In the American Grain Chapter Summary & Analysis - Voyage of the Mayflower Summary

Voyage of the Mayflower Summary

Here Williams speaks to the hardships the Pilgrims experienced. He introduces them as the seed of Tudor England's "lusty bosom," a "hard and little" seed that floated off in the surrounding cold of the hothouse that was the Restoration. The writer defines them as the fiercest element in the settling of the New World, and stresses the trouble they had by including accounts by historians. These accounts are manufactured by the writer, but written in 15th-century English to give an authentic voice to the reports of "God's providence": a sailor on board the Mayflower was evil to the point of plotting to throw "halfe of them overboard." He was smote with illness, however, and he himself was "throwne" overboard upon his death.

Besides disease, Williams relates, and in conjunction with cold, difficulties with growing food, and gross general misfortune, the Pilgrims were wrought with an intense emptiness. Therefore, the author...
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