Mayflower By Nathaniel Philbrick: Chapter Summary

In Nathaniel Philbrick’s narrative Mayflower, he tells the story of the struggle and hardships of a group of people who cross the ocean to find personal and religious freedom in a new land. These people are the Pilgrims, but they are much different from the stereotypical pilgrims that we think of today. Philbrick tells the story of the Pilgrims struggle to survive in their first few months, their first meetings with and the rise and eventual fall of the alliance between the Native Americans and the Pilgrims. I found the book to be very interesting when I read it, and though it was boring or slow at times, it provided a great deal of intriguing information that I never knew before about the story of the Pilgrims and their long, treacherous …show more content…
The Native Americans, specifically Massasoit and the Pokanoket tribe, played a huge role in the survival of the Plymouth Colony, as they helped the Pilgrims adjust to their new land and learn farming so that they could sustain themselves in America, and in the process, an alliance was formed between the two groups that lasted for years. Even though the alliance did eventually fade and new alliances were formed, each side had benefitted from the other’s help, and in the case of the Pilgrims, this greatly helped their ability to survive in the harsh and unforgiving conditions of early America. As I read this book, I tried to visualize what was going on in order to help myself understand the points that Nathaniel Philbrick was trying to get across throughout Mayflower. I would advise any other reader of this book to utilize this strategy in reading the novel, as not only did it help me understand what was happening, but it also allowed me to comprehend to the best of my ability why it was happening. In telling the story of Mayflower, Nathaniel Philbrick teaches the reader information that the reader would potentially not have known before, and in doing so, educates the reader in an interesting and engaging way about some of the earliest history of civilized