If I got one thing from Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick, it is that the Pilgrims should have died shortly after arriving in America. They almost actively made efforts to ensure their starvation and failure in this new land they were hoping to live in. (Why would you not carry fishing supplies with you when you're going to be living on a ship and then by the coast for the next few months? Why would you trust just any smooth-talking merchant-type person with all your money and resources? ) Sheer luck and determination, as well as the resourcefulness of the Native Americans is what allowed them to survive. On their own, they’d never have made it.
Philbrick’s narration of the events leading up to King Philip’s War and his careful report of the war itself were both informative and interesting. For someone who doesn’t particularly like reading nonfiction, even if it is historical, I’ve come to realise that this style of writing, almost creative nonfiction, I think, is something I really enjoy. Reading Mayflower was like reading a novel—except all of this actually happened.
I think one of the aspects I found difficult to work with was the sheer amount of information in the form of names of persons and places. Since I know nothing about this period of time, I wasn’t sure who was important and who wasn’t and so I had to keep flipping back and forth to reread sections in order to refresh my memory about why so-and-so’s death had caused such an outrage, or how this one was related to that one and why it was that one who was important in relation to this one, or how this settlement and that settlement were now allies against that one section of that larger tribe. It got confusing at times, and it didn’t help that I took my time with this book, and so sometimes I wasn’t even confused, I just couldn’t remember what was happening or who someone was. Strangely enough, once the actual war began, it became a lot easier for me to associate people and places and alliances. It would have helped if I kept a notepad and pencil to write down names, but I managed well enough without.
If I actually had knowledge of this time, maybe I would have found mistakes or missing pieces of information or a million criticisms with proof and arguments to back each one. But I came to this with a blank slate. And so I found it helpful, informative, and horrifyingly fascinating, because mass genocide can only be horrifyingly fascinating.
Philbrick’s narration of the events leading up to King Philip’s War and his careful report of the war itself were both informative and interesting. For someone who doesn’t particularly like reading nonfiction, even if it is historical, I’ve come to realise that this style of writing, almost creative nonfiction, I think, is something I really enjoy. Reading Mayflower was like reading a novel—except all of this actually happened.
I think one of the aspects I found difficult to work with was the sheer amount of information in the form of names of persons and places. Since I know nothing about this period of time, I wasn’t sure who was important and who wasn’t and so I had to keep flipping back and forth to reread sections in order to refresh my memory about why so-and-so’s death had caused such an outrage, or how this one was related to that one and why it was that one who was important in relation to this one, or how this settlement and that settlement were now allies against that one section of that larger tribe. It got confusing at times, and it didn’t help that I took my time with this book, and so sometimes I wasn’t even confused, I just couldn’t remember what was happening or who someone was. Strangely enough, once the actual war began, it became a lot easier for me to associate people and places and alliances. It would have helped if I kept a notepad and pencil to write down names, but I managed well enough without.
If I actually had knowledge of this time, maybe I would have found mistakes or missing pieces of information or a million criticisms with proof and arguments to back each one. But I came to this with a blank slate. And so I found it helpful, informative, and horrifyingly fascinating, because mass genocide can only be horrifyingly fascinating.
