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A Narrative Of The Captivity And Restoration Of Mary Rowlandson Summary

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During King Phillip’s War on February 10th a group of Wampanoag Native Americans attacked and burned the settlement of Lancaster. A colonial woman named Mary Rowlandson was captured and held for eleven weeks by the native group as ransom. After her release she proceeded to write one of the first bestsellers in American history, detailing her capture within the pages. Her work is titled “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson” and it allows us to greater understand what American’s were reading at this point in time, and helps to provide a social and historical context when it comes to early American literature. Split into twenty “removes” that act as chapters; Rowland’s story is one of a journey. Her struggles …show more content…

No matter the circumstance of her travels she keeps coming back to the idea that God had a hand in every experience and decision she went through. This essentially goes back to her Puritan upbringing and the idea that God creates everything for a certain purpose. While spending time with the native people she also slowly began to realize the thin gap between them and the colonial people. While certain day-to-day activities were not exactly similar, she took notice to some praying and the occasional use of similar clothing for dress. Towards the end of her capture the native food and gesture of the Wampanoag people became comforting to her. At the time, her eventual accepting of the native people spoke volumes. In Rowlandon’s concluding paragraph she states, “Yet I see, when God calls a person to anything, and through never so many difficulties, yet He is fully able to carry them through and make them see, and say they have been gainers thereby. And I hope I can say in some measure, as David did, “It is good for me that I have been afflicted.” With her journey done, and come full circle, her Puritan ways allow her to accept that God wanted this journey to

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