John Smith Of Plymouth Plantation Analysis

After the New World was discovered in the sixteenth century, England began a campaign to colonize what is now the East coast of the United States. In 1607, John Smith arrived in the New World and began an English colony called Jamestown. A little more than ten years later, in 1620, William Bradford was the governor of Plymouth, another colony. You would be hard pressed to find another example in history where two very different men accomplished the same goal. One man was a veteran soldier and a daring adventurer, while the other was the leader of a new denomination of Christianity, and yet both ended up governing colonies. The best way to see the difference between these two men is to examine their writings about the New World. Their language, style, and even point of view illustrate the difference between the two. Both, however, had a striking similarity, and it was that similarity which led to each one’s success.
John Smith, the avid adventurer, used long, flowery sentences paired with large and fancy words to tell his narrative of daring adventure. For example, when describing how many colonists wanted to leave, Smith makes a comparison between them and a Spaniard, saying “The Spaniard never more greedily desired gold than he victual, nor his soldiers more to abandon the country than he to keep it.” This could have been said in a shorter or more concise fashion, but Smith chose to make it more descriptive and