Compare and contrast the meaning and style of “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” and “The Minister’s Black Veil.” How does each author convey his meaning to the reader? Which author’s style is more effective and why?
Puritan religion is adequately portrayed in both Jonathan Edwards’ sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story, “The Minister’s Black Veil”. Edwards’ sermon is preaches about how God’s wrath will send sinners, who do not repent and truly believe in God, to Hell for all eternity. Hawthorne’s story is about how people try to hide their sins inside themselves as if behind a curtain or veil. Through use of details, tone, and figurative language, these literary giants discuss their topics.
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In “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, Edwards uses multiple instances of figurative language to further the understanding of what he is saying, he also uses figurative language to create vivid images in the minds of his audience. In his text, it states, “The Bow of God’s Wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and Justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the Bow, and it is nothing but the mere Pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one Moment from being made drunk with your blood.” This quote creates an image of an all powerful God aiming a bow at each individual who has not repented. It highlights the anger that such a God must be feeling towards His creations. Hawthorn does not use figurative language as expressively as Edwards, though he does use some in “The Minister’s Black Veil”. In it, he writes of how the veil symbolizes secret sins that people have and that they try to hide from one another and, even, themselves. This shows his message of trying to get people to realize their secret sins and to repent of them to be saved, but in the text, is not so