Preview

Columbus: Was Columbus A Hero Or A Villain

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
299 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Columbus: Was Columbus A Hero Or A Villain
Columbus can be called a hero or a villain. He has made many choices in life to give himself these two titles. Columbus is a hero in many ways. “From his last year his reputation dripped.” (Fernandez) Columbus before he turned into a self centered person, he brought many new ideas to the table. He wanted to discover new lands and he did that. He found new lands as well which was success for Columbus. People were in awe of Columbus’s strength and heart to find these new lands and find them he did. ‘Therefore presented Columbus an unblemished hero.” (Fernandez) Some of the historians and people out there do not think about the violence he did. They think about his accomplishment and there were many of those, from exploring new worlds to making

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Columbus a hero or a villain?, This question has plagued historians thru out the ages and its based on this question that Zinn and Schweikart answer in different ways. Howard Zinn in the first chapter of his book “A People's History of the United States” talks a bout…

    • 1576 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The first article accurately describe the terrible horrors that Columbus spreads throughout the land, such as mass homicide, rape, enslavement and plenty more treacherous things that are illegal all over the world. The first article explains how Columbus came to America and the native Americans flocked him with beautiful and mysterious (to him and the Europeans) gifts and treated them like gods yet Columbus writes that the "Indians" are foolish and ignorant. He sees them like tools he says they are well fit and have handsome features so what does he do he enslaves them and cover them with deadly smallpox. Yet through horrid time in history people like Conell find a way to sugarcoat it and only say the "nice" subjects like finding America and spreading technology while people like Howard Zinn spread the ill coated truth of the birth of this great independent country's…

    • 292 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Columbus was only doing what any other person under the ruling of a king and queen would have done back then, to serve and please them in any way possible. He wanted to show himself to his king in queen. Christopher of course is known for discovering America, but on the way there he did things that are frowned upon now. On his discovering he made the Natives into slaves, forced them to as he please or they would get punished. Columbus should not be bashed upon for his prejudices and brutality, back then it was all around the world and everybody was doing it, it wasn’t a wrong thing at this time.…

    • 208 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Christopher Columbus, an explorer from Spain who sailed the ocean blue in 1492 and gained fame after “discovering” a land now known as America. Although Christopher Columbus was not the nicest man on earth he did open a lot of doors for his people. So the question is Christopher Columbus, hero or villain. Christopher Columbus to me was always an over praised man. To start off, he thought he was in Asia when he entered America.…

    • 389 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout history there have been a number of people that have been celebrated as heroes, but some of their fame is controversial. Today Columbus is seen as a great man who had such an impact on the history of the America’s. He is only seen heroic for his journey to the New World “his famous journey lasting months to get from England to Cuba.” Accordingly Columbus was expecting to find a new route to get to India for trade. To many Columbus is seen as a man who did nothing but good for the world. When you look deeper into his colonization of the New World you will find the horrific details of the take over of the Native Americans. So therefore Christopher Columbus was more rather a villain than anything else.…

    • 761 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Christopher Columbus is a man who is known in society simultaneously as a hero and a villain of his time. What if the world had to pick only one, what would it be? Many new studies and scholars believe that Columbus was the villain of his story not a hero as past information would lead us to believe. Past documents were all written from Europe’s point of view, this lead to extremely biased documents because Europe was the side to profit unlike the Native Americans. Columbus was the antagonist of the new world due to how he forced the natives into slavery, he raped and robbed the natives he found, and how he slaughtered the natives if they could not collect enough gold.…

    • 266 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Christopher Columbus is known as an American hero for discovering the new world. He did many things in his lifetime, some of them good and some of them bad. He was a Spanish conquistador who traveled to North America from Spain. Columbus is also known for the many murders and raping he committed. In a time in which the slave trade was starting to expand, Columbus and his crew enslaved many native Americans of the West Indies and subjected them to extreme violence and brutality on his first voyage in 1492. I believe that Columbus should not be known as a hero.…

    • 228 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Regardless of whether or not Christopher Columbus was a moral man, or the fact he discovered America with the intentions of finding a trade route to Asia, or whether or not his intentions were good or bad he was a man of his era who started a new period of exploration and trade. This period ultimately led to the development of the greatest republic known to this date.…

    • 378 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    As we all sit down and enjoy the day off from our duties, we often think of Christopher Columbus and thank him for his accomplishments and contributions, but do we ever look beyond it & think how cruel he was to the native people of America? Columbus had found the new world in an attempt to find Asia and had sent many expeditions to explore the area heroically. That is what the majority of people think about when they think of Christopher Columbus. Little do they know, Christopher Columbus had a dark side. He was deceitful and merciless, and would stop at nothing to obtain what he wanted , much like a villain. I would classify Columbus as a villain do to his horrible ethical treatment of others as well as his deceitful ways.…

    • 550 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “1492, Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” We all have been hearing this saying ever since we were little. Is he really a hero? He found a new world and jump started an age of exploration like no other. After he found the Americas there…

    • 628 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    I believe Christopher Columbus was a hero in his time, and in ours. But before I can go any further I want to say that what was right and common sense in 1492 was different then in 2011. It is unfair to say he was a villain based on standards and morals that came 500 years later. Also, another thing we forget is the world was different back then. Europe was starting its Renaissance and each country was trying to top the other in development to become the most powerful country. So, there was a lot of competition going on. Besides, the planet was not very well known. The people of the time only knew of Asia, Africa, and Europe. They did not even know the continents they were aware of very well. They were mistaken in many of their beliefs about the world that they did know. They had seriously underestimated the size of Asia, therefore thinking the world was 2/3s smaller than it really was. However, it was a time of great exploration. People were starting to map out the world, partly for trade routes. With those mistaken beliefs: the need to explore, and the Renaissance, you can see what drove Columbus across the ocean blue. I think he is hero for many reasons: he discovered two “new” contents and took the risk of crossing the Atlantic into unknown waters and defying what people said was impossible. Also he was being heroic to Spain by finding gold and killing non-Christians.…

    • 599 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Christopher Columbus is well known in history as the greatest explorer of all time. His voyages and discoveries of new land inspired many other Europeans to explore the world. One of his biggest and most significant discoveries, was the New World. During his voyage, Columbus kept a detailed record of what occurred during his time of exploration. His record is a clear depiction of his poor treatment of the Natives who already lived in the New World. Christopher Columbus was a villain, because of his treatment of the Native Americans and the tremendous decline in population he was responsible for when he arrived to the New World.…

    • 595 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Question 1: In Christopher Columbus’s personal journal there are numerous examples that portray him to be a hero in some fashion or another. Christopher Columbus describes in immaculate detail his voyage across the sea. He portrays himself as a man of great power and leadership. Columbus describes his search for the city of gold in such a way that one would almost start to believe that he is doing the Natives a service by extracting their gold from their lands so that it can be placed in the rightful hands of the rulers of his own nation. Columbus says, “They have no religion, and I believe that they would very readily become Christians, as they have a good understanding.” (Columbus) In this regard he can be portrayed as a hero in that he was…

    • 943 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    My body hangs over the edge, swaying with nervousness. One step, I look down, I can’t see the bottom. Two steps, my legs shake like when they came. One the edge now, the wind seems to push me, it’s cold, oh so cold. It whispers and sings in long ways; groaning and howling. For this may be giving up, my retaliation rises, but the winner is clear. They the killers, the ones that named you savages. They have spilled out our blood for us to become one with nature. They chained us to become properties and they have come in a mass wave to take the land we once praised. With one graceful motion I,m falling, my heartbeat rises louder. And louder and louder, the thing almost beats out of my chest. I see the ground, my breath dives my throat, then nothing. Imagine that. You feel so lost and terrified you take your own life with the swiftest motion, letting your existence become one with absence. Now imagine your killer, the one that drove you to do it is a praised hero with a day to his name and equal grounds with Martin Luther King Jr. it's already happened, Christopher Columbus, the praised hero.…

    • 597 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Christopher Columbus can in no way, shape, or form be considered a hero. A hero is someone who performs good deeds for the sake of others and not for their own benefit. Christopher Columbus did not do a single good deed in any of his four voyages in the late 1400 's. Christopher Columbus was not the founder of the Americas we live in today because he did not set a single foot on these grounds, even if he did there were already the natives who inhabited the land. When he first sited land it was further down south in the Caribbean Islands. Christopher Columbus can be considered the enforcer of slavery. Slavery was already going on when he left Spain. However, the natives could be used for trade with other goods, this was known as the slave trade. He and his crew basically enslaved a whole race of men, women, and children. When Christopher Columbus discovered what he thought to be the "New World", he had no idea that he would find a whole race of people. His intensions were to go out and find gold and spices to bring back to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in Spain.…

    • 668 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays