Identify the features of Puritan plain style in Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation and explain how his narrative interprets historical events as evidence of divine providence.
William Bradford governed Plymouth Colony for decades and, years after the events, wrote Of Plymouth Plantation, a history of the colony's founding. His prose is a textbook case of Puritan plain style: short, direct, unadorned sentences, plain diction over ornament, and a consistent refusal to dramatize for its own sake. This was a deliberate choice, not a lack of skill -- Puritan writers distrusted elaborate language as a form of vanity that could distract from the truth being told.
Bradford's history is also a providential narrative: one that reads specific events as evidence of God's active involvement in human affairs. When he describes the brutal first winter, in which nearly half the colonists died before spring, he frames the survivors' endurance as evidence of divine favor and testing, not simple chance or luck. This lens shapes the entire history: storms, illnesses, and strokes of good fortune are all read as meaningful signs rather than neutral events. A modern reader does not have to share that theological framework to recognize it as the organizing structure of the text -- understanding it is necessary to understanding why Bradford chooses to tell his history the way he does.
Mastery looks like: They can identify specific features of plain style in a passage and explain how a providential framework shapes which events Bradford emphasizes and how he interprets them.
Common stumbles: Mistaking plain style for a lack of skill or craft; reading a providential history as if it were a neutral, purely factual account rather than one shaped by a specific interpretive framework.