The Legacy of Puritans

[tealin]

Mr Lovecraft reminds me of the thought Mr Schama placed in my head: that I need to study the Puritans more in order to better understand the U.S.

' ... the product of generations of pathetic Puritanism; kindly, conscientious, and sometimes gentle and amiable, yet always narrow, intolerant, custom-ridden, and lacking in perspective.'

~ From The Plague-Daemon

Unfortunately most Americans' familiarity with their Calvinist founders stops at the Grade 2 Thanksgiving Feast reenactment. Puritans ... they were the ones with the buckled hats and big white collars, right? You mean Pilgrims. They landed at Mayflower and had Thanksgiving and nine months later America was born. The end.

Ohhh, historical ignorance.

I promise there will be drawings tomorrow.

Comments

[salamandersoup.livejournal.com]

"They landed at Mayflower and had Thanksgiving and nine months later America was born." Oh, Tealin. I love you. x3

[disneyboy.livejournal.com]

Yeah...those big sticks-in-the-mud! So unreasonable, close-minded and old-fashioned - a few murderous reanimated corpses escape and and a few dozen people get killed and/or eaten, and they completely blow it out of proportion! :)

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Actually, that is a description of a doctor at the university who worked tirelssly during a typhoid epidemic ... but your comment is funnier.

[disneyboy.livejournal.com]

Oh right- duh! I even read that part. You were right - that stuff is pretty intense and well written! (although I could see some people possibly taking some offense from his description of the African-American boxer...eek.) I just had to chuckle at the cyclical nature of the stories: "Well, people just didn't understand what we were trying to do, but we figured this time, we'd get it right...oh, darn! THAT didn't go well... And apparently some people got killed, eaten - some kids disappeared - such a strange coincidence! (they seem so completely removed from the consequences of their actions!) And the zombie had to be put down/institutionalized/burned/etc. - just awful! We'll never try anything THAT collossally stupid or irresponsible again...KIDDING!" It's kind of like a series of Simpsons episodes, where they are vaguely aware that stuff happened previously, but not really! And they're mocking these repressed Puritans, including the doctor who they never acknowledge might have been right about their wacky schemes! It could make a great sitcom - heyyyy - you could make some quick "webisodes" based on them!

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

OK, I never made the connection between the missing kid and the boxer zombie ... You are not allowed to call yourself stupid in my presence ever again.

It's the cyclical nature of the stories (aside from the last one) that made me make the above sequence. Amusingly horrific. Or horrifically amusing.

Yes, Mr Lovecraft was an unabashed racist and xenophobe. Rather a shame. But he had quite an imagination.

[azvolrien.livejournal.com]

Oh, those wacky Puritans.

I've always thought the Pilgrims were Puritans. Were they? I know an abysmal amount of US history.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Yes, the Pilgrims were Puritans. In the US educational system, which I have the incomparable honour of having been processed through, you never really find out who the Puritans were, as a group, or as a political entity, or their history in England (which would explain why they came over) or what they believed in, which really had a lot of influence on the character of the nation and is still apparent even to this day. Most Americans know them only as the Pilgrims, though – they don't even know why they were called 'pilgrims' (as in someone who journeys somewhere for a religious purpose) and the ignorance as to who they actually were, as opposed to their symbolic status the American mythos, does everyone a disservice by removing a vital key in the understanding of the course of history.

I think that was a run-on sentence.

I'm sure Oliver Cromwell would have loved being called 'wacky' as well. ;)

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

... their symbolic status IN the American mythos ... (sorry)

[azvolrien.livejournal.com]

*feels less ignorant now* Whenever I hear about the Pilgrims, I always think about Eddie Izzard's spiel on them ("Yes, there's more of us coming, but we all keep out promises.").

Well, the Cerne Abbas giant was quite possibly somebody making fun of Cromwell, rather than an ancient fertility symbol. There isn't any mention of it in the local abbey's records before Ollie.

[azvolrien.livejournal.com]

*our promises.

[ardys-the-ghoul.livejournal.com]

Most of my knowledge of the Puritans comes from too much Nathaniel Hawthorne. </English Major