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The movie The Witch was not particularly a scary movie, it was more of a slow burning creepy tale. There was a lot of suspicion, paranoia, panic and despair about the life of a farmer when his youngest son suddenly disappears. The family was expelled or exiled from the local area because of a religious dispute. Religion is the main pillar of identity in the 1630s so at the time, it had power to change lives. The family blames the eldest daughter for the youngest son’s disappearance since she was with him at that time. The family is being as rational as possible, when the truth is that a witch nearby kidnapped him. The witch kidnapped him because it allows the witch to become younger, so she can kidnap the oldest boy of the family later in the movie and kill him. The movie allows for people to understand how identity was shaped in the 1630s and what the repercussions could be if a puritan went against the word of God. The movie proves that faith and religion was the main factor for identification for the Puritans. It makes us ask questions today like could this situation happen contemporarily? Does religion still have as big of an impact on identity today? If not, then what makes us who we are today? What kind of altercation could trigger solitude in this day and age?

This movie was a really interesting point of view on the new settlers of America. The movie focused on a single family of eight and their lives once in America. The family had been exiled from their settlement because of their religion. Which is interesting because all that came to the Americas, came in order to escape religious prosecutions in their homeland. The family had to pack up everything a basically flee. Yet, the father was unconcerned with fleeing and leaving the settlement, his sense of individuality was fascinating. He showed no concern for this family’s well-being. One of the first scenes was the family praying to the woods once they had left their home. It seemed as though they could be praying for salvation and sanctuary in the woods. If I were put in this position, I would not want to the leave the settlement in order to stay alive. I would think that if we left then our chances of survival would go down to slim to none. Another part of the movie that was really intriguing was the scenes of the oldest daughter and the witch interacting. The witch took the shape of the rabbit, and then the  overall demonic goat leader of the cult. At the end of the movie the oldest daughter completely leaves her religion behind to find safety and life in that of the satanic practices taking place in the woods. The goat brings her to the woods and shows her all the naked women waiting for her. Eventually all the women begin to levitate and fly away. This could symbolize so many things.  Flying in many contexts usually shows a sense of freedom and liberation. To me this showed a freedom to be who every you want to be in the new world. The daughter was finally free from the religious chains that her family and society of the new world had bound her in. 

I thought this essay was very good and showed a lot of what we have covered in the class. I only had some short comments on the essay and how to make it better. In the first paragraph I pointed out that she should describe further the pros and cons of Tocqueville comments on both democracy and aristocracy. Then my last comment for this section was to make the thesis stronger and more direct. In the second paragraph I noticed that the sentence, this is due to the idea…., needed to be moved further up in the section to be more directly related to her argument. The last structural comment I had was in the third paragraph. Lily slightly mentioned the push back that Obama had when elected to office, I told her that she need to show an example of this because those who have no prior knowledge would not know what she was talking about. In the last paragraph I found a sentence that completely summed up her whole argument and that of Tocqueville, this sentence was short yet very strong and pushed her paper further in the last moment, “Race serves as an impediment to true equality”. Besides these few structural changes I thought that Lily’s argument was very strong in the paper and from the first paragraph you knew exactly where she was going with the paper and how she would support it. 

This presentation was helpful in providing some background information on American Individualism. It starts off by having some questions, which engages the reader and gets them thinking about what individualism is. It goes on to explain how the modern West essentially invented individualism. Additionally, it explains how individualism in the United States has had a unique history. A major part of Puritanical Individualism is religion, as seen in a community where each person had responsibilities and relationships. While there are multiple aspects that make up the American Individual, some examples include freedom, optimism, and honor. In the presentation, it also explores the difference between Utilitarian and Expressive Individualism.

The Witch was a thrilling movie set in early colonial America, giving the audience some insight on what it is like to be a Puritan settler. The family this movie follows was banished from the Puritan colony due to a religious dispute. This is interesting because it mirrors why the Puritans came to the new world in the first place: for religious freedom. It also brings up the point that even though the puritans came to America for religious freedom, their new colony was not all religiously free. At the time, every settler was very religious, as you can see by the family in the movie constantly praying to god or repenting for their original sin. In their new “religiously free” settlement, they were banished because of a slight religious difference. The Puritans were about religious freedom, but more so for themselves. People practicing other religions or slightly different versions of their own religion were not very welcome in Puritan society. Whether or not this is a result of their intensity about religion, I am not sure. I think this is an important truth needed to separate American mythology from the truth about the early colonies.