Farewell, My Pelf Farewell My Store Analysis

My parents baptized me Christian and put me into Christian schools my whole life, but have never truly believed in God and what the Church preaches. I have not been devout in my faith because of so many other things that go on in my life that I think to affect me more and would be a better use of my time. The Church community seems to want to force me into believing in God, and what God wants me to do with my life. Craig grows up with his faith being forced into his daily life and people expecting him to embrace it and expand on it, but he does not and cannot because of many factors in his life that he finds more important and more enjoyable. Craig conflicts with his religious faith because of his drawing and his responsibilities as a young …show more content…
In Anne Bradstreet’s poem versus upon the burning of our house, she talks about her pelf being destroyed in her house, “Farewell, my pelf, farewell my store” (Bradstreet 52). In this quotation, her pelf is figurative text that tries to show that she has some kind of ill-gotten gains in her house. Because pelf is a word for materials that were acquired illegally, but she uses this word to describe materials that she doesn’t need in her life that she could give away to please God. That is why she thanks him for burning her house. We learn that she needed something to get rid of her corrupting possessions in order for her to please God. Similarly, in the book of Deuteronomy, a passage called Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, the author describes the actions that Anne Bradstreet feels, “But the foolish children of men miserably delude themselves in their own schemes, and in confidence in their own strength and wisdom; they trust to nothing but a shadow” (Edwards). In this quotation, the author talks symbolically with a shadow. This shadow represents the false beliefs of man, and the idolatries that men create because a shadow is just an absence of light, nothing exists within it, similarly to the false beliefs of man. They are consisting of absolutely nothing, but an absence of light and clear thinking. We learn that we man should not put his faith in a false idol or figure for they are foolish. Similarly, to this belief in a shadow Thompson describes the Allegory of the cave by Socrates on pages 496-500. This is figurative because Craig wasn’t there with them at the time, and the cave is a metaphor for Craig’s situation. The prisoners in the cave represent the