Christopher Columbus Literary Response

Steve Epting
AP English
Literary Response: Christopher Columbus
This reading spoke about the voyager, Christopher Columbus. It spoke about his four voyages and everything that he went through such as being arrested and put in chains and every island or continent that he explored. The text portrayed him as a person that loved to travel and someone that was eager to find a new place to settle. In the letters, Columbus described the islands, which he found, so well that I had a vision of what the island looked like. The diction was perfect in this reading. Many descriptive adjectives and details were used. The only question I had was how did the letters that he wrote get back to whoever he wrote them to? I was wondering that when I read the article because there was no mailing system.
This reading was very interesting to me. The tone of this text was pithy and bittersweet. It was pithy and bittersweet because it was precisely meaningful and it wasn’t rambling on and on and, to me, it showed a mixture of pain and pleasure because it know he was frustrated and tired from all of that traveling across the big oceans. This reading appealed to ethos because it appealed to the right audience. The vocabulary wasn’t too hard to understand and it didn’t appeal to your emotions. My favorite line in the reading was, “It is well to give to God that which is His due and to Caesar that which belongs to him.” This line is actually in the Bible and it is teaching Christians that God wants you tithe and start a relationship with Him. But, the line was written to Ferdinand and Isabella on his fourth voyage. The line was placed there to his opinion toward his discoveries.
The author was trying to show us the true Christopher, based on his journal entries. He also states that he is not doing these voyages for the wealth and the fame; he’s doing this because he has a purpose on his life. These entries told us that he was excited about finding the new land and it also told us that he was a very good writer. Columbus shows us in the journal entries that the voyages weren’t easy, but he still made it to find the “promised land.”
In conclusion, the author told us about the voyages he took and what he went through. Christopher Columbus was a trailblazer that made a mark on this country.