Columbus's report of the first and third voyages -- literary analysis, themes, style and devices, key places

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Click here for a summary of Columbus's report on the first voyage
Click here for Columbus's original report text

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Themes

  • Praising the king and queen
  • Praising God and thanking God
  • Naming islands
  • Taking captives
  • Natural descriptions
  • Giving and receiving from the Indians
  • Shy natives
  • Generosity of natives
  • Fostering trade and good relations
  • Missionary desire
  • Expectation of monstrosities
  • Bragging

and the eternal God, our Lord, Who gives to all those who walk in His way triumph over things which appear to be impossible, and this was notably one

  • Importance of evidence
  • Sexual imagery- the earth is a nipple (to be conquered)
  • Scientific theorizing


Style and devices

  • First-person narrator (letter)
  • Sucking up to the king and queen
  • Run-on sentences

And in it, although of all I have taken possession for their highnesses and all are more richly endowed than I know how, or am able, to say, and I hold them all for their highnesses, so that they may dispose of them as, and as absolutely as, of the kingdoms of Castile, in this Espanola, in the situation most convenient and in the best position for the mines of gold and for all intercourse as well with the mainland here as with that there, belonging to the Grand Khan, where will be great trade and gain, I have taken possession of a large town, to which I gave the name Villa de Navidad, and in it I have made fortifications and a fort, which now will by this time be entirely finished, and I have left in it sufficient men for such a purpose with arms and artillery and provisions for more than a year, and a fusta, and one, a master of all sea craft, to build others, and great friendship with the king of that land, so much so, that he was proud to call me, and to treat me as, a brother.

  • Some pomposity


People and places

  • Canary Islands
  • Indies
  • Guanahani
  • Catayo
  • Castelano
  • Avan
  • Spain
  • Espanola
  • Colibre
  • Fuenterabia
  • Vizcaya
  • Navidad
  • Azores
  • Ptolemy

Christopher Columbus. Image source

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