A Little Commonwealth Essay

Puritanism was a major belief during the 1500s-1700s, Puritans believed that you are required to devote your whole life to the Lord. In order to be a Puritan you had to glorify God by attending church, report sinners, and show God’s grace through your own actions. In

Extreme paranoia continued to grow meaning that no one was safe from being watched by their neighbors. The Puritan lifestyle revolved around a constant presence within the church for all family members. This meant that everyone would oblige to the rules of the priests and ministers around town and would present themselves as an active member of the church communities. Any activities outside of this lifestyle were heavily frowned upon and regularly

Puritans and reformers of seventeenth century England have been given a bad name for their part in history. This is primarily because they were working against the grain and trying to create change in world that saw change as a threat. The time period was turbulent and there was bound to be resistance in a world that was dominated by Catholics and those that had reformed to abide by their King’s law. The puritans of the time were considered extreme and rubbed people the wrong way because they wanted a world that abided by their morals and ethical codes. For this, they took the blame for the misery that many suffered during this age, but as we see in Fire from Heaven, this is not a fair assessment. The Puritans of this time wanted to improve the lives of the people and society as a whole through morality and purity.

Puritans live in a life with a life of rules. They live by religious beliefs and literature purposes. The puritans believed in God being all powerful, Bible is God’s true law, success is a sign of improvement, and how education was written to glorify God and for education only not for entertainment.

When looking into the history of the puritans one can find many things, however while reading “City Upon a Hill” and “The Divine Right to Occupy the land” one may then come up with the idea of the puritans being selfish.

inability to find a balance between freedom and order. The Puritan’s society put a higher value on order rather than freedom, and had very strict rules to enforce that order which forbid most everything excluding church and work. Their society as a whole attempted to have strong order, particularly in a religious sense, and thus didn’t allow individuals to have personal freedoms such as things as mundane as dancing. This is also connected to the fact that they

The pressure and consequences of puritan lifestyle is shown in “their creed forbade anything resembling a theater , vain enjoyment, They did not celebrate christmas, or holidays from work meant only that they must concentrate even more upon prayer”. This quote shows how the puritans society suppresses individuality. To the extent that most human desires were evil , even salem foulk believed that the virgin forest was the devils last preserve. What makes this puritan lifestyle such a burden was the predilection . ”Minding others people's business was time honored among the people of salom”. This created the suspicions that would lead to the trials .

In conjunction, the literature on black families during slavery provides a wealth of data on the way in which consanguine kin assisted each other with child rearing, in life crisis events such as birth and death, in work groups, in efforts to obtain freedom, and so on. Relationships within these groups were governed by principles and values stemming from their African background. Respect for elders and mutual cooperation among kinsmen are noted in all discussions of black families during slavery. Also, the willingness to assume responsibility for relatives and children beyond the conjugal family and

Slaves weren't treated like people, they were treated more like property. In document 2 it is said that they would be sold at auctions and their families were often torn apart from different slaveowners buying them. This was often the case for many enslaved people. This is where extended families became important. If a slave's mother was sent somewhere else to work, her "extended family" (like her sister, grandmother, or friends) would take care of her children for her.

It is in one’s moral beliefs that children are the way to a better future. It is instilled in the modern era to the minds of the human race that treating a child a certain way, will lead them to become a certain person. For instance, they will one day become society’s doctors, educators, and politicians, respectable men and women. Yet, in Puritan New England the conditions to raising children to being such was much more intense from modern day’s way of teaching and living. The life for children in Puritan New England was tough and tenacious, because of its strict beliefs in religion, the lack of individualism and expression permitted to the children, and the dire consequences leading to being abused, or at times, being punishable by death.

The Puritans put great importance on the family. Most of the Puritans were farming families who owned a small plot of land to plant and harvest. Women helped in the fields, and men had some sort of profession such as a hunter, miller, or minister. A typical Puritan family included the husband and wife, along with three or four children. However, during the lives of the parents, eight to twelve children would usually be born into the family.

Family was very important in this time, before blacks became “free”, many were separated from

In their society the Puritans based their lives, beliefs, and communities on what they deemed as God's law and true word, the bible (Barger). Reading the bible was expected for the members of society, this included women and children, which was often unheard of (Foner 66) at that time. With their lives being restricted to the word of the bible this left very little leeway for anything other than what was deemed acceptable, and this rigid way of life was another straw that led to the eventual troubles and fervor that took over.

Over the years, people broadcast the Puritans as a group of people who were extremely legalistic and against anything that would be considered fun in the modern world. This incorrect broadcast of the Puritans has led to many misconceptions about how they lived when they came to the New World and settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Puritans were not legalistic, but rather sought to please God by creating a society that focused on fulfilling their calling through the institutions of family, work, education, and government in a positive environment. This led to a fruitful society when it followed in its original intentions.

In order to compare the realities of Puritan life with M. Night Shyamalan’s theatrical interpretation, The Village, it is important to understand who Puritans were and what kinds of beliefs they had. Puritans, different from Pilgrims, attempted to “purify” the Church of England in the seventeenth century as they felt it had been insufficiently reformed. Their idea of reformation consisted of a Calvinistic approach to society; believing in the absolute sovereignty of God, absolute dependence on divine grace for salvation, and the importance of personal religious experience. This meant that not only did they have to cleanse the church of traditional Roman Catholic practices, but also develop a new societal structure that reflected their new