Captivity Narrative Essay

Narratives about captivity have often intrigued readers in Western culture. Mary Rowlandson and Olaudah Equiano’s stories helped pave the way for stereotypes within both European and white culture; teaching Europeans to see Native Americans as cruel and allowing whites to see the evil in the American slave market. In both “A Narrative of the Captivity” and “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano,” Mary Rowlandson and Olaudah Equiano share their individual stories of being kidnapped and enslaved. Though the two narrators share similarities in their personal accounts of being held captive, either individual’s reaction sheds light on the true purpose of both Rowlandson and Equiano’s writing.

Slavery, Hardships, and Freedom? This book describes a day in a life of Frederick Douglass. In 2013, I saw a movie called ’12 Years A Slave’ reading this book and watching the movie was eye-opening for me. ‘My Freedom’ in this book explains that young Douglass suffered as a slave, when which he failed to flee his ‘Bondage’, then eventually he escapes that life. Douglass’s story continues to reverberate throughout his life and the American Dream that he conquered all the obstacles that he overcame and reached his goal. He shows us that you can achieve your goals if you strive for it. “My Bondage and My Freedom” is an eye-opener for your life and you can compare your life and see how you can make a change

This week’s reading focused on prisons. The Society of Captives was written by Gresham M. Sykes in 1958. He conducted a study on a maximum security prison in New Jersey. Chapter 1 focused on the prison and its settings. The author goes into detail about the size of the cells and what the prison actually looks like. He also writes about how the prisoner is no longer seen as man but as a number. My Sunday school teacher visits prisons to teach about the bible. He has commented to me that is exactly how certain correction officers see the prisoners. They are nothing but a number to some individuals. This can lower their self-image (Sykes, 1958).

When someone hears the phrase “held captive”, usually wild animals come to mind. No one ever really thinks of humans as being held captive. However, in Daniel Quinn’s 1992 novel Ishmael, the character of Ishmael tries teaching the story’s narrator to think of ways in which he has been held captive by both internal and external forces. Society has a way of making people feel like they need to do certain things to be successful, so basically society is holding people captive by holding them back from living the way they want to. As humans, we also have ways of holding ourselves captive. Ishmael compares our captivity with a form of blindness. Throughout the novel, Quinn helps the reader realize what they are blind to and what they are

The Unredeemed Captive published by Vintage on March 28, 1995. The Unredeemed Captive - A Family Story by John Demos was about Eunice Williams’ being held captive by the resident Indians and the fight her family endured in order to go home. Eunice was captured together with her family along with hundreds of other residents in and around Deerfield. Demos, seems very knowledgeable of the Deerfield raid. He also uses impeccable detail on the captives’ march to Canada. Demos, also does a great job of depicting the experience of being a captive. It also helped to understand the story better when Demos explained further why the Indians were victorious in capturing the villagers. As well, he described the Kahnawake Indian village where Eunice

In this piece of evidence from an modern day example, it talks about how when black slaves escaped the ones that were caught were interrogated and harmed

How were blacks set free? Some bought their own freedom from their masters, but as time passed, this type of exchange became quite rare. Most became

Dugard's book demonstrates the experiences she faced in captivity and show her personal story about sexual abuse. Jaycee Dugard was kidnapped and forced in captivity for eighteen years. Dugard was locked up in a soundproof concealed room and was often raped. As a result of her alienation towards the outside world, Jaycee felt unloved, fearful and depressed. Even though a forced rape causes a negative impact on a person's brain, Dugard kept a positive attitude to surpass the negative situation.

(1) The use of natural dialect can be seen throughout the slave narrative interviews through words and phrases used that were common during the period of slavery, but are not used today. One example can be seen in the dialect used by former slave Mama Duck, “Battlin stick, like dis. You doan know what a battling stick is? Well, dis here is one.” Through incomplete sentences and unknown words the natural dialect of the time can be seen. Unfamiliar words such as shin-plasters, meaning a piece of paper currency or a promissory note regarded as having little or no value. Also, geechees, used to describe a class of Negroes who spoke Gullah. Many examples can be seen throughout the “Slave Narratives”

Footnote: Jesse Sage and Liora Kasten, eds, Enslaved: True Stories of Modern Day Slavery (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006), 68.

i) Mary Rowlandson's A Narrative of the Captivity and A Restoration is a captivity narrative. Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is a slave narrative. While they are considered distinctive genres, they share some characteristics. Look at the excerpts you have from them in your reading. How are they similar? How are they different? Be sure to provide evidence from the texts to support your conclusions. Answer the above questions in a 1,000-1,250-word essay.

The captivity narrative genre includes writings by or about people captured by an enemy, usually one who is considered by the hostage to be a foreign and uncivilized heathen, and was especially popular in America and England in the seventeenth through late nineteenth centuries. Documents from the time show that between 1675 and 1763, at least 1,641 New Englanders were held in captivity as hostages, though many believe that the numbers are drastically low because of poor record keeping (Vaughan, 53). Regardless of the exact number of hostages, the fact is that thousands of people were profoundly affected by being held captive by the Indians. Some of those people, including Mary Rowlandson,

In “The Life and Escape”, William Wells Brown tells his story of being a slave as a young child and his escape out of slavery as he was older. He was a slave alongside his mother and he had witnessed her going through struggles, but could never do anything about it to help her. He came to realize that all he could do was sit back.

The captivity narrative and the slave narrative are two types of literary works, which were very common during the 17th and the 18th century. The captivity narrative usually involves an innocent white woman who is taken captive by an Indian tribe, who the woman describes as savages in most of the cases. On the other hand, the slave narrative focuses on the quality of life that slaves were facing before the time of the abolishment of slavery. Although the captivity narrative and the slave narrative show some similarities, they are completely different. We can observe the differences by analyzing two literary works, A Narrative of The Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson by Mary Rowlandson and From The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavas Vassa, the African, Written by Himself by Olaudah Equiano. A Narrative of The Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson is a narrative written by Mary Rowlandson herself, which sheds light on her own experiences revolving captivity. The Interesting Narrative of The Life of Olaudah Equiano gives the reader insight into the life of a slave, the treatments they endure, and usually their freedom, whether it be through escaping or other means. Both narratives usually include real-life accounts, however, the differences lie in the structure of the narrative, the purpose that the narrative is trying to lay out and the treatment of the parties who are living these experiences.

Prior to the publication of any slave narrative, African Americans had been represented by early historians’ interpretations of their race, culture, and situation along with contemporary authors’ fictionalized depictions. Their persona was often “characterized as infantile, incompetent, and...incapable of achievement” (Hunter-Willis 11) while the actions of slaveholders were justified with the arguments that slavery would maintain a cheap labor force and a guarantee that their suffering did not differ to the toils of the rest of the “struggling world” (Hunter-Willis 12). The emergence of the slave narratives created a new voice that discredited all former allegations of inferiority and produced a new perception of resilience and ingenuity.