Summary Of The Captivity And Restoration Of Mary Rowlandson

In Mary Rowlandson narrative, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, it talks about how the Indians came to the English homes and destroyed them and killed their people. People were getting burnt, shot, stabbed, and cut open. Everything was completely ruined and destroyed. The English people had nothing left and no life to live. The Indians also attacked Rowlandson and her family. There were thirty-seven people in the house, and some were stabbed, shot, and knocked down. She saw her sister gets shot right before her eyes. As Rowlandson was escaping, she had her child on her hip and the child got shot and she got wounded. After the Indians got what they wanted, they told her if she comes with them she will survive. She and twenty-four others went along with the bad guys. All of this took place because the Indians

had nothing for themselves, and they didn’t like the English people to begin with.

So to get what they wanted, they used a force of violence and destroyed homes and took the lives of the English. As the author travels with the Indians, she begins to take on their natural habit and characteristics, and starts to act like them.

Mary Rowlandson lived in Lancaster, Massachusetts. That’s where the Indians went to get food, and clothes. She was the wife of the minister of the town. While all this took place her husband was away and she had to go through this alone. But it’s a good thing he wasn’t there because he would have died or have seriously been wounded, but he’s still alive. Rowlandson went as the Indians captive so she can live. But the author stated, “If the Indians should come, I should choose rather to be killed by them than taken alive…” (Rowlandson 259). Basically what this means is that she went back on her word and went with them instead of being killed. Throughout her journey with the

bad guys, she and her child weren’t being treated very well. They both were wounded pretty badly, and the Indians did nothing to help their captives recover from their wounds. They gave Rowlandson and her child a horse to ride on, but they didn’t know how to ride it, so they fell over, and the Indians laughed at them. She had to travel long distance in the cold weather with her very sick child, who wasn’t healing well at all. They had nothing to eat or drink while traveling. The young one couldn’t handle anymore of the torture so, it eventually died. The procreator of this young one was very upset and devastated her baby died. She had two other children but didn’t know of their safety, so it made the pain of losing one much more hurtful. As she continues to travel with the Indians, she starts to pick up on their habits and develop their lifestyle. The writer became a completely different person by the time her journey ended. She wasn’t her old English self anymore; she also had a little Indian in her blood for being with them far too long. A switch up is nice every now and then but not when it comes to switching over to a different culture that isn’t a good one or nice.
One example of how she changed is the fact that she eats their food and like it. Although she doesn’t like it at first she begins to adapt to it. She had the choice of starving or eating whatever they made. Nobody wants to starve to death, so she did what she had to do, but eating like them made her different. The author quotes, “With the blood about my mouth, and yet a savory bit it was to me…” (266). What she meant by this is that even though I am eating blood it taste good to me. If Rowlandson were back home, she would have never eaten the meat uncooked. But being that she with the Indians, she had to eat it however it was done. Nobody in his or her right mind would eat something like that. The editor said her stomach would turn against this and that, but after being with them for weeks, she came to enjoy eating their food. Eating the Indians food, the taste was savory and sweet to her. Some of their meals included: horse liver, peas, deer meat, and whatever they could find. The food was cooked by getting boiled under the fire, or just eating it raw. The English people ate their food completely cooked, and that’s how Rowlandson used to eat, but now she eats it raw like the Indians. Switching over to eat equivalent as the Indians wasn’t such a good thing. Because consuming raw food wasn’t good for the body at all. One can become ill or die in result of harmful bacteria from the intake of raw food. To eat just a little bit of they food so you won’t starve to death is ok, however to ingest a full course meal of undercooked is berserk. Her body has to adjust to the food change and it might not do it very well. She will probably have to go to the bathroom more often, or have stomach pains. Although in this case she didn’t, because the good Lord had blessed her continuously throughout her journey with the Indians.