Art Imitating Life: New Horizons

It seems no surprise that literature would be affected by the experiences of the author in real life. After all, where else is there to draw inspiration from but the sum total of one's experience and knowledge? Interesting to note how the experiences of the first American colonial authors' influenced their work, though: faced with a new frontier and very little knowledge of what awaited them, with very little to no ability to turn back, limited resources and very little practical survival skills those early American writers were faced with one subject that dominated above all others: the brute struggle for survival.

Or it WOULD have been the focus of their work if they did not have one other highly influential element: the subject of religion. With this consideration, what might have been very simple travelogues and paltry journal accounts about woodland explorations and skirmishes with the Indians turns into a narrative about a New Chosen people whose very souls are at stake. More than a battle for brute survival, this a battle for the very survival of the soul and -- consequently -- the world. What's most interesting, though, is how these two aspects are constantly interrelated: all mentions of the survival of the soul are precepts that are meant to help the colonists work together.

William Bradford's accounts of the founding of Plymouth Plantation are rife with references to God's divine and right judgment and how it is casts upon those who would destroy the unity of the group (such as the callous young sailor). Winthrop's model of Christian charity is meant to keep the community together (he even talks of the cohesion between bodily parts and the failure of the body should certain body parts fail to do their job correctly. Even if this is an allusion to the BODY OF CHRIST, it still emphasizes a communal aspect and communal survival. Mary Rowlandson sees the very destruction of her village, her family and her friends as the wrath of God made manifest.

Everything the colonists are undergoing is seen as a new test for a New Chosen people, with references to covenants abounding in their discourse. Though this was certainly not uncommon in literature before the colonization (considering that the vast majority of all work produced from the time that the Roman Church became dominant was concerned WITH the Church), it did lead to the creation of a new type of literature that dealt not with the philosophical and metaphysical weight of Christianity, but with the very pragmatic aspects of survival that were attached to -- in some cases consequent -- of the spiritual aspects of survival. What occurred in the physical world was a mirror of what occurred in the metaphysical realm of god which was in turn triggered by the actions of the people in the physical world! This concern seems to have a large amount of relevance and presence even up into today's fiction; it might be said, then, that early American literature established a particular flavor of writing that would prove endemic to the country's body of written work.