Ronald Wyscaver Shanda Easterday LITR220 July 18, 2015 Short Answer Essay Assignment 1. Based on the readings from weeks one and two, discuss the images of America the European writers constructed to promote colonization and settlement. What kinds of unique natural resources and environmental factors did they extol in their accounts of the New World? Relate these images to natural resources and environmental factors today.…
Mary Rowlandson, a Puritan woman with a strong religious ethic was captured by the Indians or as she describes them “savages” during the King Phillips war. Mary was faced with severe amount of pain and suffering and was held hostage and stripped away from her basic necessities. Her children were also captured and separated from her, sold or bought by other Indians. Throughout her narrative “The Sovereignty and goodness of God” Mary dealt with unremarkable sufferings however, she remained sanguine about the difficulties she encountered, portraying her hardship and misfortunes as a test from God. After Mary survives the terrible conditions she feels blessed and very thankful that she has finally escaped those treacherous Indians and has returned…
This essay summarizes the key aspects of Rowlandson's captivity story; the reasons behind her captivity; how she juxtaposes the bible and her experiences; the trials and tribulations that she had to confront in the hands of her captors; the type of succor that she received during her moments of crisis; her attitude towards her Native Americans captors; the culture, traditions and attitude of the her captors namely the Algokian Indians; the hardships the Indians had to endure at the hands the colonists; my thoughts on her narrative…
Captivity narratives are written by those captured by their enemies. They are considered enemies based on their beliefs and views to be uncivilized. The Mary Rowlandson’s Captivity narrative holds a strong importance in early American history. During this time these types of narratives are allowing us to take a look at our colonial America culture by someone who was there. There are apparent themes in this captivity narrative such as the uncertainty of life. While showing part of her life, through her Puritan beliefs and faith of God, by Rowlandson tells us her story. It expresses her point of views on the way she felt, and lived through a time in history.…
The captivities of Mary Rowlandson and Equiano parallel each other, but they also have differences that can be seen throughout their journeys. During Mary's captivity, she lost her daughter from wounds sustained during their capture. Equiano also saw and experienced death, while aboard a slave ship. The slaves died of infection and some by the crewmembers of the ship. Their emotions through the experience were similar. They both felt grief-stricken, Mary because her daughter died, her son was wondering the wilderness, and her other daughter was not allowed to see her. Equiano was grief stricken because his sister was taken away from him and he thought the strange men aboard the ship would eat him. They are also alike in the way they were assimilated into the cultures of their captors. In the beginning of Rowlandson considered her captors to be miserable people. By the end of the excerpt, she was referring to their home as her own. She was became a member of their society, to the point where they would let her go places on her own, and trust she would come back. In the beginning of Equiano's captivity he was just a slave from the interior of Africa, he was fearful that the crewmembers of the slave ships were going to eat him. While aboard the slave ship, he began to learn the language of the crewmembers. Which is a big step in the whole integration process. He was beginning to get along with the crew who beat slaves and through them over board. He was becoming like them. They both began to see the captor's culture as an alternative to the way they were living. They were very similar in the way they dealt with death and their ability to accept.…
Throughout Mary Rowlandson Story, The Sovereignty and Goodness of god, Rowlandson shares her experience of being captured by Native Americans. Of course it is an unpleasant experience for Rowlandson. Although this Narrative is told from a puritans point of view, one must also consider seeing the opposing view, and that is the Native Americans point of view. Yes, the Native Americans did assassin many white settlers and kept some hostage, but they were not just doing this because native americans were pure evil. They did it because they wanted revenge for what the white Settlers had done to them. Before the Native Americans started attacking white settlers, we have to understand that the white settlers did way more to disturb the Native American…
Mary Rowlandson who wrote A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson described her first person experience she had with Native Americans. She depicts the events as would be seen by an outside observer which become partly biased due to the emotions she felt during captivity. Her story takes place during King Philip’s War, a territorial battle between Native Americans and English settlers. Mary and her children were captured and taken as prisoners by Native Americans in order to be ransomed off. Mary was later sold to a neighboring Indian tribe which she obtained a bible and allowed her to practice religion. Mary’s strong faith in Christianity allowed her to survive her arduous and emotional journey.…
Mary Rowlandson (1636-1711) a puritan women, held as a prisoner by the Native Americans and forced to travel, “some 150 miles, from Lancaster to Menamaset then north to Northfield and across the Connecticut river.”(10) was not a writer however had her book, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson published. The book was released for the, “public at the earnest desire of some friends, and for the benefit of the afflicted”(5-6) and Young Goodman Brown, a fictional character created by Nathaniel Hawthorne, was written because a few male puritans wanted to publish a story to open up societies eyes and live in a more patriarchal society. Regardless of being a fictional character or a nonfiction, we get presented evidence in which both individuals experience problems that at the time the puritan society could relate too.…
In A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, Mary Rowlandson, a Puritan woman, deplores her captors entirely at first, but in retrospect, she develops a liking for them, and treats them with neighborly respect as well as appreciation for their generosity. While Mary Rowlandson and the Indians were visiting King Philip, Rowlandson develops amicable relations with some of her captors, in which both her and the Indians benefit from:…
mary rowlandson believed that god sent her to the captivity, so she could talk to people about how god is there for everyone no matter what it is.…
The mentality that existed amongst Puritans that sought to account for God 's reasons for affliction by captivity was that it was His punishment. Thus their subsequent redemption was viewed as His mercy. They saw the many occurrences of captivities as a warning that all of New England must heed the lessons to be learned by captivity or they will continue to be afflicted with suffering. The narratives themselves not only revealed the history of the Indian wars against the people of New England, namely Puritans or settlers of the seventeenth century, but also revealed much about the Puritan way of thought.…
In order to be accepted by Puritan she first disguises her feelings of the Native by using terms like "murderous wretches"(68) and "merciless heathen"(69) to refer to the Natives.. To grab the attention of the reader through the full description of her situation and used such narrative as, ", the Indians shot so thick that the bullets rattled against the house as if one had taken an handful of stones and threw them so that we were fain to give back."(Rowlandson 68). Rowlandson intended to lure her Puritan readers by first depicting the Natives as beasts which in turn led the reader's interest of her accounts on. In order to justify her "boldness" she would mention the Lord's name like so, "Oh, the doleful sight that now was to behold at this house! Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolation He has made in the earth.' Of thirty-seven persons who were in this one house none escaped either present death or bitter captivity save only one,"(69). This upcoming particular piece of text, she specifically shows that she is human and chose her life over an orthodox Puritan perspective. The quotation also signifies her slight affiliation with the Natives by mentioning "we". Rowlandson writes,…
In the beginning of her captivity, Rowlandson is scared, angry and hungry. As she sees her friends dying, she claims the brutality is “like a company of sheep torn by wolves” (70). During this portion of her narrative, the Indian attacks cause extreme chaos and devastation to the town of Lancaster. By comparing Indians to wolves, Rowlandson introduces the idea that the Puritans are the complete opposite of the Indians; Puritans are civilized and domesticated, while the Indians are savage animals. She describes the savages rejoicing over the puritans’ demise: “ Oh the roaring and singing and dancing, and yelling of those black creatures….” (71) This is an example where she uses words that she considers to be uncivilized. She is not only implying that the Indians are not civilized people, but also are not even human beings they are “black creatures”. Overall her language is essentially dehumanizing the Indians, and is extremely…
As the Europeans journeyed to the Americas, they expected to visit a world completely free from British dominance, but what they did not expect is the adversities they would face when coexisting with the Native Americans. A recount of Mary Rowlandson’s experience when dealing with the Native Americans is told in her narrative The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, where she describes not only the cruel and animalistic nature of the Native Americans by whom she is held captive for eleven long weeks, but also her revelation of the Lord’s almighty power and the diminishing influence he is having over the New England societies. The narrative begins when Mary’s town of Lancaster is raided by Native Americans, and she is one of few that are taken captive along with her three children. As she is forced to bear witness to the death of her youngest child, starved, and tortured by the Native Americans, she confronts the issue by realizing that everything she once had is gone. But somehow she finds comfort in knowing that the Lord is by her side and he has a purpose in her suffering. Furthermore Mary Rowlandson’s use Biblical excerpts and things she encounters while in captivity, allow for her to reinvigorate her devotion to God, and therefore allow her to survive with the Native Americans and eventually leave and return to what is left of her life in New England.…
References: to native Americans demonstrate the mentality of early American towards civilizations that lived here long before their colonization. In Rip Van Winkle, Irving provides examples of the change of attitudes of colonist before and after the revolutionary war. When Rip wakes up from his 20 year nap he is confronted by the villagers and they ask him what is his “role”, he makes the mistake of saying he is loyal to England and therefore, he is accused of being a spy . Their accusations illustrate the beginning of individual freedom that they now had after winning their Revolution. Hawthorne uses Goodman Brown to proof that the puritans in the village were not really pure. He demonstrates how the puritans would violently pursue people who had other belief systems. For instance, the devil tells Goodman how his past relatives had lashed Quaker women and set fire to an Indian village. To further demonstrate this Brown was giving the ability to witness first hand every sin that his puritan brothers had committed. By the end of both stories the inner self of the characters had undergone a major transformation. The previous role that they had in their earlier communities and lives had also transformed. Brown was aware of the sins of his neighbor, therefore his beliefs about his community had radically changed . His relationship with his wife is no longer a union of love but more of an obligation that he had. The things that the devil had shown Brown had impend him from moving on.…