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Anne Bradstreet's The Flesh And The Spirit

Decent Essays

The Flesh and the Spirit is a poem by Anne Bradstreet that redefines the way we perceive religion and property. It begins with two sisters, “Flesh”, and “Spirit”, who are talking on the banks of a nearby shore. You are apparently listening in on the conversation as it goes on, and have a sense of the situation at hand. Flesh begins to question Spirit and why she enjoys to meditate. Flesh, who is bent towards materialistic things, is quite confused about Spirit’s practice, as she doesn’t understand the satisfaction from partaking in it. Flesh then begins to try and convince Spirit that there is more beyond spiritualistic understandings, and that the world is full of new types of riches such as gold and silver. Spirit is not very cooperative …show more content…

Whenever we go over a new chapter of the bible, usually it is followed by a parable by Jesus. Back then, Jesus would go around telling these parables to either followers, or people he deemed worthy of hearing these stories to hopefully convince them to follow in his footsteps. I feel like this is similar to his story in that Bradstreet is trying to tell a lesson, especially by naming the sisters based off of their ideals. The story has a very “this is what you should do” kind of tone to it, and I think this is very similar to how Jesus was trying to convince his followers of the same thing. By making it a story and something that can seem relatable, it was easier for people to hold on to these ideas and bring them into their own lives. This is also very different from his stories though, for I feel that Jesus made his parables very easy to understand so that the general public could get a grasp on the greatness waiting for them in the next life. With Bradstreet, she was a bit more cryptic with her writings, and putting it in poem form made it even harder to understand. This made it so that not every person back then could understand the emotions and ideas that Bradstreet was trying to convey. So although similar in style, this was also very different from Jesus’s

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