“Here He Lyes”
Jill Lepore elucidates the correspondence between imprecise history and religion: “in 1631, while Smith lay on his deathbed, a Welsh clergyman named David Lloyd published The Legend of Captaine Jones, a lampoon of Smith’s True Travels. A later edition includes, by way of preface, a spoof of Smith’s well-known epitaph.” The epitaph renders Smith a credible Christ-like persona “Who told his glorious deeds to many/ but never was believ’d of any.” The clergyman is believable in the context of Christianity; hence, his ratification of Smith’s believability represents how Christianity can be used to advance erroneous accounts. The epitaph emphatically elevates Smith by rendering him a pious persona yet fibbed in his writings. Accordingly, Christians may be swayed about the clergyman’s proclamations concerning Smith’s legendary nature, yet he is not an outright saint.
Moreover, the author deconstructs the implication of Jamestown using the ‘American dream’ versus ‘American Nightmare’ binary: “ Just as cock-eyed, anachronistic, and overblown is a debunking tradition that damns Jamestown as the birthplace of the American nightmare: with corporate funding from wealth investors ( the Virginia Company), steal somebody else’s land (the Powhatans’) and reap huge profits by planting and harvesting an addictive drug (tobacco, whose sales were responsible to the boom), while exploiting your labour force (indigent Britons and, after 1619, enslaved Africans).” Evidently, the wealthy investors tracked and appreciated the American dream of prosperity by venturing into tobacco farming which was the elementary of the ‘booming economy.’ The colossal profits the garnered enabled them to animate their dreams. Comparatively, the ‘indigent Britons and enslaved Africans’ submitted to the ‘American Nightmare’ for they were subjugated by the well-heeled investors. Accordingly, Jamestown cannot be portrayed as the ‘birthplace of the American dream’ considering the mistreatment and enslavement it subsidized. Being in Jamestown was not a warranty that one would procure the “American dream.”
Franklin goes all-out to preoccupy himself at all times: “ In his cabin, maybe even before the ship finally sailed on June 20, he at last found something to do: he set about stringing together proverbs taken from twenty-five years of his Poor Richards’s Almanack.” Franklin concomitantly accomplishes two aims in the ship: he relishes the seafaring and at the same time assembles proverbs. His mindset heartens him to derive the thoroughgoing utility from all the time that he is existent. Jill Lepore observes, “Franklin finished his little essay at sea, on July 7, 1757.When he reached England, he sent it back on the first east-bound vessel.” Evidently, Franklin’s exertion at sea is not in vain because he composes an essay that was published. Franklin is a prototypical workhorse of who sets the superlative benchmark for all Americans.
