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The Narrative Of The Captivity Mary Rowlandson Summary

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Megan Rochelle Professor Devin Pizzino English 10 November 2015 Title The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson is a personal account, written by Mary Rowlandson in 1682. In her accounts, Rowlandson tells the readers of what life in captivity was truly like for her. Mary Rowlandson ultimately lost everything by an Indian attack on her town of Lancaster, Massachusetts in 1675. After the attacks, she is then held prisoner and spends eleven weeks with the Wampanoag Indians as they travel to safety. What is different about these accounts is that Rowlandson truly opens up to the reader about the hardships that she faced. Rowlandson shows a captivating personality as she struggles to recognize her identity. The repetition of the ideas of food, along with the use of the word …show more content…

Anytime that Rowlandson and the Indians move, it is titled by Rowlandson as a “remove”. Within this narrative, there are twenty different removes. That being said, it means that Rowlandson and the Indians had moved to twenty different places throughout Rowlandson’s captivity. This is ironic, because throughout each journey, Rowlandson is “removing” part of who she use to be, as she assimilates more into the Indian tribe and culture. At the beginning of the narrative, Rowlandson had to remove herself from the life that she was use to, including all of the ideals and values that she grew up on. Suffering from depression and anger, Rowlandson used the words of God to “remove: herself from them. For example, in the fourth remove, Rowlandson states that: “thus saith the Lord, refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears, for thy work shall be rewarded, and they shall come again from the land of the enemy”. In each remove, Rowlandson learns something new through proof that supports God’s word. Because of this, each remove can symbolize a move in a closer relationship to

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