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Mary Rowlandson Captivity Summary

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Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson is a text that describes the experiences of Mary Rowlandson during her captivity by the Native Americans in the King Phillips war. The details about the capture which took place in 1676 are recorded in her diary accounts which were written a few years after she was released. The captivity lasted about eleven weeks and is accounted in the diaries. Rowlandson specifically believes that her experiences were related to the Bible and that the capture was a trial from God which she had to endure in order to survive and remain a true Christian woman who is suitable for the then puritan society (Harris 12). She judges the Native Americans from the religious perspectives which create an obvious bias against their culture. This paper will discuss how the narrator promotes the social and religious interactions between the various groups in the American society at the time of King Phillips war. …show more content…

The narrative offers an account which can be used to describe the particularly puritan society based on the ideals of Christianity and the European culture. It offers a female perspective of the Native Americans who showed no respect to the other religious groups. The narrator makes serious observation about her captors noting the cultural differences as well as expectations from one another in the society. However, prejudice is evident throughout the text which makes the narratives unreliable in their details besides being written after the event had already happened which means that the narrator had was free to alter the events to create an account that favored her. Nonetheless, the narrative remains factually and historically useful in providing the insights into the tactics used by the Native Americans

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As the sun prepared to rise on the tenth day of February in the year 1675, life for the settlers of the town of Lancaster, Massachusetts was about to change forever. One of those settlers was a wife and mother by the name of Mary Rowlandson, soon to be taken prisoner by the aggressors, who would spend the next eleven weeks as a captive. Her story, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, is the harsh tale of struggle, loss, and hunger. Mary Rowlandson, like many of the settlers of the Puritan colony of Lancaster, was a devout Christian. Mary Rowlandson’s recollection of captivity is a story of the sovereignty of God, faith based hope, and the strength in perseverance.

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Later that winter the ‘praying Indians” of Massachusetts had their feelings of uncertain. A certain young woman by the name of Mary Rowlandson was being held captive. During her captivity she had gotten into close contact with Philip (Metacom) himself. She had reported in her journals “In my travels an Indian came to me and told me if I were willing, him and his squaw Would run away and go home along with me”. Early April of 1676, a praying Indian by the name of Tom Dublot, met with Philip to talk about her release.

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“Now is the dreadful hour come, that I have often heard of (in time of war, as it was the case of others), but now mine eyes see it,” writes Mary Rowlandson in her true-to-life account of her captivity among the Native Americans, and the attack that changed her life (258). This attack, which was a part of a series of battles that occurred during King Phillip’s War against the colonists in 1675, resulted in the loss of Rowlandson’s family, friends, community, and home. In A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, she chronicles this period of fearing for her life that lasted eleven weeks until she was granted the freedom to return to what remained of her previous existence, with only some sense of her former self

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“A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mary Rowlandson”: The Influence of Intercultural Contact on Puritan Beliefs “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson” by Mary Rowlandson gives a first person perspective into the circumstances of captivity and cultural interaction and an insight to Rowlandson 's attitude towards the Indians, both before and after she was held captive. Rowlandson displays a change in her perception of "civilized" and "savage", in spite of the fact that her overall world view does not alter. It should be covered below that in the following Essay, since the author and the narrator are the same person, will not be individually distinguished. For one thing, Mary Rowlandson provides all the conventions typical of a Puritan perspective.

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