Essay on Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

On page 9 of the text, Dillard says, “Every live thing is a survivor on a kind of extended emergency bivouac. But at the same time we are also created” (9). How does this sentence make you feel?

heart when it comes to important topics. She emphasizes the values of family, God and

That one can find meaning, contentment, and inspiration in life. No matter how long a person has struggled with pain and problems, growth and improvement are possible.

To consider: What Characters does she use to represent these themes? How do they contribute to the conflict of humanity and society in the novel?

The English had two main colonies in the new world, Jamestown and Plymouth. The first colony was Jamestown, established in Virginia in 1607. Jamestown was settled by Captain John Smith, and was named after King James I. Tobacco was the main export of Jamestown, and became the basis of the Jamestown economy, sending more than 50,000 lbs of the plan back to Europe by 1618 (textbook 46). Jamestown had a very rocky start, many colonists dying in the first few years of the settlement, and the settlers had many problems with natives. Shortly after the arrival of English colonists the Natives attacked them, and were finally forced back by a canon from the English. A very uneasy truce was finally settled between the natives, called the Powhatans,

The second portion asks if he is able but not willing. This would make him malevolent. God is supposed to be omnimalevolent, all loving and all good. A God who is able to stop all evil but doesn’t is clearly not loving then, correct? Christians would respond that this apparent ignorance from God is actually human sin and not God turning his back on us.

I have been asked hundreds of times in my life why God allows tragedy and suffering. I have to confess that I really do not know the answer totally, even to my own satisfaction. I have to accept, by faith, that God is sovereign, and He’s a God of love and mercy and compassion in the midst of suffering. The Bible says that God is not the author of evil. It speaks of evil as a “mystery.” In 2 Thessalonians 2:7 it talks about the mystery of iniquity. The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah said, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” He asked that question, “Who can understand it?” And that’s one reason we each need God in our lives.

Dillard states, “ Is this what we live for? Is the final beauty: the color of any skiing in any light, and living, human eyes? Would you be a writer, you can’t be anything else?” The nature of a writer is that of like the burning moth, for the beauty of it is not seen until the writer has finished his story like that of the moth whose beauty is not seen until the fire has ignited its body and all that is left is its

From this quote, we could observe Huck’s obvious refusal to accept faith, and we could further infer his skepticism that he has towards religion. He rejects both sprites and prayers when they fail to produce the results they want. In the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain satirizes religion and its aspects of hypocrisy, and it almost seems like Twain is evoking his own thoughts on religion simply by reflecting his own thoughts through Huckleberry. Twain seems to have struggled with many aspects of religion, often satirizing it through his characters. Twain was a satirist, but satire can only be effective when it contains some truth.

An author writes to convey a message to their readers. Genres help convey that message and help authors manipulate the way a reader perceives the text they are reading. Journals for example, like “From Of Plymouth plantation” show the reader what the thoughts of the author were at the time of the writing; letters are written with a sense of urgency and a desire for something. The letter written to King Ferdinand and Queen Elizabeth by Christopher Columbus shows the reader how desperate Christopher Columbus is to be freed. Authors who use poems to convey their message are allowed a greater quantity of freedom over the aforementioned types of texts. The use of repetition allows a poet to control the pace at which the reader proceeds in the poem; whether that is slow and utilizes a lot of repetition to convey a sense of intrigue or faster with no repetition so the reader gets more and more excited and their attention is grasped. Poets also use rhyme scheme to increase the pace or rhythm of the poem.

“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.” (Twain, ix) Mark Twain opens his book with a personal notice, abstract from the storyline, to discourage the reader from looking for depth in his words. This severe yet humorous personal caution is written as such almost to dissuade his readers from having any high expectations. The language in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is completely “American” beyond the need for perfect grammar. “Mark Twain’s novel, of course, is widely considered to be a definitively American literary text.” (Robert Jackson,

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves”, left the mouth of the once prominent advocate for the abolishment of slavery, former president of the United States, and revolution pioneer, Abraham Lincoln, in his quest for the independence of slaves throughout the nation. Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn expresses the American experience and captures the same idea of acquiring freedom, both physical and mental escape, through the characters Huckleberry Finn and Jim, who both physically escape their dangerous and threatening living arrangements, and the raft that aides Huckleberry and Jim in their quest and exploration of themselves and a new life. The concept of the “American

Civil War which brought end to traveling on the river. After a failed attempt at

However much of her prose focuses on gaining her will from God not by herself. Living in a society where the values from God are completely different was interesting on how she would be able to still apply the values that she has learned from her childhood. She believes that everything that happens to

John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress is an allegorical story about the Christian religion. It allegorizes the journey of a Christian into "the Celestial City, which represents heaven. Although Pilgrim's Progress may seem simple and straightforward, there are many deeper meanings throughout the whole story. Bunyan uses the names of his characters to signify whom the character represents in the story, for example, the character Hopeful represents hopefulness, Help represents people who are willing to help others in need of assistance, Faithful represents people who are faithful to whatever they are associated with, and the main character, Christian, represents all young