"The Day of Doom"

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how "The Day of Doom", a poem written by Michael Wigglesworth is a poem with the central apocalyptic theme of the Great and Last Judgment. It looks at how the 224 eight lined stanzas dramatize God's sudden appearance among wicked men, His summons of the living and the dead to judgment, His extension of acceptance to "believers" and His punishment of the damned. It also discusses how the poem is perfectly suited to the Puritan period and how the cultural circumstances when the poem was published in 1662 made the poem gain its great success.

From the Paper:

"Through out the poem, Wigglesworth tends to strengthen the faith of the Puritans in their religion, their Christianity. The strong tradition of preaching and the sermon established by the Puritans had strong influence on the structure and the content of the poem. Inevitably, preaching became one of the strong sources for literary creations in the Colonial Period of American history. It is also true that sermons were the most popular literature of the time and became a dominant literary form for New England's most notable writers."

More papers on "The Day of Doom":

• Poem Review # 44128 : "The Day Of Doom"."
• Comparison Essay # 148600 : "Puritanism in the Poetry of Bradstreet and Wigglesworth"
• Analytical Essay # 107743 : "The Supernatural in the Works of Shakespeare"

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