Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God Analysis

“Believing in predestination, they explained that all human beings were pledged by the covenant of works to adhere to the divine law and were justly condemned for failure to adhere to it.” (The Puritan Beliefs). In other words, they had to live strictly by the divine laws through everything, or they would have to face many different consequences. The involvement of religion greatly affected the writing styles all throughout the country. Some literature, including; the sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Jonathan Edwards, do not go any deeper than religion. While others, for example; the historical narrative Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford, has religion woven throughout the entire story. On the other hand, especially; the

The believed that the devil would come to people and force them to defy God. This idea lead to hysteria that came with the outbreak of witch trials. Fear of the devil helped to create not just the events in towns, but also the writing style of this time period. “O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God” (Edwards 103). Edwards is describing how God holds sinners over the fire pit of hell. He is using description and the reader’s fear of the devil to persuade his readers to no longer sin and ask her God’s forgiveness. Many writers from this time period used this technique in their writing so they could hopefully eliminate sinning. Eventually this writing style caught on, making persuasion based on fear of the devil, one of the main writing

Anne Bradstreet was one of the people to defy the law. Most of her poems were about personal feelings and events. For a few of her poems she was able to argue that it contained religion and God. On the other hand, most of her poems obviously was more than religion. “I am obnoxious to each carping tongue/ Who says my hand a needle better fits./ A Poet’s Pen all scorn I should thus wrong,/ For such despite they cast on female wits.” (Bradstreet 25-28). Bradstreet is talking about how women are capable of being writers too. She is describing how the critics only see the fact that Anne Bradstreet is a women. The critics imagine women with a sewing needle, rather than a pen. During this time period, women were not writers, which makes Bradstreet’s writing defies the rules on two aspects. One with her writing themes and the other with the fact that she is a women. Anne Bradstreet may have been from the puritan time period, but her writing style fits the outline of the romantic period since she speaks more about emotions. Bradstreet’s poems helped to transition writing from puritan to romantic thanks to her refusing to follow tradition by writing about her