Narrative of the Captivity of Mary Rowlandson

A detailed Summary of Narrative of the Captivity of Mary Rowlandson

The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson is a personal account, written by Mary Rowlandson in 1682, of what life in captivity was like. Her narrative of her captivity by Indians became popular in both American and English literature. Mary Rowlandson basically lost everything by an Indian attack on her town Lancaster, Massachusetts in 1675; where she is then held prisoner and spends eleven weeks with the Wampanoag Indians as they travel to safety. What made this piece so popular in both England and America was not only because of the great narrative skill used be Mary Rowlandson, but also the intriguing personality shown by the complicated character who has a struggle in recognizing her identity. The reoccurring idea of food and the word remove, used as metaphors throughout the narrative, could be observed to lead to Mary Rowlandson's repression of anger, depression, and realization of change throughout her journey and more so at the end of it.

The idea of food is constantly used throughout the Mary Rowlandson's narrative, because it was the only essential need that she was concerned everyday to survive. Before the captivity, Mary Rowlandson was an innocent housewife that knew nothing of what su

Mary Rowlandson endures a great amount of pain throughout the whole story. She had many reasons to be angry, hurt, and depressed as she lost everything in her life. Towards the end of the book she admits, "when everybody is sleeping, my eyes are weeping"(329). We can see the repression she experiences at the end when she can't even sleep because of all the sufferings she had experience. There she basically admits that she was not truly happy. This could have been the crucial point in the narrative where her feelings of being angry, hurt, and depressed throughout the whole journey have been build up so long and so much inside of her that she finally has a nervous break down. Therefore, Rowlandson is seen through the metaphoric ideas of food and the word remove to have not only repressed her feelings of anger and depression, but more importantly that at the end her ideals and identity have changed from before the captivity.

ffering was like. She has always had plenty of food, shelter, and clothing. As a reader, you can see how her views towards the Indian's choice of food gradually changes throughout her journey, and how it is related to the change in her own self. After tragically losing all of her family and her home, she had to repress her feelings to move on with the Indians to survive. She described the Wampanoag Indians at "Ravenous beasts" when she was captivated, which shows the anger that she felt towards the Indians at that time. The Indian's diet was really different from the whites. Rowlandson hardly ate a thing the first week she was held captive. She described the Indian's food as "filthy trash", and she "could starve and die before [she] ate such things" (306). As Rowlandson's hunger began to eat her up inside out, she had to repress her spoiled taste and anger in order to survive. During the seventh remove you can see her views of the Indian's food change as she "got two ears of Indian corn" (307) and didn't want to give it up. When one Indian asked her "can you eat horse liver?" (307), Rowlandson replied that she would try "if he would give a piece" (307). As she ate it, sh

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Approximate Word count = 1430
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English