Laura A Lewis’s Hall of Mirrors attempts to explain the social hierarchy of early New Spain society and argues that through sanctioned and unsanctioned domains that dominate every day life; consequently, society’s layer are intertwined and often conflict and influence each other in New Spain society. The term sanctioned domain refers to rules of society that were handed down and enforced from the Spanish government and distributed through the lower rungs of society(5). The term unsanctioned domain pertains to acts that were considered to go against Spanish moral and religious beliefs. Unsanctioned acts consisted of witchcraft which could be broken down into dealings with the devil, and use of “black Magic”(6). Sanctioned and unsanctioned domains are the threads that interlocked all layers of new early Spain society.…
In the sermon, “Sinners In The Hands of An Angry God,” Jonathan Edwards utilizes imagery as one of the rhetorical devices in order to scare his audience back to the pious ways of the first generation Puritans. Edwards’ vivid descriptions of hell and eternal torment are examples of the emotional appeal pathos. He uses figurative language including metaphors, similes, and personification to illustrate this unfortunate scenario in the minds of his listeners. For example, Edwards’ states, “The devil is waiting for them, hell is gaping for them, the flames gather and flash about them, and would fain lay hold on them, and swallow them up…” (8-10). In this example the audience can clearly imagine the horrors of hell, which encourages them to look to God for salvation, thus also making use of logos as the audience rationalizes and considers the situation. Hell is described as a “world of misery, that lake of burning brimstone…” (19-10), among many other things. The speaker/writer’s depictions of hell work to keep the audience members on their toes so they remember what they are doomed for if they dare to stray further from the Church or anger God even more than they have already done so. The rich imagery in this sermon is significant to the uniqueness of the piece because Edwards’ uses this literary device to scare the audience into compliance, and it serves as a main support for the author’s overall purpose, which is to get people to solidify ties to the…
In the time period of the Inquisition, a great deal of restriction was imposed on its subjects. The Inquisition was established during a time in which many people were emigrating – for various different reasons – to European and South American countries, bringing their values and cultures with them. This naturally brought about a multitude of conflicts between existing citizens and immigrants. Some pose the argument that due to this more prevalent blend of cultures across the world, the Inquisition led to more legal action and punishments for – what some argue to be – trivial and petty crimes, such as witchcraft and sodomy. However, we, as readers, understand these cases in different manners, based on the sources that we derive information…
This Chapter really stuck out to me; by reading I found a lot connection. “In Giving I Connect with Others,” the title speaks for itself, but to elaborate and go in-depth, the writer Isabel Allende had a 28-year old daughter who was very sick, went in a coma and later past in 1992. Losing her daughter in her very arms was difficult for her. While in her process of grief she reflect over her life, she came to the understanding that she was still the same person she had been 50 years ago. She still had the zeal for life, falls in love easily, craves justice, and ferociously independent.…
Rulfo takes issue with how the church seizes control of the townsfolk through the use of fear. Catholics in this era did not necessarily believe the word of God out of faith, but because they feared the doctrine of damnation. However, the villagers are partially justified in thinking this way since the people who do not receive last rites also fail to receive peace after death. Fear is a very powerful emotion and the amygdala unfortunately tends to ignore critical thinking when it is triggered. However, The tragedy of this damnation motivation is that the Bible is more than just law. In fact, the law aspect of the Bible exists only to point in the direction of christ and his prepaid sacrifice for us. If Father Renteria would only read to his…
In the sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Jonathan Edwards, with a contemptuous attitude, attempts to provoke a religious revival in the Puritan communities of colonial America using the very powerful motivator of fear. He instills, very literally, the fear of God within the hearts of unconverted people within the church. Edwards renders his audience emotionally unstable with the terrifying body of his sermon, it allows his conclusion of salvation to be the solution of the entire unconverted congregation.…
Elie Wiesel could be described as your normal, average boy who loved his family, friends, and God. All this changed when WW2 began. Wiesel’s whole life got turned upside down and changed. Wiesel, along with his father, got sent to a concentration camp. In that camp they had lost everything, their personal possessions, their family, and even their will to live. In Night, Elie Wiesel uses diction, imagery, and tone to illustrate the loss of humanity during the holocaust. Loss of humanity was a huge theme during the holocaust because of all the things they had lost and the way the Naziz did this.…
Hooper’s congregation possess too much pride and cannot accept that every human is flawed. Suddenly, the minister dons a veil upon his face with no explanation, and although he wears a simple piece of fabric, the townspeople begin to gossip about and avoid him. “But that piece of crape, to their imagination, seemed to hang down before his heart, the symbol of a fearful secret between him and them” (Hawthorne 6). They cannot accept Mr. Hooper’s veil because he has the bravery to publicly display his own immorality when his duty as a minister is to represent a holy person free of sin. As a role model of society, a minister guides the lives of others. If a person of God can have flaws, then the average person can most definitely be flawed as well, and a Puritan cannot sin if they want to go to Heaven. Therefore, admitting that all humans have flaws would mean their straight and narrow Puritan lifestyle holds no significance. Just as Mr. Hooper’s congregation cannot admit their own flaws, The characters in Poe’s story have the inability to accept that they can fall victim to death and disease. In The Masque of the Red Death, Prince Prospero and his revelers have an excessive amount of pride, which leads to them believing that they can cheat out death. They lock themselves within a castellated abbey, where “There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was beauty,…
In “Night”, Elie Wiesel uses diction in numerous ways in order to form an audience to connect with his contextual elements in his brief story, specifically when expressing his interpretations of the men, such as Idek, who worked to run the concentration camps. This made the text undemanding to appreciate for the audience. He also incorporated diction throughout the time of lynching men and adolescents, and occasionally using colloquialism, throughout the excerpt. For instance, towards the end of the text, Wiesel refers to the men who are about to go the way of all flesh into the great divide as “dried-up bodies who had forgotten the bitter taste of tears”, by using formal diction (Wiesel 572). This form of writing allows the audience to better grasp the intensity of the regime and how it has formed a severe emotional impact that has morphed the habitual emotions of the prisoners. An additional example of this is when…
As soon as I walked into the church, I could feel how tense the room already was. My two children grabbed my hands, fearfully, as we walked into the room filled with emotion. We searched for a place to sit. Pastor Edwards had already started his sermon, so we sat in the back pews. He immediately began pointing out our iniquities and used very vivid metaphors that clearly shown God’s wrath towards the congregation. When Pastor Edwards yelled, “You have offended Him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but His hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment,” it was as if he aimed this directly at me (48).…
Harwood’s ‘Home of Mercy’ focuses on the ideas of oppression, youth and punishment by using an abundance of literary and poetic techniques. All of the above highlight the strict and rigorous nature of the Catholic Church, thus portraying Catholicism in a negative manner.…
Giovanni Bocaccio, an Italian author of the fourteenth century, is most noted for writing the Decameron, a series of 100 stories that are structured in a frame narrative. Each of these one hundred novellas presents a particular theme ranging from love, death, fortune, wit, sex and of course, religion. The action is taking place in Florence during the Black Death that struck the city in 1348. These were the times when religion was major part of everyday life in Medieval Europe. Through the Decameron, the reader is exposed to a variety of stories discussing the Christianity and saints. There are two particular stories that represent the most interest to me as a reader, are the first and last tales of the book. Throughout his book Boccaccio goes from negative to positive view of saints. On one hand, there is the Ciappelletto described as the worst men who ever lived, but who became a saint after death (day 1, story 1). And, on the other hand, there is Griselda, the women of great virtues, who can be called a saint in life (day X, story X).…
In the introduction of this chapter, we learn that on November 28th, 1595 Gaspar de Peralta, a judge for the Royal Audiencia of Charcas, answered a call from his next-door neighbor’s house. Once he entered the house, he found a domestic horror scene. Having entered the bedroom, Peralta found his chief scribe and the secretary of the audiencia (Fernando de Medina) standing over the bloody bodies of his wife and her lover, Beatriz Gonzalez. Fernando de Medina (the Husband) immediately confessed to murdering his wife and her love. He proceeded to tell the judge of his wife’s long- term affair with Beatriz Gonzalez. Fernando de Medina believed that it was his right to defend his honor. One of the first documents was a statement from Medina, saying that in no point in time in the twenty-seven years or so of marriage had he given his wife a reason to be unfaithful. In the document he explained that over the twenty-seven years he had moved from place to place and he always provided his wife with everything she’d ever needed. She provided him with two children and they all were all well taken care of. The last and final move though was she meets her “new suitor” in the garden. He goes on to say that Gonzalez and his wife would use any opportunity and location to be together. They used his (the husband) home, or the lovers, she would either wear her own clothes or try to hide their relationship and wear men’s clothing. In this passage the husband feels he has to defend his honor because he found out that all of his servants were aware of this affair.…
Last but not least Edwards loaded diction creates a dark and guilty weight that lies within the sinner heart. By doing so Edwards’s sermon allows fear to grow with the sinner. “How dreadful is the state of those that are daily and hourly in the danger of this great wrath and infinite misery” (10). Edwards’s diction is so powerful that people in the audience were not able to with stand the attacks that came with it.…
In conclusion, I believe this book contains many spiritual struggles as well as mental struggles in contrary to the more trivial literature about this era. Other books uphold the structure of the more appalling behavior of the time. The Quest of the Holy Grail invites…