Rising Above the Challenges: Elizabeth Smart

802 Words2 Pages

Could you ever imagine what it would be liked to be taken from the once place you are supposed to feel the safest and then being held captive under excruciating fear? More people than anyone would care to think about know exactly what it's like, one of those many being Elizabeth Smart. Elizabeth Smart had to overcome many obstacles throughout the entire ordeal, the main portion of the hard times lasting nine months. Elizabeth went through many emotional high points; fear, the pure will to survive, and her quest for freedom and putting it all behind her.
When Elizabeth was first kidnapped in June of 2002, she had to experience the fear of a man waking her up with a knife to her throat who wanted her for his own selfish gain. Elizabeth was only 14 years-old when Brian David Mitchell came to kidnap her and make her his "wife" under the ploy that he was sent from God and had some a duty to fulfill. When Mitchell got her away from her home, using the threat of killing her family to make her leave quietly, he forced her up the mountains close to her home to the base camp where his wife, Wanda Barzee, was waiting. The greatest fear for Elizabeth at this point was what was going to happen to her.
Elizabeth's fear only grew stronger when she had to endure the harsh treatment Mitchell and Barzee subjected her to. She was raped almost every night of her captivity by Mitchell, treated as Barzee's slave, and restrained by a steel cable that only allowed her 20 feet of movement in the camp where they were hidden. Brian David Mitchell used this fear to his advantage and maxed it even stronger by adding on the fear for Elizabeth's own life as well as her families. Elizabeth resisted Mitchell as much as she dared for as long as she could, but a...

... middle of paper ...

...hose who would never return.
Elizabeth went through an extremely frightening ordeal only to emerge strong. Elizabeth suffered extreme fear and over came it. She was strong enough to have the will to survive for as long as she had to. Finally, she was able to find a way to her freedom and eventually move on with her life.

Works Cited
"'I was broken beyond repair': Elizabeth Smart recalls kidnapping ordeal." NBC News. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Feb. 2014. .
"Elizabeth Smart Shares About Her Faith And Kidnapping." NPR. NPR, n.d. Web. 21 Feb. 2014. .
Smart, Elizabeth, and Chris Stewart. My story. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2013. Print.

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