Short Answer Questions

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

1. Edwards gives the effect of ventriloquism on a person so he can emphasize how easily and quickly death can come. One can be witty, smart, and or an all around good person, but one can never out wit or defeat death. He also wants to stress not only will death come, but destruction will come as well. He means destruction in a way of going to hell. One shouldn’t take death and destruction for granted or as a joke. One needs to be careful not to be so foolish. By giving the monologue of wickedness a human face, Edwards means to relate better to his audience and show them how realistic death and destruction is and it was easier for his audience to understand.

2. Taking in effect of the poetic devices of sound and rhetorical devices of direct address and repetition, the passage should be moving and effective because the words themselves are powerful. Edwards’s use of diction is so compelling and distinct it draws his audience into what he was saying. Also, Edwards tone of anger and disappointment in the sinners makes the audience want to learn more of what they were doing wrong and what they could do to improve that. Such words like fiery, fierceness, wrath, and fury also made the passage so effective. These words showed how firm God would be on the sinners.

3. This particular phrase signifies that sinners tend to depend on God for “peace and safety” when they need it. Sinners take God as a joke, but they soon feel his wrath when they find out that they “were nothing but thin air and empty shadows” (431[full ed.] 200 [shorter ed.]). Sinners are only dependent and reliant on God that they ask for what they want and expect to get it, but they do not want to completely accept Christ in their life. It’s kind of like sinners use God for what they want and then they are threw with him until they next time they need him, like a one night stand. It can mask a “natural man” because the man can display himself to be “holier than thou”, but he could actually be a hypocrite. He could try to be holy and live a true Christian life, but he can do what he wants to do behind closed doors.

4. The Great Awakening was a time of a spiritual wave through the whole United States. The “haste” and “little time” gives rise to the tone of the sermon because it stresses how little time sinners have to get themselves together until the end time. The sermon also informs sinners how quickly they need to give their life over to Christ. That is also why Edwards displays a tone of anger because he doesn’t want to feel responsible if those sinners go to hell. He supposes that the ends of times are near because God is gathering more and more of his elect. During the Great Awakening, a lot of men started to become priest and felt that they had a conversion experience with God.




The Souls of Black Folk

1. Dubois “fine contempt” proved to be insufficient when he was a young boy in New England. When a young girl came to his schoolhouse she refused to take his card. This experience made him realize that he was different. His “fine contempt” proved to be insufficient because he was an African-American. Dubois’s ethnicity put him in a category of ignorance and unintelligence. Even though he has accomplished so much, none of that mattered because he was black. Dubois gets on a very personal level with his audience by giving them examples of his personal experiences. The audience can then realize that no African-American is better than the other, even if you knew the encyclopedia from front to back, you still would be labeled as a Negro that doesn’t know anything. Dubois’s personal experiences add to the argument by that black and white relations still have not changed. This argument proves persuasion to the black community.

2. The dramatic numbered list by assessing Washington’s ideas. Dubois establishes why Washington brought up these ideas and all the repercussions that came along with them. He realizes that Washington makes his decisions in a hasty manner and does not think about them. Dubois makes it very clear that Washington wants change to happen overnight. He also realizes that he isn’t willing to do the work required to follow through. Like stated before, Washington does not think about his decisions and he doesn’t consider the consequences if everyone does not agree with his plans and does not follow through with them.

3. Dubois intercuts “The Souls of Black Folk” with “Sorrow Songs” because he wants to create an illusion of a flashback. “Sorrow Songs” were songs that slaves would sing when they were working in the cotton fields. They were a way the slaves could relieve themselves without getting caught from their master. These songs were also a way to look forward to the things that could come in the future, like freedom. Dubois wanted to demonstrate the difference in time then and when he wrote the book. Again, he wanted to show how relations between races haven’t changed. Some things might have might have been much worse then, but they still have not changed.