised land” of New England is similar to that of Catholic Spain, which viewed military prowess as an extension of divine favor, but the band of Puritans at Massachusetts Bay preserved only a tenuous loyalty to England and was more concerned with its own utopian project: the New Jerusalem, or the “Citty upon a Hill” that Winthrop describes at the end of his sermon (317). By claiming Jewish stories of conquest, the Puritans were also claiming spiritual status as a chosen people. The power of this view cannot be overstated, because it has led to a consistent pattern of Manifest Destiny in American history.

What evidence did the Puritans feel they had to justify such a claim?

After discussing the divinely ordained hierarchies of wealth and poverty, Winthrop moves through a series of familiar New Testament themes concerning love. Comparing the community on board the Arbella to a body, Winthrop invokes some of the most beautiful language of 1 Cornithians, namely, his paraphrase 1 Cor. 12:26, which claims that “[i]f one member suffers, all suffer with it; if one be in honour, all rejoyce with it” (312). Winthrop’s subsequent shift to Adam’s fall from grace seems logical, since it allows him to explain that Christ came to reinstitute love between humanity and God. The Holy Spirit also “gathers together the scattered bones of perfect old man Adam and knitts them into one body againe in Christ whereby a man is become againe a liveing soule” (313). This is brilliant storytelling on Winthrop’s part, showcasing his ability to coordinate the themes of the New Testament into a metaphor for the group of religious refugees on board his ship. It is inspirational speaking at its finest.

However, the radical thrust of Winthrop’s message appears later in the sermon, as he begins to build toward his climactic vision of the “Citty upon the Hill.” This is where the logic falls apart, as far as the claim to literal identification with ancient Israel, but the story that Winthrop is telling most certainly does not fall apart, as he is able to make the metaphor of the promised land seem like an obvious outgrowth of the Puritan mission. Winthrop concludes that “…for the worke wee have in hand, it is by a mutuall consent through a speciall overruleing providence, and a more then an ordinary approbation of the Churches of Christ to seeke out a place of Cohabitation and Consorteshipp under a due forme of Government both civill and ecclesiasticall” (315). He is speaking of a theocracy here, in the conflation of civil and ecclesiastical government. This is a radical departure from Christ’s stark division between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man, a division that St. Augustine pursues at great length in The City of God. Winthrop’s synthesis of civic and spiritual goals has continued to plague American politics, despite its contradiction of Christ’s teaching in Matthew 22:17 and 21, where he suggests that Christians should not refuse to pay tribute to Caesar, nor shirk their taxes, despite the ideological conflicts between the then-secular Roman government and the small band of Christ’s followers.

More troubling than this sleight of hand is Winthrop’s explicit claim to a “speciall overruleing providence.” This claim underpins his association of Puritan society with ancient Israel, yet it is unclear how this special providence came to be. Did God speak to Winthrop out of a burning bush, as he did to Moses? Was Winthrop struck blind in the street, as Paul was on the road to Damascus, with the voice of God iterating a proclamation of special providence? No evidence of such an event exists in Winthrop’s biography, except for his gradual disillusionment with political and economic corruption in England. Readers must conclude that Winthrop considered himself something akin to a prophet; otherwise, there would be no basis for him to claim a providence that was not shared by all Christians the world over.

By the time Winthrop reaches his conclusion, the logical contradiction has become hardwired into his message, allowing him to conclude: 

When God gives a speciall Commission he lookes to have it stricktly observed in every Article….Thus stands the cause betweene God and us, wee are entered into Covenant with him for this worke, wee have taken out a Commission, the Lord hath given us leave to drawe our owne Articles wee have professed to entreprise these Accions upon these and these ends, wee have hereupon besought him of favour and blessing. (316)

In the Hebrew tradition, Moses did not decide that he would enter into a covenantal relationship with God–such an arrangement was envisioned by God and proposed to Moses through direct revelation. Notice the subtle subversion of the phrase “the Lord hath given us leave to draw our own Articles.” Where and when did God give Winthrop this liberty to write up his own covenant?

The Puritans were not blind to this tenuous claim to divine favor. In fact, most of their memoirs are riddled with anxiety about whether or not they have experienced enough providence to justify their own salvation. Some, like Michael Wigglesworth, will be tormented by fears of having been irreparably damned. Others, like Mary Rowlandson, will spin off of Winthrop’s term “speciall providence” and coin phrases like “strange Providence” that allow them to interpret even captivity among the Native Americans as a sign of God’s favor.

The power of the myth outlined in “A Model of Christian Charity” and extended throughout the rest of the Puritan literature is that it allowed the new English settlers to construe anything that happened to them as evidence that they had been sent into the wilderness of the New World with a mandate from God to claim promised land as the fulfullment of their most idealistic dreams. The leap from the dream to the proposed reality begins here in Winthrop’s sermon.

Myth and History in Cabeza de Vaca

As a failed conquistador, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca had to construct a different metaphor for his experience, choosing hagiography as a way to frame the value of his experience. In his prologue to La Relacion, he asks that the narrative be “received in the name of service, because this alone is what a man who came away naked could carry out with him” (142). Conquest and service are two parallel narratives in the biblical tradition, allowing Cabeza de Vaca to turn to books other than Genesis for his metaphorical and mythological structure.

For instance, he alludes to the book of Numbers in his description of the Native Americans he encounters in Florida. In Numbers 13, Moses is instructed by God to send explorers into the land of Canaan, which has been promised by God to Israel. It is a prelude to conquest, as Caleb “still[s] the people before Moses, and sa[ys], Let us go up at once, and possess it [the land]; for we are well able to overcome it” (13:30). Others are not certain of victory, however, and they give “an evil report of the land which they had searched…saying, The land, through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eats up the inhabitants…and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature. And there we saw the giants…and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight” (13:32-33). Cabeza de Vaca’s description of natives is remarkably similar: “The Indians we had so far seen in Florida are all archers. They go naked, are large of body, and appear at a distance like giants. They are of admirable proportions, very spare and of great activity and strength. The bows they use are as thick as the arm, of eleven or twelve palms in length, which they will discharge at two hundred paces with so great precision that they miss nothing” (143). Not only does he invoke the biblical image of giants dwarfing the would-be conquerors, who have come to a new land with a sense of entitlement, he also adds hyperbole in his description of the proficiency of the archers, who may have been excellent marksmen, but could hardly have been expected to miss nothing.

The purpose of such passages is more subversive than the mythological purpose of Columbus’s diary. Cabeza de Vaca still positions himself as a conquistador, whatever might be said of his ostensible transformation throughout La Relacion, because his central metaphors come from Jewish stories of conquest. In this fashion, he anticipates the typology of the Puritans, who sought to create a literal New Jerusalem. Yet the imperial purpose of La Relacion is not as evident as in Columbus’s journal, because C de V’s emphasis is on his weakness and the helplessness of his band in the face of overwhelming strength. He appeals to God for help in navigation, for miraculous healing of the sick, for direction in the wilderness when he is lost, and in these regards he seems to be constructing a narrative with more humility than Columbus’s record of his voyages. However, the reality that he plans to use these anecdotes to gain favor for himself with the Spanish crown and to add knowledge to the Spanish arsenal, thus reinforcing the purpose of conquest, suggests that the spiritual themes of La Relacion are, in fact, selfish motives masquerading as piety.

Later passages, such as his claim to have discovered a spontaneously burning tree while lost in the desert, allude to Moses’s discovery of the burning bush, out of which God speaks of the promised land, “a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:8). C de V’s bleeding feet and singed hair evoke images of the mutilated Christ en route to his crucifixion, intensifying the martyr metaphors and reinforcing the messianic themes in order to mute the imperialism of his purpose.

The burning tree follows C de V’s ostensibly miraculous healing of sick natives, both of which illuminate the most audacious aspect of the narrative, which is a subtle bid for beatification as a saint. Among other requirements, such as a five-year period following the death of the confessor and the nomination of the same, is evidence of at least one miracle attested to by an eyewitness. C de V cleverly covers these bases with his caveats about faith healing, which were not only observed by natives, according to his narrative, but also by Castillo and others among his countrymen.

If he couldn’t be a conquistador, this brilliant mythologist paved the way for his own canonization as a saint.

Genesis as Myth in Columbus’s Journal

Speculating about the predominance or absence of violence in a hypothetical invasion of North American tribes into Europe is less useful than tracing the obvious parallels between myth and history that exist in available narratives, such as Columbus’s journal. A fascinating complication in such analysis is that Columbus’s narratives were transcribed, as was the indigenous oral literature. The effects of transcription become especially apparent in the journal of Columbus’s first voyage, where Bartolome de las Casas ostensibly tones down the potentially racist tone of the narrative.

There are reasons to believe that Las Casas responded, in part, to the Papal Bull of 1537, in which Pope Paul III defined Native Americans as humans capable of experiencing spiritual conversion (never mind the implicit assumption that they needed and wanted such a conversion). Paul III also explicitly forbade the enslavement of natives, including deprivation of their rights to property, which were likely direct responses to Columbus’s enslavement of the Taino Indians during his second and third voyages (Sullivan 119-20). As a devout Catholic, Las Casas would have wished to comply with the latest orders from the Vatican, and evidence of his hand in softening the journal appears in suspicious phrases that seem to contradict Columbus’s behavior elsewhere and also conflict with later passages in the same narrative that are ostensibly quoted from the original text of the journal.

The first-person sections of the text are meant to be read as direct quotations from the original manuscript, but conspicuous phrases emerge that suggest Las Casas’s hand in tempering their potentially inflammatory natures. For instance, the journal claims that Columbus “suffered nothing to be touched” (120) when he initially found an abandoned village and later commanded that “nothing which they had left should be taken, not even the value of a pin” (121) after watching the population of a town flee in fear of the advancing Spanish. Later, Las Casas suggests in his paraphrase that “the Admiral gave orders that nothing should be touched, which directions were adhered to” (123), which could indicate his hand in altering the previous passages rather than quoting them directly.

Perhaps most significantly, other passages in the journal suggest that Columbus was not, in fact, scrupulous about forbidding his soldiers to take advantage of the natives, as he took one young man on board and “thought to carry him home to Spain” (125) and later detained five young men who had boarded his ship (127). The text suggests that Columbus allowed the first young man to return to his people and that he also “took seven women and three children…that the Indians might tolerate their captivity better with their company” (127), caveats which are apparently intended to soften the obvious humanitarian violations of the “Admiral’s” behavior. However, if Columbus was willing to detain five young men and capture seven more of their tribespeople, it seems unlikely that he would have given a moment’s thought to the safety of their belongings, as the earlier passages suggest he did.

The fact that Pope Paul III’s proclamation appeared in 1537, roughly ten years before Las Casas is thought to have begun his transcription of Columbus’s journal, coupled with the inconsistencies inherent in the transcribed text, suggest that it was doctored with the intent to salvage some of Columbus’s reputation and preserve the heroism of his legacy. In a word, Las Casas might be said to have been mythologizing Columbus with his redactions of the text.

The mythological influence of Genesis on Columbus’s journal is also evident in a number of passages, which reinforce my assumption that a major catalyst in the European colonization of North America was the cultural predisposition to empire building that Genesis invites. Genesis 1:26-28 most directly invites the colonial mindset:

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

After the fall from grace, God informs Adam that the earth is “cursed,” that he will be forced to grapple with weeds and only eke out subsistence “by the sweat of [his] brow” (Genesis 3:17, 19). These are the most influential cultural forces in the use of technology such as guns and steel to subdue the earth and enact dominion over native peoples, as per my earlier critique of Diamond’s premise.

One might reject statements like Columbus’s assertion that the “language is the same throughout these islands” (124) out of hand for their ignorance and seemingly willful inaccuracy, but this would overlook the mythological function of the text. Columbus likely would have observed the differences in language or at least have heard about them from some of the natives who were telling him stories about neighboring cannibals, so it seems that he had other reasons for presenting a simplified version to Fernando. The mythical narrative of dominion assumes that conversion to Christianity is necessary and inevitable; thus, linguistic barriers would pose a problem. Telling a story about the New World that implies easy passage for Christian values would serve a mythological purpose very well.

Similarly, Columbus maintains that “these people have no religion, neither are they idolaters, but are a very gentle race, without the knowledge of any iniquity; they neither kill, nor steal, nor carry weapons” (127). Elsewhere, he claims that the natives believed the Spanish conquistadores to have come from heaven, which precludes the dearth of religion that he ostensibly observes. From the Yuchi myth, “The Creation of the Whites,” which describes the emergence of white man from sea foam, it is clear that natives did not necessarily all associate the Spanish with angels. “Wohpe and the Gift of the Pipe,” from the Lakota tradition, suggests that some tribes assumed that deities could assume human forms and may have associated the Spanish with wakan or supernatural figures. But the very association requires a religious consciousness that Columbus identifies and denies in one breath. His mythological purpose suffers no damage from the contradiction, because the story of European dominance through conversion depends upon a spiritual consciousness–natives would not need to be “liberated” by faith otherwise–and upon obsequiousness to the one “true” Catholic faith, as is implied by the ostensible association of Columbus’s army with heaven. Historically, the contradiction doesn’t work. Mythologically, it makes perfect sense.

Columbus’s assertion that the indigenous peoples carried no weapons must have raised some eyebrows back in Spain, particularly alongside his reports of cannibalism (since the cannibals purportedly took prisoners and dismembered them, which would have required some sort of weaponry). Historically, such a claim seems ludicrous. Mythologically, however, it reinforces the sense of religious and cultural superiority that extends from Genesis: in other words, it would have been easier to imagine colonists tending the garden of the New World if the natives were not seen as a real threat and if the colonists’ entitlement to subjugate the earth and have dominion over its wildlife (which Columbus and the Puritans associated with the “heathens”) were not in jeopardy.

Thus, the mythical thrust of Columbus’s journal can be seen as a direct extension of Genesis, with echoes of the Jewish Eden in the New World, a fertile landscape ready to yield itself to the sweat of the colonist’s brow, and a population ripe for conversion. Dominion seems obvious and inevitable–even humane–through Las Casas’s transcription of Columbus’s narrative.

Would Native America Have Colonized Europe with Guns, Germs, and Steel?

Source: “Pizzaro Conquers the Incas” (Unknown)

Jared Diamond’s brilliant explanation of geographical luck as a central cause of the technological progress in Eurasian society that culminated in guns and steel (with germ immunity being the byproduct of domesticated animals, which are the primary carriers of epidemic disease) essentially assumes that violent conquest is inevitable. Implicit in his argument is the nuance that had the native peoples of North America possessed sufficient technology, they would have inaugurated a bloody colonial history that differed from North American history mainly in setting.

For instance, he writes of the Aboriginal Australians in Guns, Germs, and Steel that “the society that they created was not a literature, food-producing industrial democracy,” and that “the reasons follow straightforwardly from features of the Australian environment” (321). Later, he maintains the same about Africa’s past: “In short, Europe’s colonization of Africa had nothing to do with differences between European and African peoples themselves, as white racists assume. Rather, it was due to accidents of geography and biogeography—in particular, to the continents’ different areas, axes, and suits of wild plant and animal species. That is, the different historical trajectories of Africa and Europe stem ultimately from differences in real estate” (401). If you have the weapons, then, you’re going to use them, according to Diamond’s reasoning.

I’m not so sure. Technology is not created in a moral vacuum; as cultural studies has shown us, science is always driven by its cultural context and reflects the interests of those in power. A friend quipped to me once that if another life form landed on Earth and tried to determine the most prevalent health disorder afflicting the human race, he would conclude that it was erectile dysfunction. In other words, the existence of Viagra (as opposed to, say, a safe and readily available abortion pill or a simple cure for AIDS) is, in part, a reflection of the proliferation of white men within science, particularly in roles like that of a research director, who gets to decide which questions an experiment is designed to answer and which questions it is not. If Helen Longino, in Science as Social Knowledge, is correct in arguing that value-free science is impossible to achieve, and that science instead contains either contextual values (those derived from the cultural milieu) or constitutive values (principles of the scientific method), then it is certainly NOT inevitable that 1) guns are a high priority in all cultures with technology and 2) that guns would necessarily be used to create a colonial empire.

Culture decides how technology is used, and so the stories that undergird a culture ought to tell us something about whether or not that group would wish to colonize others in a violent manner. Genesis 1-3 is the most important source of cultural assumptions in Europe, and from the outset it contains imagery that foreshadows the conquest of North America. Not only does Genesis introduce us to a vengeful God who banishes his children from Paradise, leaving their descendents with the notion that paradise always exists somewhere else, one of its creation chronologies places humanity at the top of the ecological and environmental food chain. The Mayan and Aztec empires were relatively anomalous among North American tribes, though some suggest that the Iroquois Confederacy of the Five Nations and Powhatan’s growing empire in the Virginia territory could have led to civilizations rivaling other dynasties. In contrast, tribes like the Blackfeet and Lakota preserve stories that represent their rootedness in the place they inhabit. Their home is the geographical center of the world, and no other place is thought to be better. The Sky Country or the Sand Hills may resemble the Judeo-Christian Eden, but there is no attempt in the indigenous literature to create Sky Country on earth, and there is no desire evident in these narratives to reach the Sand Hills before death would take the individual there. The effect is much different from the Genesis narrative, and based on these examples it seems safe to say that those tribes whose stories reverence the place they inhabit would have had no measurable incentive to venture across the ocean in search of the “green breast” of a new world, as Fitzgerald puts it.

Violence is another matter. Had the Huron or the Iroquois gained guns and steel, they would have likely used it for bloody ends, given their brutal torture of war prisoners and occasional practice of cannibalism. The war songs of the Blackfeet, Crow, Lakota, and Ojibwe show that violence was a central part of their culture and that military conflict with unfamiliar societies may have been inevitable in the hypothetical arrival of North American tribes on the shores of Europe.

But the oral literature does not suggest that Indians were possessed with a sense of urgency about acquiring more land or transforming that land into the Edenic paradise that the Puritans believed they were sent into the wilderness to create. If geography had allowed the native tribes to progress more rapidly than
Europe, there would almost certainly have been a flowering of printed literature, if the survival of the oral tradition is any indication. The extinction of the buffalo, however, would not have been predetermined by human nature, and the wholesale slaughter of the Spanish, French, and English would not have commenced with the same insistence on spiritual superiority and the need to conquer a continent on behalf of the Sun Chief.

Perhaps more importantly, Iroquois or Narragansett explorers would not have been driven by the lingering sense of displacement from paradise that the Genesis narrative invites. Had the natives of North America sallied forth, in other words, they would not have been looking for a new home, and that is one of the strongest reasons for rejecting Diamond’s view of bloody conquest as the only possibility for first contact between societies.

Creation of the Whites

This is a difficult story to address, because it seems so neutral and gives an account of first contact that seems non-violent. The narrator suggests that the whites “asked the Indians to give them a portion of it [the land] that they might live on it” (66), which we’ll see in later narratives rarely held true in other scenarios. Roger Williams and Thomas Morton were among the few colonists who purchased land from Native Americans and established friendly trade relations with them, so we might use the Yuchi tale to drive home the point that all settlers were not the same and that the population of the New World was highly diverse. Given what Jared Diamond and others tell us about the Greenland Norse, and given the competition between England, Spain, and France for colonial empires, we can assume that the Yuchi tale could pertain to the Norse, the Spanish, the French, or the English: all would alike be seen as “whites” by the native eye.

Such guesswork is less fruitful than attention to the nuances of the story, itself, namely, what the narrative can tell us about European culture from an outside perspective. Why were the whites so restless? What’s all this business about carrying land away in boxes, and then coming back to inform the Indians that “their land was very strong and fertile” (66)? The Yuchi, Passamaquoddy, Iroquois, Narragansett, and Pequot tribes already knew their land was fertile, so the fact that Europeans would feel the need to state the obvious tells us something about the sense of cultural superiority that most explorers brought with them. Perhaps we can deduce something from the boxes about the scientific nature of European society, which had led to technologies like guns and steel, as Diamond points out.

One irony in the narrative is the ostensible tentativeness of the settlers, who seem to skirt the coast in their “house-boat” before returning multiple times and always in greater numbers (65). European history likes to conceive of this period of exploration as an epoch of fearless swashbucklers, but from the indigenous point of view it seems that European fearlessness was directly proportional to numerical advantage. We’ll talk more about Diamond’s explanation of colonial history and its relationship to geographical luck, which may challenge some of our assumptions about American identity.

The questions raised by the Yuchi narrative are more valuable than the conclusions it invites, since most conclusions about this tale cannot avoid being highly speculative. Questions about first contact and race relations should lead us to approach this as a more metaphorical kind of story, where we try to hear the spirit of the story rather than trying to piece together a literal history from it. What does it tell us about the Yuchi people? What does it tell us about Europeans from the indigenous point of view? What does it suggest about the colonial history that followed?