Postcolonialism, Hope Leslie & Ramona

So... I'm writing a paper on Hope Leslie and Ramona and I find myself writing this. Craziness.

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It is a compelling concept that Hope Leslie and Ramona both allude to imperialism and class/race via religion, considering that if the main characters from each were ever introduced, they would hate each other due to their religious, territorial, and racial differences. The reader sees the justification of Mexican Protestant imperialist values beset upon the Natives through Ramona—only to then view American imperialist values beset upon Natives (and then eventually Mexicans)through Puritan Hope Leslie. It is, then, a consideration to be made on whether the understanding of either novel’s is—or even can be—legitimate in its claims of righteousness. The reader finds that the limitations of a religion-supported imperialist system start at the point that another competing set of values is found; the limitation is competition. If both religions use elitist rhetoric, any competition—even from the same branch of faith (Puritan vs. Protestant, yet both Christian)—creates immediate strife and potential “heresy”. This limit, then, presents the necessity of further imperialism to eradicate the threat of heresy and conversion.

It shows that perhaps any political system, including religion, that is based on the egotistical assumption of self-elitism is either bound to imperialize or at least create conflict. The limits of such belief systems, because they are ideas and not material things like the usual conquests of land or currency, are not bound by the physical limits of temporality. Instead, they are fought by potentially countless people over potentially limitless spaces of time. This is proven true in the modern world, as any might see that communism has been in strife with capitalism, Judaism with Christianity and Islam. Indeed, the only hope for the removal of an assumed threat of heresy, or the like is either the recognition that nothing is perfectly elite or “right” and to accept differences—or the military assertion of righteousness by the total annihilation of the opposition.
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