Voice of the Author's - Essay Example

John Winthrop and Samuel Seawall are writers of a journal and a diary respectively. These two literary works represent diverse and strong individuals’ point of view in many aspects of life they faced. Their individualism gets revealed in their attitudes and perspectives of various events in their community (John 187). John Winthrop who trained to be a lawyer got elected Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony. This was mainly because he had leadership qualities. He wrote a journal that showed the puritan determination to give meaning to everything, more so the natural occurrences.

His tone is that of a didactic conversationalist. This journal shows the propensity of the puritans to view spiritual education in nature. His journal was mainly religious with spiritual messages. His journal is an individual’s voice construing the community’s vision and bringing hope and warning to the community. The Massachusetts colony had compatibility with the Plymouth’s Pilgrims and the pilgrims got eventually subsumed to the larger and successful Massachusetts colony. Winthrop’s journals show a self-reflective objective to emphasize his visualization as a people’s leader making novel way in a new land. . a sober and genuine leader of an ethical society that was to form the track of the American literary, artistic and spiritual background for years to come.

Winthrop’s journal was a recording of the day to day events with occasional commentaries on the occurrences. The author of the journal gives the reader an imminence of the writer’s priorities and values. Diaries are a historic representative genre representing literature in the early century. Diarists record day to day occurrences in a personal and intimate level. Samuel Sewell, a businessman and leader in Massachusetts Bay was one of the diarists. His life represented Puritan’s prosperity.

He was a successful business man who made remarkable fortune. He is famous for his public apology and renunciation of his participation in Salem witchcraft. He publicly admitted his mistake of participating in trials that affected innocent people. Winthrop and Sewell work both have didactic observations of natural facts as well as spiritual lessons experienced. In his diary, Sewell would pause in his observations and remark about the spiritual repercussion of a natural phenomenon. Additionally, Sewell has more focus on business related matters and succeeding materialistic prosperity planted in the reader’s mind.

Both Winthrop and Sewall’s literary works have historical significance in America. Both of the works represent aspects and events in the American society long ago. They got written with different agendas ranging from personal reasons to general commenting reasons. On the other hand, their perspectives are different. The differences come from their perspectives and agendas and attitudes. This is for the reasons that, unlike Winthrop, Sewall gives the reader of his diary a foretaste of a private Puritan life. The