A shining city on a hill and christian charity

Throughout the book the Wordy Shipmates we get reminded that Winthrop's idea of America, is that it will be a shining city upon a hill.  Winthrop believes that America will one day be this perfect place where everybody gives to one another and everybody is empathetic to one another.  This comes from his idea of christian charity, where the idea is that everyone gives back to one another and people give and give and give and don't really think of themselves at all.  That the community is one body and everyone helps each other all the time.  But when you look at America today, yes there are instances where people help one another and people care of and help one another and America seems like a great place to be, but there are other instances where America isn't exactly the shining city on a hill.  Vowell uses her sarcasm once again in this quote "As I write this, the united states of America is still a city on a hill; and it's still shining- because we never turn off the lights in our torture prisons." (pg.72 Vowell) 

But there is also this idea of christian charity that Winthrop brings to us. Google's definition of christian charity is "In christian theology charity, or love, means an unlimited kindness toward all others."  But obviously as Vowell explains to us,  Winthrop is not exactly a great model of this.  But Winthrop has a problem with deputy governor Dudleys wainscoting on his house and saying that it is too ostentatious for his house.  It seems that "rejoicing together"(pg.106 Vowell) Which is apart of christian charity, is too hard for Winthrop to handle and don't we wonder why America isn't the shining city on hill that he dreamed of, that president Reagan brought up once again many years in the future?

Puritans affect on American Society

There were a lot of examples from the book that showed the affect the puritans had on American society.  The first I would like to talk about is the affect that the puritans had on the reasons that America goes to war. When Vowell talks about the seal that Winthrops fleet brought over when they came from England.  The seal that pictured an Indian holding a bow and arrow and saying "Come over and help us."  Then she goes on to talk about how behind that saying is the underlying statement of, "We are going to help you whether you like it or not." Then she talks about all of the different wars that we have started that have just been behind the statement, of "we are going to help you whether you want it or not" and that is what we have based our reasons for starting war in America.  Such as when Vowell discusses our reasons for beginning our war with Vietnam.  Which our reason for doing so was if we don't help them there will be a communist take over.  Then Vowell also discusses our reason for beginning the war in Iraq.  Our reason was to disarm them and free their people and the save the rest of the world from impending danger.  All of the reasons for starting each of these wars can be traced back to the saying, "We are going to help you whether want it,like it, or not." Which can be originally traced back to the puritans.

                   But this is only one of the ways that Vowell discusses the affect that the Puritans had on American society.  But we also took in something good from which the puritans brought which came from this quote of Winthrops' "We must delight in each other, make other's conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body.  Now that quote of Winthrops' that Vowell used spoke of empathy, sympathy, and sacrifice.  It seems like in times of hard ship even though a group of people or one person can try and hurt Americans as a community, Americans always can come together and community members really become members of the same body.  Vowell gives the example of her experiences during 911, but I can think of other moments where this puritan quote has applied itself into american society.  I can even think of local experiences.  During Hurricane Irene almost all members of the community were out after the flood helping one another and commiting selfless acts that bettered the community as a whole, also there was Hurricane Sandy, people donated things and even went to the places that were affected to help clean up.  The Boston marathon, people thought of the community as one and helped one another and volunteers and random people on the street were helping runners and people that had been physically affected.  These are just some examples and there are so many more.  These are just some of the ways that Puritan thinking affected the American Society.

Sarah Vowells writing style

Sarah Vowells' writing style is much different compared to any other authors that I have read.  I feel like the writing style made the book a little bit harder to understand during some parts, because of her different examples that she used to explain her understanding.  The reason I feel that her examples made it harder to understand what she was saying was because, if you don't understand her examples it makes it harder to understand the point she is trying getting across.  Such as when she talks about things that I may have never heard of and I haven't learned about yet, I would just kind of get confused, like there was some sort of inside joke that I was missing.  But on the other hand some examples that she gave actually helped my understanding of the historical events that she was talking about.  It seemed at some points I really could not understand what she was talking about and other points it made a lot of sense to me and the examples helped.  I guess that part of her writing style could be all open to perspective.  I really liked her sarcasm though.  I thought it gave the book a little bit of humor and a different feel when some parts just seemed very dry. I also thought that the story would shift around a lot and it was kind of hard to stay focused on one topic for very long because of all the different examples that she used  throughout the book.  This book had a very different feel to it because she didn't really have a set story line.  I really liked how it almost felt like she was having a conversation with you and it was almost just like whatever popped into her head she wrote down.  It  felt like it gave the book a genuine quality.  It didn't seem like she edited it a bunch of times to make it sound like an actually story, it almost seemed raw and uncut.  I really liked that about her writing style.  Even though her writing style was different compared to other authors it was still well written.