On February 20th 1676 a woman by the name of Mary Rowlandson
was captured in a war know as King Phillips War. Phillip's Narragansett,
Wampanoag, and Nashaway Indians burned 1200 houses and the war killed almost
600 Englishmen and over 3, ooo Indians. Rowlandson was one of many victims that
were captured in Lancaster. For eleven weeks she was held hostage here until
she was then ransomed and released. Her experiences here inspired her to write
"A Narrative of the captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson.
. 
Rowlandson starts off her narrative in first person, where
she describes being locked behind the gates of hell with so called "black
creatures" or "Ravenous Beasts" on page 259. By excluding them
from humens and claiming them to be ravenous, she shows signs of fear and
isolation. Rowlandson makes makes the Indians out to be awful, which isn't
surprising since they have treated her awfully. For example, Rowlandson
explains how she would go days without food, she never knew when her next meal
would be. Throughout of the torture, Rowlandson nears the point of suicide, but
realizes just how lucky she is to be alive and how much she has taken for
granted. Taken her own life would be selfish.
She also gives her unconditional faith to God as she
practices the Puritan theory that he will always be there. For example, on page
261 she says that, "the Lord wounded me with one hand and healed with the other."
This shows she believes that God is here to get her through this capture and
that she should stay true to that. Rowlandson also believes that this was
punishment for not living out her Puritan life to the fullest and that everyone
needed to do so in order to avoid another Indian war like King Phillips.
Mrs. Mary Rowlandson is not the only one
with this Puritan life style. For example, a poet by the name of Anne
Bradstreet also writes about these Puritan beliefs. In "Upon the Burning
of Our House July, 1666" she writes a poem about how she will turn to God
in her times of need instead of acting in anger. Here she agrees with
Rowlandson and Puritans and believe that God is always there to lean on. This
relating to Rowlandson when she gives her undeniable faith to God and trusts
that she will make it through her awful experiences in captivity, because God
is with her.
Works Cited
Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine. The
Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Print. "
"Verses upon the Burning of Our
House." Wikisource, the Free Online Library. Wikipedia, 2012. Web. 28 Jan.
2017.
The work of Mary Rowlandson gives the reader an inside view of being held captive by raiding Indians. Throughout your blog, you could add more details and elaborate on a few more topics. I agree with your statement about how she refers to the Indians as “black creatures” or “ravenous beasts” which shows she feared them and thought of them more as evil creatures than humans. In the paragraph about her unconditional faith in God, you could add how one of the Indians gave Rowlandson a bible, and the little bit of kindness from the Indians and the readings of the bible that brought her comfort and strength.
ReplyDeleteAnne Bradstreet was a good person to compare Mary Rowlandson with because they both wrote about their children. Mary Rowlandson wrote of how she cared for her ailing child and when that child died, how she was not afraid of laying next to her dead child but God gave her the strength to carry on and not end her own life. She wrote about seeing her other children and was not allowed to talk to them and she didn’t know when she would see them again but God showed mercy by allowing her to talk to her son who she had not seen since the beginning of her captivity. Anne Bradstreet wrote poems about her grandchildren that had died and about her children that had left the nest and she did not know when she would see them again.
Mary Rowlandson’s narrative was very easily understandable, and I think you relayed that message very well. She had great description and really made her reader feel for her. All of the examples you gave were great ways for the reader to connect. I enjoyed that you brought kept bringing the point back to Rowlandson’s Puritan beliefs. However, one detail you mention I would have to argue. You stated that at the beginning Rowlandson starts off already in captivity, “locked behind the gates of hell.” Where in fact, from what I interpreted, she started off still in her village/township watching her neighbors and family slaughtered by the natives. In your third paragraph quote Rowlandson “the Lord wounded me with one hand and healed with the other” (261). I took this to mean that Rowlandson “wounded” her to make Rowlandson realize her mistakes and sins, but He still loved her enough to help her find the way back to the Puritan way of life, to repent. But overall I thought you addressed the topics of Rowlandson’s narrative exceptionally well.
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