Reference no: EM131612024

1. Analyze the following passage for audience, purpose, tone, and perspective to show the main idea.

"We have been advised by some credible Christians yet alive, that a malefactor, accused of witchcraft as well as murder, and executed in this place more than forty years ago, did then give notice of an horrible plot against the country by witchcraft, and a foundation of witchcraft then laid , which if it were not seasonably discovered, would probably blow up, and pull down all the churches in the country. And we have now with horror seen the discovery of such a witchcraft! An army of devils is horribly broke in upon the place which is the center, and after a sort, the first-born of our English settlements: and the houses of the good people there are filled with the doleful shrieks of their children and servants, tormented by invisible hands, with tortures altogether preternatural." (Cotton Mather, "The Wonders of the Invisible World")

2. Analyze the following passage for audience, purpose, tone, and perspective to show the theme.

"Thus absolutely lost in thought, and dying with the very thoughts of drowning, I come up with the post, who I did not see 'til very deliberately a few paces, when we entered a thicket of trees and shrubs, and I perceived by the horse's going, we were on the decent of a hill, which, as we come nearer the button, 'twas totally dark with the trees that surrounded it. But I knew by the going of the horse we had entered the water, which my guide told me was the hazardous river he had told me of; and he, riding up close to my side, bid me not fear-we should be over immediately. I now rallied all the courage I was mistress of, knowing that I must either venture my fate of drowning , or be left like the children in the wood. So, as the post bid me, I gave reins to my nag; and sitting as steady as just before in the canoe, in a few minutes got safe to the other side, which he told me was the Narragansett country." (Sarah Kemble Knight, The Private Journal)