What Is The Last Lesson In Mary Rowlandson's Captivity

Food is an essential thing needed to survive. In A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson; Rowlandson faced many challenges that she had to overcome. During her captivity, her biggest challenge was finding food every day. Her captors’ food was different compared to the food she was used to in her Puritan society in Europe. This forced her to adapt to her captors’ eating habits if she wanted any food. Although, these eating habits went against Rowlandson’s religious beliefs, she realized that she was willing to eat nearly anything to make it out of captivity alive. Rowlandson’s attitude towards her captors’ food changes drastically over the course of her captivity because she wants to survive. In the beginning of Rowlandson’s captivity, she went long periods of time without eating any food because she was disgusted by it

She confesses to God by saying, “for I must say with him, Father I have sinned against Heaven and in thy sight” (Rowlandson 315). She asks God for forgiveness of her actions and choices she has made during her captivity. In her defense, she had no other option if she wanted to survive but, it is hard to tell if she is being sincere about asking for forgiveness because the next day she eats a fawn. As they were travelling, “they killed a deer, with a young one in her, they gave me a piece of the fawn, and it was so young and tender, that one might eat the bones as well as the flesh and yet I thought it very good” (Rowlandson 316). She has driven herself to a lower level by eating a piece of a fawn, that they pulled out of the deer’s stomach. At the beginning of her captivity, she would have never thought of eating a fawn but, now she enjoys it and eats the bones with it. This goes to show that in times of dire hunger, Rowlandson was willing to eat anything to