Overview of John Demos's Unredeemed Captive

1408 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Esss

The Unredeemed Captive tells a story of struggles a family went through to stay true to one another. Eunice Williams’ was taken captive and family went through many obstacles to try and get her home. Both Eunice and her family were captured together along with many other town residents in the Deerfield Massacre of 1704. Demos precisely described the Deerfield raid along with the process of traveling to Canada. Throughout the book, Demos also covered some individual captive experiences and events. Demos showed the life of Eunice before her life was changed and how it would be if she was not taken. He stated why the raid was the way it was and showed the success of it. The story began with the change of a small frontier town. “Harvest over. First frost. The valley ablaze with autumn color: reds and yellows at the sides (along the forested ridges of East Mountain and the lower hills to the west), green of the meadows in between” (Demos 11). The French started planning this raid early in 1703 and the town of Deerfield, New England was finally raided on February 29th, 1704 and everything seemed to change. The village, quiet as can be, stood as still while the assaulters finished up their preparation. Most of the town was ransacked, ravaged, and set ablaze. Many houses were attacked, some in specifics. Some residents were slaughtered and scalped, and only the fortunate successfully escaped. For many others, the less fortunate were held imprisoned and taken back to New France in Canada. The motivation for the attack was to capture Deerfield's prominent pastor, John Williams. They believed he would make a good exchange for a French captain named Jean Baptiste Guyon which was a pirate held hostage by the English. The night of the attack ... ... middle of paper ... ...d be seen as fact or fiction. I didn’t see any weaknesses throughout the book. I thought it was an easy read and enjoyed it. The unredeemed captive was a very interesting story. John Demos created this story to inform on what happened in the past. I learned the story of the raid on Deerfield in 1704. The importance of not only the dangerous journey these captives endured, but the story for one child, Eunice Williams. She had to give herself along with the other Native Americans captures and to continue life among the wilderness. I watched the relationships among many tribes build and crumble while hearing a story of a family who was ripped apart for many decades. Things happen in life; it’s not about what happens, it’s about how you react to them. Works Cited Demos, John. The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America. New York: Vintage, 1994. Print.

Show More
Related

  • A Critical Analysis of John Demos' The Unredeemed Captive

    262 Words  | 1 Pages

    John Demos’s “the Unredeemed Captive” is a story about a man named John Williams, and his five children who were captured by Indians during a war in 1704. John Williams and his children are eventually released, but much to his disappointment, his youngest daughter Eunice remained with her captors, and married an Indian man. This story has a captivating storyline, and makes for a very compelling narrative. In this paper I will attempt to make a critical analysis of John Demos’s work. The major areas I am looking at are the evolution or the piece, from beginning to end, what the major sections of the book are and how they flow together, and how this work is and isn’t a conventional narrative.

    Read More

  • Summary Of The Doctors Plague By Nuland

    705 Words  | 2 Pages

    One weakness can be found with the way the information flowed together, sometimes making the text either difficult to follow, or in the second and third chapters, quite dry. Also, in my edition of the book, one of the few pictures Nuland decided to add to supplement his writing was a complete waste of space. The pictures were supposed to show the differences between Ingác Semmelweis over a span of a few years, but the reader can’t even see any differences because the printing quality was absolutely terrible. Still, the overall strengths of the book overrule the few flaws mentiones.

    Read More

  • The Unredeemed Captive, by John Demos

    780 Words  | 2 Pages

    At the start of John Demos' book The Unredeemed Captive, a group of Native Americans attack the English town of Deerfield, kidnap a few of its people, and take them to Canada. On October 21, 1703, in response to the attacks, the "Reverend Mr." John Williams, the town's leader, writes to Joseph Dudley, the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, for tax relief, funding to rebuild the fort, a prisoner exchange to free the captured residents, and soldiers to protect the town. Governor Dudley agrees to fulfill the reverend's requests, and stations 16 soldiers at the town's fort (Demos 1994, 11-13). In response to English counterattacks, Governor Pierre de Rigaud, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, begins to plan an February "expedition" of 48 French troops and 200 of France's "domiciled Indians." During the expedition, the soldiers destroy the town of Deerfield. Many of the residents that do not manage to flee or hide are killed or captured, including the reverend and his family. The troops then take the captured colonists to Canada, where they will be held hostage in an attempt to negotiate the release of many French prisoners under English control, including Vaudreuil's best "privateer," Pierre Maisonat, the infamous "Captain Baptiste" (Demos 1994, 15-19). In The Unredeemed Captive, Demos uses the incident at Deerfield as a lens to reveal the underlying political, cultural, and religious conflicts in colonist-Native American relations, and those between the European colonizing nations themselves.

    Read More

  • The Deerfield Raid Analysis

    1461 Words  | 3 Pages

    Reverend John Williams’ narrative on the Deerfield raid (1704) is an informative account on what this experience entailed for him; although, while one may think that his narrative would be mostly focused on the actual raid and what occurred to him as a captive, the primary focus of Williams’ narrative was largely based on his views on Catholicism and his extreme hatred for this religion (pg. 91). In essence, most of his narrative was an anti-Catholicism rant describing how blasphemous the religion is and how though there was numerous opportunities to change his faith through forced measures while being a captive, he never faltered, choosing death over all else (pg. 91).

    Read More

  • The Journey and Downfall of Royce Oatman

    2601 Words  | 6 Pages

    Stratton, R.B. Captivity of the Oatman Girls: Being an Interesting Narrative of Life Among the Apache and Mohave Indians. San Francisco: Whitton, Towne and Co., 1857.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Ira Berlin's Generations Of Captivity

    1086 Words  | 3 Pages

    Ira Berlin wrote Generations of Captivity to persuade to his readers that even as time passed between the generations the change from a society of slaves to a slave society was one that happened slowly over time. Berlin wrote the book in five different sections, each one showing a focus of slavery from the more focused areas, like the Chesapeake Bay, to areas that were less focused with slavery. Berlins first chapter of the book dealt with the Charter Generation, which maintained the idea of a society with slaves, within the 1600s respectively. Berlins second chapter moved on to the Plantation Generation, which showed the society moving closer to the slave society. The third chapter focused on the Revolutionary Generation, which was a slave

    Read More

  • Having Our Say by Sadie and Bessie Delany

    1098 Words  | 3 Pages

    Franklin, J., Moss, A. Jr. From Slavery to Freedom. Seventh edition, McGraw Hill, Inc.: 1994.

    Read More

  • The Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson

    1716 Words  | 4 Pages

    Rowlandson, Mary. A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson.In Women’s Indian Captivity Narratives. Ed. Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola. New York: Penguin Books, 1998.

    Read More

  • Avoiding the Grave at Andersonville: Three Young Men from Leopold, Indiana, Survive the Civil War Prison

    1521 Words  | 4 Pages

    Gourley, Catherine. The Horrors of Andersonville: Life and Death Inside a Civil War Prison. Minneapolis: Twenty-First Century, 2010.

    Read More

  • Ghetto Takes Shape

    1561 Words  | 4 Pages

    One weakness is that much of the information included is not in chronological order. This makes it difficult for the reader to understand in which order these events had occurred. Flipping back and forth between pages is sometimes needed, as well as making a timeline of your own. While Kusmer did have a rhyme or reason as to why he had written the book how he did, a way to solve this issue would have been to simply write the book in chronological order. Another weakness is that sometimes the book is quite dry. It is an interesting read, however at times it is more like reading a history book:

    Read More

  • Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

    1039 Words  | 3 Pages

    My overall opinion of this book is good I really liked it and recommend it to anyone. It is a good book to read and it keep you interested throughout the whole book.

    Read More

  • Pros And Cons Of The Jury System In 12 Angry Men By Sidney Lumet

    1175 Words  | 3 Pages

    I feel that the movie has no weaknesses. This is because even though I had a few things I didn’t like such as the anonymity given, I realised that there was a reason for this which I explained in my strengths of the movie below.

    Read More

  • Impact Of The Salem Witchcraft Hysteria

    716 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Massachusetts Bay colony, there were social stresses and there was a quarrel over land ownership in the Putnam family, twelve others from Gloucester; thirteen from the port of Salem; and fifty-five from Andover women. Rebellious acts started going on and the desire of power became outrageous as they physically started attacking ...

    Read More

  • Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup

    982 Words  | 2 Pages

    Imagine that it is the year 1841 in Saratoga, New York and blossoms of the dogwood tree are swirling around your face as the wind gently tousles your hair. All seems well in the world, and, to Solomon Northup, great opportunities are coming his way. Two men, by the names of Merrill Brown and Abram Hamilton, had offered a dream job to Solomon. They had asked him to join them in a circus, playing the fiddle, an instrument Solomon had mastered. However, these men were not as honest as they seemed. Brown and Hamilton later drugged and kidnapped Solomon at a hotel one night during the tour. These men successfully forced Solomon into twelve years of slavery.

    Read More

  • The Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum Security Prison

    1648 Words  | 4 Pages

    Gresham M. Sykes describes the society of captives from the inmates’ point of view. Sykes acknowledges the fact that his observations are generalizations but he feels that most inmates can agree on feelings of deprivation and frustration. As he sketches the development of physical punishment towards psychological punishment, Sykes follows that both have an enormous effect on the inmate and do not differ greatly in their cruelty.

    Read More

More about Overview of John Demos's Unredeemed Captive

Open Document