In this passage, Christopher Columbus was going on his first voyage and he wanted approval form the king and queen of Spain. He won the support of the Spanish monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, for his expedition to the West Indies. He had a series of four voyages, which followed with a series of disasters and disenchantments (Christopher Columbus). Due to these unfortunate events, he had to return to Spain to clear his name and any charges placed on him. There were documents about Columbus’ journey and also written by him. A letter was sent by Columbus to Luis de Santangel, a royal official and a supporter of his venture. There was also another letter written by Christopher Columbus, given to Ferdinand and Isabella Regarding his fourth voyage (Christopher Columbus).
In this passage there were things that were very foreign and confusing to me as the reader. Both of the letters was written in the 15th Century so it was hard to understand but still informational. Obviously the intended audience, for the first letter, was the minister who was reading it. In the first letter, he was informing Luis de Santangel that he has crossed in to the Indies. In this letter there weren’t any appeal to pathos and logos, but there was an appeal to ethos. The writer expressed credibility which further explanation in footnotes. For example, when the word Isla Juana was used at the bottom of the page was the real name meaning or changed to what is now Cuba. There was some sentence structure I picked up. One was a complex sentence. For example, I understood sufficiently from other Indians, whom I had already taken, that this land was nothing, but an island. The word choice was confusing being that I never understood the entire passage. I did see a good use of adjectives used in his letters such as, marvelous, lofty, many, and limitless just to name a few (Christopher Columbus). There were two words being repeated more then once in the second letter and that was your highness. This was repeated multiple times because he was showing respect to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. A lot of important words were used in the text and they were italicized.
The main idea of this entire passage was that Christopher Columbus gained access and permission to the voyages and completed all of them. The writer gives a reason for someone to believe this because the letters were written by the subject itself. The major arguments in this passage was that he wanted to inform the subjects he were writing to about his experiences and how and what he did and accomplished on each voyage. The tone of this passage was an exciting tone due to the fact that he was telling them about his experiences. I didn’t notice any uses of figurative language. Columbus’ intentions were to inform his audience about his expeditions and excursions and that is what he accomplished. The writer arranged his ideas in a narration. In the beginning, it started off with an introduction, and then later followed with the story in sequence.
In his letters he took responsibility for someone else’s discovery instead of giving credit on finding something new to him rather then new completely. Obviously, we know that this discovery was an accident and history from the past say that he discovered the so called “New World”. He also stated in his letter that, having seen that there was nothing new and that the coast was carrying me northwards, which was not the course I wished to take because winter was now drawing on and I proposed to make to the south, and as moreover the wind was carrying me forward, I decided to wait no longer and I turned round and made for a fine harbor (Christopher Columbus). This obviously stated that the path he had taken was not the course he wanted to go, but what he had wished to take since winter was on its way.I can say there hasn’t been text that I have read such as this. I really don’t expect to read anything like this again because no one was intelligent like Christopher Columbus. When I read this, it was something new because I always learn the basis of Christopher Columbus and not what was really important.
