Hope Leslie Literary Elements

Novel

Massachusetts during the 17th century

Third-person and first-person narrators (who author letters) are utilized.

Viciousness, vengefulness, terrifying, suspenseful, heart-breaking, romantic

Hope Leslie (protagonist). Sir Philip (antagonist).

The Native Indians versus the white settlers conflict. Another conflict relates to Hope and Everell’s romance which must rise above social, tribal and religious hindrances.

Mononotto’s incursion of Bethel and cold-hearted homicide he commits there.

Alice foreshadows her demise: “she was fully aware of her approaching death, and died as befits a child of faith, in sweet peace.”

N/A

Historical allusions such as the Massachusetts bay colony and Pequod War. The name “Bethel," the mention of martyrdom, and the invocation of God are overt Biblical allusions.

Human sacrifices depict the ferociousness of the Native Indian tribes.

The intersection between Christianity and slavery is paradoxical: “ She is the daughter of one of the chiefs, and when this wolfish tribe were killed, or dislodged from their dens, she, her brother, and their mother, were brought with a few other captives to Boston…Some by a Christian use of money, were redeemed, and others, I blush to say it, for it is god’s gift that every man should enjoy good of his own labour,' were sent into slavery in the West Indies." The captured Native Indians are enslaved by the whites, who are preachers of Christianity. Christians deem the Native Indians to be lesser humans.

William Fletcher employs parallelism when declaring his resolution: “I shall not again see my Alice…I have not the courage to meet her smiles; I have not strength to endure her tears.”

‘The sovereign’ denotes the monarch. ‘sub rosa’ denotes secretly.

Liberty is personified by being described as “Daughter of disloyalty and mother of all misrule-who, from the hour that she tempted our parents to forfeit paradise, hath ever worked mischief to our race.”