Question 15

15. One reviewer of Mayflower asserted that Nathaniel Philbrick “avoid[ed] the overarching moral issues [of his subject] and [took] no sides.” Do you find this to be true? Are there moral lessons Philbrick wants us to learn? If so, what are they?

For some reason, I feel like he really tried to keep morals out of this text and relay just facts, but I think that morals, if only in a dark, and obscure fashion, do appear in the Mayflower. One of these morals is a rather simple one: the past is as full of details, color, and life as any moment we experience in the present world. People tend to picture the past as a far away place with limits on every sense that we possess. To me, it seemed as if Philbrick was trying to convey this message with his vast reservoir of details about how and why things happened. It also seemed as if he was trying to impress the infinite amount of knowledge we will never possess, point to the moral in question. Whenever trying to tell something as effectively as possible, he will often say that a particular detail is lost to history. These statements impress upon me the sheer weight of the past. The other moral that I think is detectable in this book is this: our decisions greatly effect the future, no matter how big or small. This may be a result of the set of facts Philbrick meant to relay, but I still think that we can learn this life lesson from his book. So as for the critic who made that quote, I think that they need to remain more open minded while reading next time.