Differences Between Anne Bradstreet s Burning Of Our...

Throughout this semester we have read various readings, some similar and some widely different but two that struck me as having both similarities and differences are Anne Bradstreet’s â€Å"Burning of Our House† and David Henry Thoreau’s â€Å"Where I Lived, and What I Have Lived For†. Both works have focus on the author’s material possessions and how they feel about them. Bradstreet was a Puritan women and Puritan’s were raised with the belief that you do not need Earthly possessions because ultimately their relationship with God is the most important thing. Puritans are taught from a very young age to wean themselves from their earthly attachments. While reading her she very clearly writes that her possessions were given to her by God and are his to take away, and that she is excepting of that because they are not what matters most. But you get the sense that she struggles with that, as any human being would. Thoreau on the other hand went into the woods to live deliberately, leaving behind his material possessions, as a choice, because he felt people were becoming too caught up in them. Both authors clearly lived in two very different time periods with two different views on their world but they both ultimately have the some of the same thoughts and views on materialism, it’s not the things you have but the life you have. Puritan’s believed that spirituality should come first and Transcendentalist believed that the things you see and hear are what is important, not the things you