Anne Bradstreet’s the Flesh and the Spirit

The flesh is concrete, which symbolizes all material items, such as “diamonds, pearls, and gold”(line 83, pg.164). All of these are of price value, as opposed to the spirit, abstract, which symbolizes “the hidden manna” (line 68, pg.164) that is priceless. Not many people can see the spirit or have it in their presence. That is not true for the flesh; most people can obtain these worldly treasures, which leads to self-fulfilled indulgences. There is no longer that fulfillment which Puritans were supposed to receive from God. Hence, the idea of Puritanism, a religion in which only a select few are chosen to be redeemed and to live with God again someday, can be very exclusive, which is evident through The Flesh and the Spirit. This sort of imagery allows us to clearly see the complex beliefs held by the Puritan, which is that people begin to divert their faith in God when they start to indulge in worldly pleasures (in the form of temptations, used by the devil to lead Puritans astray). The initial persona is a narrator, a witness of the conversation between the two sisters: Flesh and Spirit. Then, the next section takes the persona of the sister called Flesh, followed by the next section which has the persona of the sister called Spirit. Bradstreet does not categorize these speakers into stanzas. The change in personas between Flesh and Spirit is marked by a pause, to let us know that the conversation slightly halts for a while, as the speaker changes. I believe that Bradstreet shows that, although these twin “sisters” are similar in birth and origin, their ideas and values about life and its importance are different from each other’s. Biblical myths tell us that God sent the devil, once an angel of heaven who fell into the abyss, to rule the world, while God Himself rules the heavens. Ironically, the devil, along with God, keeps the world in perfect balance. This balance is between good and evil. It is constantly restored so that humans can get both views and