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World On The Turtle's Back, The Crucible, And Self-Reliance

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The Evolution of American Literature
American literature has changed over many years. Some of these works have helped to shape how we live, work, and think. Others are a reminder of a past that may have been grim or pleasant, depending on how the writer may have seen it. Some works of literature that show the evolution of Americans and our religion could be The World on the Turtle’s Back, The Crucible, and Self-Reliance. The World on the Turtle’s Back is a work by the Iroquois native Americans that was from around 2000 bc. It was passed on orally from generation to generation and expressed how the Iroquois tribe thought the world was created. They believed that the world was created by a group of gods. This story also shows that during this time most Native American literature was probably passed down orally, which is very different from how we usually pass on our stories today.
John Edward’s Sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is a piece of literature from colonial times. He is angrily addressing a group of puritan people and telling them that they should change their ways so that they will not go to hell. This sermon shows how religion …show more content…

The first story The World on the Turtle’s Back is about the Iroquois beliefs on the creation of the earth and showed that during this time most literature was passed on orally. The next story Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God shows how religion shifted from the native American beliefs to the largely puritan beliefs of the early colonial times and that even though the Sermon may have been spoken it was also written down so that everyone could read it. Lastly we have the Essay Self-Reliance by Ralph waldo Emerson. His essay focuses on the individual and changes from most literature being religious in some way to the importance of people having transcendental thought and thinking for themselves rather than a

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The most important feature of a sermon is the application of a scripture text to the personal experience of the listener. Especially this last part is what reduced many of Edwards’s listeners to tears. In Edwards’s sermon the scripture text is “Their foot shall slide in due time”. This meant that eventually, all sinners would be punished by God, which could be at any time. Edwards speaks of a wrathfull God, a God who by Puritan standards is considered forgiving for not letting all of humanity fall into the deepest pits of hell.

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When push comes to shove, everyone makes a tough decision, but in the end the decision was either out of fear to protect themselves, or a strategy to gain a designated amount of authority. In today 's society, many of the decisions people make lead to riots in the streets and people getting hurt. Similarly, the Ferguson riot in Missouri years ago, where many civilians were injured because of decisions made by everyone involved. Whether it turned violent because they wanted to prove something or because they feared the police when they showed up. In the story, The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller, the characters also illustrate the fact that it is human nature to defend oneself, to strive to survive despite the harm such actions can cause to

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On a bright Sunday morning, accompanied by her mother and grandmother, a young girl lounges in the pew of a church when a missal catches her eye, and she begins to flip through the pages revealing the compilation of the religious texts. As this young girl grows older and presumably pursues a higher education, she will begin studying texts of the same complexity of those contained in the missal, which will challenge traditional beliefs and contrast religious literature with literature that happens to contain religious themes. When analyzing these pieces of work, the girl will propose many questions that readers prior may have considered at an earlier time. In American literature, specifically through the examples of "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman and Lorraine Hansberry 's A Raisin the Sun, religion, once thought of as a unification of all people, paradoxically acts as a source of the development of an identity, rebellion from a community, and a factor of discrimination.

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