Compare And Contrast John Smith And Plymouth Plantation

After the discovery of the New World in the late 1500’s, many Europeans began to colonize the east coast of North America. Two Europeans who colonized the Americas were John Smith, author of The General History of Virginia, and William Bradford, author of Plymouth Plantation. Smith and Bradford both having European backgrounds recorded their journey to America and the establishment of their colonies. However, they both differ in their writing style, objectivity, purpose and tone.

Smith and Bradford’s common European background is one of few similarities they share. John Smith was born in 1580 in Lincolnshire, England and William Bradford was born in 1590 in Yorkshire, England (Kinsella 70). They are also similar in the fact that they

In contrast to Smith’s complex sentence structure, Bradford utilizes a simple sentence structure, seen in “In sundry of these storms the winds were so fierce and the seas so high as they could not bear a knot of sail, but were forced to hull for divers days together” (Bradford 79). Bradford utilized a simple sentence structure and wrote in plain vocabulary as a way to get directly to the point and to provide a clear picture of what was occurring to the reader. Smith and Bradford also utilized different objectivities. Smith, in an effort to appear subjective, writes in the third person referring himself as “Captain Smith” who the “new President and Martin, being little beloved, of weak judgement in dangers, and less industry in peace, committed to managing of all things to”(Smith 73). Smith writes in the third person to emphasize his belief that he played a crucial role in the establishment of the colony and attempted to portray himself as a person who the leaders of the colony turned to in times of need. Despite his attempts to appear subjective, his personal narrative is objective. Bradford, however, is successful in writing in a subjective manner, despite writing in first person point of view. When describing the sickness that the pilgrims encountered when they first arrived, he accurately describes the reaction and kindness of the people who, “spared no pains night or day, but with abundance of toil and hazard to their own health, fetched them wood, made them fires, dressed their meat, made their beds, washed their loathsome clothes, clothed them and unclothed them” (Bradford 81). Bradford accurately describes the actions of the pilgrims toward the sick and expresses his subjective view of their