The Fictitious Line Between the Puritans and the Native Americans

Gabrielle Burt

American Literature                                                                                  

Mr. Robert Nagel

 3 June 2016

The Fictitious Line Between The Puritans and The Native Americans

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        When I think of a captivity narrative, I think of a story about a person taken as a captive into a culture or civilization that has different beliefs, values, and customs than the captive. This is true in a sense in Mrs. Mary Rowlandson narrative story, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, but not completely accurate.  Rowlandson’s purpose of writing her story was to express the events that took place and the experiences that she went through. I believe Mary Rowlandson’s purpose of what she wrote was to show the line of good and bad between the Puritans and the Native Americans by using ideas such as charity and moral growth.

Mary Rowlandson’s was not able to accomplish her goal of exploiting the line, and this can be shown through many subtexts in her narrative. I believe that her narrative is a bit subjective; she gives more opinions, because she is unable to state true facts. Also Mary’s tone is a little unconvincing in some parts of the story, this could also be because she wrote the story after she has been freed and already knows what the ending results are. I believe in Mary’s narrative, she was not able to say that the Native Americans are humane, due to the fact that the Puritans were at war with the Native Americans. She does show through certain subtext that the Native’s were humane.

End of introduction  

 Mary wants people to think throughout her whole story that she experiencing moral growth. In some sense she was, but I see her lose faith in God and not grow, but become weaker in some parts. Rowlandson does try to remain hopeful and trust in God throughout her whole process. This is true most of the time, but a subtext of her not following God is in the eighth remove, where Mary says, “Then also I took my Bible to read, but I found no comfort here neither, which many times I was wont to find: So eaise a thing it is with God to dry up the Streams of Scripture- comfort from us” (234). Mary is wondering why God is not helping her through her current situation, this goes against one of her purposes, which was to show moral growth and trust in God.

        One subtext that stands out to me is the confusing parts of Mary Rowlandson’s line that she tries to draw between the Native Americans and the Puritans. Throughout her story, I see many similarities between the Native Americans and the English people during this time. A theme to exemplify this would be charity.  Mary Rowlandson tries to explain how little she gets from the Native Americans, although that is not true. Mary was saying that at some points she would go days without eating, but she contradicts herself when she is eating food she had from day one.  This is talked about in the fourteenth remove, where Mary says, “I have nothing to eat by the way this day, but a few crumbs of Cake, that an Indian gave my girle the same day we were taken” (237). This subtext shows me that ever since Mary was separated from her children, she always had the chance to eat these crumbs, but always said how she had no food and was starving. Mary was almost always provided with food, shelter, and many other things.  When Mary is back with the Christian Europeans she praises that she has such great food and shelter, but ironically she was given the same treatment when she was with the Native Americans.

        Mary Rowlandson’s belief of charity and goodness is wrong. She uses irony many times in her story.  For an example of a subtext, she talks about how the Europeans give her so much charity and happiness, and the Native Americans did not. I read online a few examples of irony as a subtext, that Mary shows in narrative. Anonymous writer from Gradesaver.com states, “It is ironic that she uses such examples of kindness because she frequently found the same kindness among the Native Americans, who gave her food and shelter even though they did not know her and had few resources themselves due to the war” (Paragraph 3). This is an example of how Mary Rowlandson’s is not explaining her story as accurately as she wanted to.