Analysis Of The Second Voice By Mary Rowlandson

Mary Rowlandson explains her experiences using a first person voice. She goes through her experiences both telling what happened and also explaining what was going on in her mind. The reading was depressing as Rowlandson describes what she and her family went through after being taken from their home. I feel as if Rowlandson may have exaggerated with how some things played out, or the optimist inside of me wants to believe that she did. It is hard to read some of the text, because it is saddening. It is not a fiction a book where someone dies, but a true (somewhat) description of an encounter that someone in the very same state that I live in, went through, which makes it more upsetting for me.

“At length I took it off the horse, and carried
Then they set me upon a horse with my wounded child in my lap, and there being no furniture upon the horse's back, as we were going down a steep hill we both fell over the horse's head, at which they, like inhumane creatures,laughed, and rejoiced to see it … (pg 7)”.

The image that this text, taken from the Second Remove, creates in my mind is a horrific one. It is hard to wrap my mind around a time when this was something that happening in Maine and that people would “rejoice” at something like that. The text lends itself easily to create images while you read the text, therefore the reader can start to “see” the text in their mind like they are watching it as a movie, instead of just reading it.

Part of me, which I cannot help but feel bad about, feels as if Rowlandson was a bit sassy sometimes when speaking with her captives, which lead to her getting hurt in occasions that if she had not talked back, she might have not gotten hit. I realize that it is practically impossible for me to judge how she acted in the situation, because I would have definitely fared worse than she did, but while reading, there are just some points where I stop and think, you should not have said
I complained it was too heavy, whereupon she gave me a slap in the face, and bade me go; (pg. 24)”

In the twelfth remove, Rowlandson is leaving with her captures to another location and complains that her pack is too heavy. It could be that she uses the word “complain” that causes me to stop and wonder why should would complain to her captors. Obviously they do not care about her or her well being, so what would complaining do. Nothing. All it got her was a slap in the face, and she probably still had to carry the pack. Honestly, if it was me in her situation, I would not have made it that far, but still, one should not complain to their captors, it just sounds like a bad idea.

In the end of the reading on the last page, Rowlandson that she knew that people suffer from afflictions and that she was bound to have something happen to her eventually because she had lived such a nice life.

“The portion of some is to have their afflictions by drops, now one drop and then another; but the dregs of the cup, the wine of astonishment, like a sweeping rain that leaveth no food, did the Lord prepare to be my portion. Affliction I wanted, and affliction I