Hope Leslie, The Perfect Storm, and Dinosaur in a Haystack

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Hope Leslie, The Perfect Storm, and Dinosaur in a Haystack

The three books, Hope Leslie, by Catharine Maria Sedgwick, The Perfect Storm, by Sebastian Junger, and Dinosaur in a Haystack, by Stephen Jay Gould, each persuade the reader to see a one sided story. The reader believes each author and allows himself to be persuaded for two reasons. One reason is he has confidence in the writer because he has not researched the 16th century, nor ever delved into the scientific world of evolution, nor investigated the perfect storm that sunk the Andrea Gail. Sedgwick did research the sixteenth century in order to write her novel about the puritans and Indians. Gould is an accredited scientist and has researched the scientific theory of evolution. Junger actually interviewed the family and friends of the real people that died on the Andrea Gail, and investigated the weather conditions to write his novel. On the other hand, The readers that do know about the 16th century, or evolution, or the storm can agree with or dispute the author or dispute him or her.

In Hope Leslie, Sedgwick tells a fictional story about a puritan family's tragic separation caused by an Indian family during the historic colonization of the New World. She presents her story line from the puritan's point of view. Sedgwick has one of her puritan characters say, "I had rather meet a legion of Frenchmen than a company of these savages. They are a kind of beast we don’t comprehend-out of the range of God’s creatures-neither angel [or] man..."(42). The Indians are made out to be savages and evil beasts. The uninformed reader that reads Catherine Sedgwick's novel is convinced that this lie true and becomes angry towards the Indians. He is overcome by Sedgwick's persuasiveness and completely agrees with her that the Indians were savages and had no right to murder the Fletchers. In reality, both sides are equally cruel to each other. The Indians kill and separate the puritan Fletcher family only because members of their tribe and family had been killed and separated from the rest of the tribe. An informed reader knows about the tragedies that both the Indians and puritans endured during this time. He can read Sedgwick's novel and agree with her, or dispute her. Obviously, she has researched the sixteenth century and knows both sides of the story. However, Sedgwick only tells the reader about both families' tragedies in such a way that it seems justified for the puritans to have killed the Indian family, but bloodthirsty for the Indians to have killed the

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