Jonathan Edwards from Sinners in the Hand of Angry God Background, Summary, and Tone

BACKGROUND: The selection in the textbook is an excerpt from Edwards's famous six-hour sermon that was delivered at Enfield, Connecticut, on July 8, 1741. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the sermon flourished as a popular literary genre in America. Like its written counterpart, the essay, the sermon expresses the point of view that its author wishes to convey to his or her audience. Although we no longer think of the prose sermon as a literary form, memorable sermons still occur. The most famous sermon today would probably be Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" sermon.

Edwards chose for the topic of his famous 'fire and brimstone" sermon one that enjoyed great popularity in Puritan New England in the century: the ultimate evil of man contrasted to the power and forgiveness of God. In contrast to his violent subject, Edwards's speaking style was quiet and restrained. We are told that Edwards read this sermon in a level voice, but in spite of his calm demeanor, his listeners are reported to have groaned and screamed in terror. One member of the audience who described the scene wrote that Edwards had to stop several times and ask for silence. Edwards was able to stimulate such emotion by means of vivid imagery and repetition of main points. He also relied heavily on the use of figures of speech and rhetorical devices such as similes and metaphors.

SUMMARY: This excerpt from Edwards's sermon describes God's rising anger against the sinners in the congregation. These sinners are like spiders that their angry God holds over the "wide and bottomless . . . furnace" of hell. Edwards tells his listeners that they can save their souls from eternal suffering only if they beg God's forgiveness now and experience the saving grace of conversion, which will insure them a place among the elect.

TONE: The tone of a piece of writing is the frame of mind and mood that it conveys to readers. Comparable to a speaker's tone of voice, it reveals the writer's attitude toward audience and material. Conveyed throught words, choice of details, sentence structure, punctuation, sensory images, and figurative language, tone can express anger, fear, sarcasm, pleasure, excitement, or any other human emotion or characteristic. In the following passage, which occurs after Edwards's fiery and frightening description of the Hell that awaits sinners, the Puritan preacher assumes a more restrained and moderate tone. He leads his audience from threats of the unknown to a consideration of things they are familiar with in order to undermine their complacency with their lives.

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