William Bradford was an English Separatist leader and led people on the Mayflower to colonize America. On these travels, he wrote a book, a narrative of the Plymouth Plantation called Of Plymouth Plantation. This book focused on the hardships of the colonists and their struggles to survive in a strange new land, assisted (sometimes) by the natives. However, we ask this question today: Did he write this to teach morals to future generations, or are we looking too hard into it?
A fellow student of mine said:
The reason some people might ask some different questions is primarily because they take their own questions out of context. We shouldn’t be asking whether or not Bradford’s morals in the book were supposed to be an example of the correct morals for future generations in America because that’s not why he wrote the book. The book was an account of the hardships the colony encountered when trying to escape England. Anyone who read past the introduction would know that. This is once again a matter of people complaining about a book they haven’t read.
But I will dare to say that they are incorrect. Yes, the book is about hardships the colonists faced, but any story can teach a moral philosophy, regardless of what the original intention was. The question is still “Did this book teach morals” because in short, yes. It did. Any story, as I just said, can teach morals regardless of intent. The book itself describes hardships of the colonists to handle the world around them. “The future is uncertain.” The colonists would make plans, the plans would get upset. The same thing happens in our modern society as well. Our plans are in constant danger of falling through.
The value of peaceful communication is apparent as well, with cooperation between natives and animosity if they don’t cooperate. The separatists, that is the colonists, even left their homes and dared to live in hardship simply to properly worship their God. Yes, this is a tale of struggles, but it also teaches a stalwart stance in what you truly believe in. The book may not be meant to teach morals, but like any story talking about lessons learned, it still manages to teach morals.
Just because the book says that it’s about something else, doesn’t mean that it can’t have multiple themes or meanings within the pages, and this even disregards what the author may have intended to teach. As long as you learn something from an experience, it still teaches you even if the experience wasn’t meant to do that originally.
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