Puritan vs. Native American Literature

Puritan and Native American Literature There are many similarities and differences between Native American and Puritan literature. These include emotion, style, figurative language, and description. In Native American literature, as well as Puritan literature, they show significant events in their cultures. Both Native American and Puritan literature are similar because both use figurative and descriptive language in their writing, however they are also different. In contrast to, Puritan literature differs from Native American literature.

These differences include figurative and descriptive language. Similarly, they write about what is important to them. In Puritan literature, they focus on human condition. For example an excerpt from “To my Dear and Loving Husband “I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold” This excerpt shows the importance of her husband to her. On the other hand, Native American literature, is written about nature, animals, and life. For example in excerpt from “The Earth on Turtle’s Back” “ From those seeds the trees and the grass sprang up. Life on Earth had begun. This symbolizes life on Earth and shows that it all started out with a turtle, the “Great Turtle”. , which for us is just an animal. They care a lot about animals as a part of their belief system. As for description, Native American literature is more descriptive than Puritan literature. A Native American story called “ When Grizzlies Walked Upright” shows many examples of description. For example, “ The bears were covered with hair and had sharp claws just as they do today, but they walked on two feet and could talk like people. While in Puritan literature, an excerpt from “To my Dear and Loving Husband” Anne Bradstreet says “My love is such that rivers cannot quench. ” This uses less description than Native American literature. In conclusion, Native American and Puritan literature has many similarities as well as differences. The similarities as shown above where that they both had use of figurative and descriptive language. However, they do use it different ways, describing different things. In their writing it shows the differences in their cultures and belief system.