Name _________________________________________ Date __________________
Reading Guide for “Of Plymouth Plantation” by William Bradford
Your textbook has four objectives for this passage:
1. Read and analyze an account of the Pilgrims’ arrival in America
2. Identify and explain elements of Puritan literature
3. Analyze Bradford’s diction and writing style
4. Define all vocabulary words
Here is a reading guide to help you learn these objectives. This guide breaks the objectives into
smaller questions or tasks. As you work through them, please:
 Paraphrase (put in your own words) your answers. You will not receive any credit for
answers written word for word from the book.
 Be sure to write in pen and give clear, specific answers to each question. Some #s contain
more than one question.
1.
On what chapter does the selection start?
2.
Why do you think Bradford uses the 3rd person plural, “they” instead of writing this as a
first person narrative?
3.
Look back at pg. 68 in the background section “The Time and Place” to figure out what
“seele,” “hull” and “halyards” means. Record each meaning.
4.
What happened to John Howland? (Paraphrase)
5.
Who was the only person to die on the Mayflower?
6.
Where did the Pilgrims end up stopping?
7.
What does “providence” mean? Whose good providence helped the Pilgrims?
8.
What did the Pilgrims do when they arrived? Why?
9.
Describe the Pilgrims’ condition upon their arrival in the New World.
10.
What season did the Pilgrims land? Why is this a problem?
11.
What is the next section about?
12.
What happened to the Pilgrims over the next few months?
13.
What is scurvy?
14.
How many people were left? How many were healthy?
15.
What did the healthy ones do to help the sick ones?
16.
Who are mentioned for specific praise?
17.
Describe the relationship between the Pilgrims and the Indians in the beginning of the next
section.
18.
What happened on March 16th?
19.
What was this person’s name? Where did he learn to speak English?
20.
What Indian could communicate even better? Why?
21.
Sachem means chief or leader. What is the name of the “great Sachem”? What important
event happened when the chief came?
22.
Rewrite each of the terms of peace in your own words. Be sure to identify clearly to whom
Bradford is referring—either Indian or Pilgrim.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
23.
How did Squanto help the Pilgrims?
24.
What is the next section about?
25.
What are the Pilgrims doing at the beginning of this last section?
26.
What type of food are they gathering?
27.
Compared with most writers today, Bradford uses long, complicated sentences. Choose
one of Bradford’s long complicated sentences with archaic (old) words and reword it in
language used today. Be sure to write the original sentence as well!
28.
What typical Puritan ideals can be seen in Bradford’s “Of Plymouth Plantation?” Find one
example from the text. Write the page number and paragraph it is located in, then explain
how it represents the ideals you noted previously.