He wanted to do as he wished and not be a follower doing what others told him to do. He believed in creating a "city on the hill" (Bradford p.26). William Bradford said there could be a model civilization, and it would be based on religious thoughts and principles. His experimentation proved disastrous however because of the unsympathetic realities of early American life. It proved disastrous because people did not want to have to answer to a central controller that chooses how they lived. Citizens did not want to have to live by religious believes but by their own believes. They wanted to make America free to live their own lives and do as they pleased.
We, in modern America, can gain knowledge from the disaster that Bradford went through. We must realize that not everything goes as intended and we need to understand how to acknowledge rejection and how to handle that lack of success in our lives. In addition, we discover that we should dream and attempt to formulate those dreams to become genuine and have meaning. The ultimate thing we learn from Bradford is to seek out our own "city on the hill" (Bradford p.26). Another inspirational author, whom did not want to be a follower as well, goes by the name of William Byrd.
William Byrd was a Virginian who was a thorough Cavalier and aristocrat. Byrd was the son of a prosperous landowner and merchant. He acquired a passion for the theater, which the Puritans had previously forbidden as immoral. As existence as a man of the world, Byrd showed interests in science, fine dining, flirting, and literature. He continuously "neglected his prayers" (Byrd p.49). His writing proved there was more to life than constantly heading for church and reading the Bible. Byrd believed that individuals should have a delightful moment in time and be themselves. He desired people to comprehend that they should not follow the bible exactly and make sense of their own being.
