Michael+Wigglesworth

Michael Wigglesworth Michael Wigglesworth was born in 1631 in England and came to America when he was seven. He graduated from Harvard in 1651 and after a short stint as a tutor took to preaching. Constantly ill, he would write often to make up for his lost time in the pulpit. Despite his fire and brimstone rhetoric, he was described as a "genial philanthropist, so cheerful that some of his friends thought he could not be so sick as he averred…” He died in 1705 in Massachusetts. His writings were extremely popular and both exemplify and codify the popular beliefs of early settlers to the Americas.

//The Day of Doom,// Wigglesworth's most famous work, is a foundational piece of early American literature, in both its style and content. Essentially a stylized collection of bible verses, the poem is focused on the tragedy that would befall the world before Christ’s return, according to the Puritan colonialists, and paints a dark, graphic picture for those that have rejected salvation through sin: Stanza 7: Before his face the Heav'ns gave place, and Skies are rent asunder, With mighty voice, and hideous noise, more terrible than Thunder. His brightness damps hev'ns glorious lamps and makes them hide their heads, As if afraid and quite dismay'd,  they quit their wonted steads.

-Wigglesworth pictures the return of Christ as a terrifying event for those who have sinned, using an ironic contradiction in that the “brightness” of Christ’s coming darkens the “glorious lamps” of the corrupted world in anticipation of divine judgement.

When it comes, those who have sinned find that their bonds of family and friendship are made invalid, and that in their damnation their pleas for mercy to people who were once friends, lovers, and family are made invalid: Stanza 193 and 195: Friends stand aloof, and make no proof what Prayers or Tears can do: Your godly friends are now more friends to Christ than unto you.

One natural Brother beholds another in this astonied fit, <span style="color: #b80f0f; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif; text-align: center;">Yet sorrows not thereat a jot, <span style="color: #b80f0f; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif; text-align: center;">nor pitties him a whit. <span style="color: #b80f0f; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif; text-align: center;">The godly wife conceives no grief, <span style="color: #b80f0f; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif; text-align: center;">nor can she shed a tear <span style="color: #b80f0f; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif; text-align: center;">For the sad state of her dear Mate, <span style="color: #b80f0f; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif; text-align: center;">when she his doom doth hear. Not only are these natural bonds shattered, God condemns them to an eternity in hell in a classic example of the “scare ‘em straight” approach common to Puritan evangelization: <span style="color: #b80f0f; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif; text-align: center;">Stanzas 203 and 209: <span style="color: #b80f0f; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif; text-align: center;">What? to be sent to Punishment, <span style="color: #b80f0f; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif; text-align: center;">and flames of Burning Fire, <span style="color: #b80f0f; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif; text-align: center;">To be surrounded, and eke confounded <span style="color: #b80f0f; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif; text-align: center;">with Gods Revengful ire. <span style="color: #b80f0f; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif; text-align: center;">What? to abide, not for a tide <span style="color: #b80f0f; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif; text-align: center;">these Torments, but for //Ever//: <span style="color: #b80f0f; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif; text-align: center;">To be released, or to be eased, <span style="color: #b80f0f; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif; text-align: center;">not after years, but //Never//.

<span style="color: #b80f0f; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif; text-align: center;">With Iron bands they bind their hands, <span style="color: #b80f0f; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif; text-align: center;">and cursed feet together, <span style="color: #b80f0f; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif; text-align: center;">And cast them all, both great and small, <span style="color: #b80f0f; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif; text-align: center;">into that Lake for ever. <span style="color: #b80f0f; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif; text-align: center;">Where day and night, without respite, <span style="color: #b80f0f; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif; text-align: center;">they wail, and cry, and howl <span style="color: #b80f0f; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif; text-align: center;">For tort'ring pain, which they sustain <span style="color: #b80f0f; display: block; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif; text-align: center;">in Body and in Soul.

The tragic (or even apocalyptic) consequences of those that fail to repent their sins have left a strong mark in American media. The blunt morality and fantastic, biblical imagery of Wigglesworth’s account of the Second Coming has influenced everything from pioneers of tragic and horror literature such as Poe to slasher movies.