Reflection Blog: The Crisis, No. 1

Thomas Paine's work represents the rationalism period. From the last couple weeks of english, we have learned what rationalism is. Rationalism is basically appealing to logic for reason instead of God like the Puritan writing style. The rationalism writing style tends to use a very different form of reason. Rationalist writers use reason and logic as support. This writing style tends to be more educated because it does not just claim that God is the reason for things happening. Rationalism gives exact reason and logic for something that has happened or something that they think should happen. It is very good for persuading someone because they have the facts and no one can deny a fact. If it is a fact, it is true.
Thomas Paine's work is definitely a rationalism piece of writing. It uses logic instead of saying the cause of the problem is God and God will fix everything if we do this and this. That is very vague, but you catch my drift. Thomas Paine was one of the most influential revolutionary writers of all time according to Boucquey (Boucquey 1). As a youth, he studied works by authors who wrote about radical topics. He was very interested in people who wrote about politics in a radical way (Boucquey 1). That is probably what prepared him to write this writing.
Thomas Paine definitely wrote a rationalism piece of writing. He never blamed God for things. He never claimed that God wanted this, so we should do it. He gave reason and logic to everything that he talked about. Instead of taking the easy way out for his support and saying it was what God said, he gave reason and logic and made his thinking seem correct because he had support to back it up.
Thomas Paine was a patriot. He wanted independence from Britain. He wrote this to show why they should be independent. He does not support the war, though.Written in an elegant, simple voice, he convinced a lot of people to agree with him (Destafano). He believed that the war was started because of his writing. He wants to be separate from them. He was speaking to all the colonist. He was trying to rally support up and get some people to agree with him. Using reason and logic, he got what he wanted (Destafano).
According to Destafano, he stayed away from propaganda. I think it is cool how all the writings tie in together. Writing in a simple format, he avoided incoherent terminology (Destafano).
"These are times that try men's souls" (Paine 134). This was the opening line of Paine's writing. By starting with this line, he got a lot of people's attention. This line meant a lot with just a couple words. He basically said that he understood what was going on, he understood how hard it was, and he wanted to find a way to get away from all that and be happy again. By getting the people to know that he knows what is happening, they will agree with him to get away from that problem.

Works Cited

Boucquey, Thierry, gen. ed. "Paine, Thomas." Encyclopedia of World Writers, 14th through 18th Centuries. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2005. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= EWWII0214&SingleRecord=True (accessed October 4, 2011).


Destafano, Richard. "Homas Paine's The Crisis, Number One, 1776." Let. Rug. Web. .

Paine, Thomas. The Declaration of Independence. Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 134-138. Print.