Skip to main content

Pondering the Puritans With Miller and Demos: The Platypus Reads Part CCXI

Reading Arthur Miller's The Crucible for the first time has helped to fill in one of those lamentable holes in my high school reading experience.  Also pushed off till adulthood was Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.  I'm catching up.  What can I say?

Well, what I can say is that the historian in me itches every time I seem see the Puritans deliberately demonized to serve their descendants various pathologies: religious, political, psychological, or otherwise.  Now don't get me wrong: I enjoy Hawthorne and Miller and will be re-reading their masterfully crafted works many times over (D.V.).  Still, as a historian and former resident of Olde New England, there's a part of me that can't stand to see history brutalized to serve an agenda.

Satisfying that rather aggrieved part that insists on its wie es eigentlich gewesen now seems the order of the day.  Filling that role then is John Demos' The Unredeemed Captive.  I'm still in the middle of it, but what I like so far is the broad view of the Puritans Demos takes: that they are but one group among many negotiating the chaos caused by European expansion and exploration in the wake of the "Renaissance" and Reformation(s).  They are neither (so far) the center of his story nor the villains.  In fact no one seems to be particularly the center or the villains.  Individual acts of brutality or humanity are recorded with perhaps a shadow of the frown of condemnation or the nod of approval, but final verdicts are left up to the reader.  Demos may suggest, but he seems to understand that his audience is mature enough to make their own decisions where necessary (where necessary  How often do we sit enthroned like God to render the last judgement on our "poor benighted ancestors"?  What would we do if we suddenly found our situations reversed and the dead were judging us!).

That's where things stand at the moment.  I'll let you know more as my thoughts coalesce.  In the meantime, remember: the Platypus speaks Truth.    

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Platypus Reads Part XXVII

Thoughts after reading the "Iliad" to prepare a Greece unit for my students: -Hector is a jerk until he's dead. He even advocates the exposure of Achaean corpses and then has the cheek to turn around and ask Achilles to spare his. He rudely ignores Polydamas' prophecies and fights outside the gate to save his pride knowing full well what it will cost his family and city. After he's dead, he becomes a martyr for the cause. -Agamemnon has several moments of true leadership to balance out his pettiness. In this way, he's a haunting foil to Achilles: the two men are more alike than they want to acknowledge. -We see that Achilles is the better man at the funeral games of Patroclos. His lordliness, tact, and generosity there give us a window into Achilles before his fight with Agamemnon and the death of Patroclos consumed him. -Nestor is a boring, rambling, old man who's better days are far behind him, and yet every Achaean treats him with the upmo...

California's Gods: Strange Platypus(es)

We've noticed lately a strange Californian dialectical twist: there, freeways take the definite article.  In other parts of the country one speaks of I 91 or 45 North.  In California, there's The 5, The 405, The 10.  Each of these freeways has its own quirks, a personality of sorts.  They aren't just stretches of pavement but presences, creatures that necessitate the definite article by their very individuality and uniqueness.  They are the angry gods to be worked, placated, feared, for without them life in California as we know it would cease.  Perhaps that's fitting for a land whose cities are named for saints and angels.  Mary may preside over the new pueblo of our lady of the angels, but the freeways slither like gigantic serpents through the waste places, malevolent spirits not yet trampled under foot.

Seeing Beowulf Through Tolkien: The Platypus Reads Part CXCIX

After spending a few weeks wrestling with Tolkien's interpretation of Beowulf , I found myself sitting down and reading Seamus Heaney's translation of the text during a spare moment.  I came to the place where Beowulf presents Hrothgar with the hilt of the ancient sword that slew Grendel's mother.  Hrothgar looks down at the hilt with its ancient runes and carvings depicting the war between the giants and God and meditates on the fortunes of men.  In a flash of insight, I thought: this is the whole poem! Let me explain.  Tolkien believed that the genuine contribution of the Northern peoples to European culture was the theory of courage.  The Northern heroes, at their best, were men who fought for order against chaos -a battle they knew they were doomed to lose.  If they were true heroes, their souls would join the gods and aid them in the final battle against darkness and its monsters and again go down fighting, spitting in the face of the meaninglessness...