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Summary Of Paul Revere's Ride

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On the Historical Integrity of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride” In history, many feats are told time and time again and become more grandeur with each utterance, to the point where nearly all original meaning is long lost. As Doctor Manhattan said it in Watchmen, “The illusion vanishes, almost before it has registered” (Gibbons and Moore 26). For example, with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, “Paul Revere’s Ride,” this certainly is the case. To suggest that the aforementioned poem is a work of historical non-fiction is a suggestion that can be simply and eloquently discredited using real documents, the face value of the piece, and simple logic. To begin, Longfellow’s poem simply is not a credible source of historical information, as there are real letters from the night of Paul Revere’s ride that contain the true sequence of events. In a letter to Jeremy Belknap; for instance, Paul Revere summarizes his actions over the course of the night. In reality, “Paul Revere’s ride” was slower paced and far more suspenseful. The poem makes no mention of the British officers that threaten to “blow Revere’s brains out” (Gilder Lehrman). In the letter, there are many more comrades along on the journey, whereas the poem suggest that Revere was a lone rider, storming into each town to alert the people at full gallop. As a result, it is ridiculous to even pose the question of the historical integrity of Longfellow’s poem when the first relevant source of information

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