Central Theme and Literary Devices

Here Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House, July 10, 1966 by Anne Bradstreet

Much of the critical debate about Bradstreet centers on her allegiance to Puritanism. Did her faith and her personal response to life conflict? If so, did such a conflict indicate that she rebelled against her faith and God? Or was she being a typical Puritan, expressing her doubts as Puritans were encouraged to do in order ultimately—and designedly—to exemplify faith at work in everyday life? Ann Stanford and Adrienne Rich take the first position, arguing that Bradstreet's impulse to write did not derive from Puritan dogma but from personal intention (Mehler, 15).

On the other hand, Jeffrey Hammond maintains that modern readers often mistakenly see Bradstreet as a conflicted individualist because of modern conceptions of authorship and that such a reading isolates her from the context in which she wrote. That she expresses doubt in her poems, Hammond asserts, does not make her an anomaly in her times but rather quite typical (Mehler, 16).

Puritan writers are acutely aware of a conflict that typifies all human life after the Garden of Eden. The flesh and the spirit, as White argues, are often at war, and it is necessary finally to detach from those things to which one is most attached in this world. Certainly, Bradstreet was attached to her home of twenty years, where she had raised eight children, watched her first grandchild die, and was now helping to raise her second grandchild. To detach from these deeply felt associations was, as the poem makes clear, very difficult.

In this poem, as in so many of the later poems, as disasters struck, Bradstreet had to struggle to accept harsh realities. Only the hope of a heavenly permanent home and trust in God made it possible to accept God's will and withdraw from her most beloved worldly associations (Mehler, 17). In selecting such difficult moments about which to write, she intends to teach her readers the redemptive possibilities of suffering. The ultimate goal of a Puritan was to live a redeemed life, and the ultimate goal of a Puritan writer extended beyond personal expression to confirm the faithfulness of God. Jeannine Hensley believes that Bradstreet had the same intention in her poems as she outlined to her children in her letter to them: “I have not studied in this you read to show my skill, but to declare the truth, not to set forth myself, but the glory of God.” (Mehler, 18)

The Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson from the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson

This brief "autobiography" is not a self-promotion, an expose, or a book designed for the purpose of keeping the reader turning the pages in suspense. In fact, it has very little personal information about Jefferson or his life outside of the political happenings in which he was involved concerning the American and French revolutions (Jefferson, 20).

Certainly, there is no mention of his black lover, Sally Hemings, and for that matter ...