The Letters of christopher Columbus

Simone Sutton

08/28/09

AP English III

The Letters of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus, the man most famous for “discovering” the Americas. By now most people know that this event was a complete accident. He was actually looking for a trade route to the Indies but instead he ran into America. In simplest terms Christopher Columbus was a failure. It just seems like luck that Christopher Columbus made one good achievement that overshadowed his other failures.

Columbus had a string of unrelenting bad luck after his discovery on America. Apparently his luck has never been that good. It seems he became an adventurer in order to make it big. He wasn’t born into a rich family, but he was born near a sea which could have been the source for his love of sea travel.

The first letter Columbus sent was very optimistic seeing as he found a very beautiful continent. He is going around naming all of the islands that he sees after the Spanish monarch and other people of importance. This letter though sounds to me like he is sucking up to Isabella and Ferdinand. Every other word is an attestment to their greatness. But a man like Columbus would be grateful for being given the opportunity to travel the sea in search of riches.

The second letter must have been written after all of Columbus’s problems have started because it tell only of how much trouble he is in , and him begging Isabella and Ferdinand to get him out of it. Columbus is not a young man anymore and probably doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life in jail or exiled or on the run from whatever trouble he has gotten himself into.