Mary Rowlandson Essay, Research Paper

Mary Rowlanrson? s Puritan beliefs aid her endure her imprisonment, which lasts eleven hebdomads, at the custodies of the Wampanoag Indians. These beliefs, are frequently referred as dogmas, reflect the overzealous belief of the Puritans that they are god? s chosen people. Rowlandson tickers firsthand the horror of the Indian onslaught on her town and the violent death that takes topographic point on both sides during which she receives a slug lesion in her side ( Rowlandson 299 ) . She is taken confined and decides that God will see her through these difficult times and trial her religion in him ( Rowlandson 299 ) . During her imprisonment she mentally endures separation from her staying household and friends, the decease of her kid at the custodies of the Wampanoag Indians, and the debasement of her intervention as a slave by the people she considers to be kids of the Satan ( Rowlandson 299,303,305,313 ) . Her belief in the Puritan manner of life helps her maintain her saneness during these seeking times. Two dogmas in peculiar are apparent during these long difficult hebdomads. They are typology and Satan on Earth ( Miller 6 ) . Throughout her diary she refers to these dogmas among others as she describes her tests in imprisonment at the custodies of the Indians.Typology refers to the Puritans taking recent events and associating them to events that took topographic point in early Bible ( Miller 6 ) . The Puritans believe that they are god? s freshly chosen people and the events in their lives prove this by taking them down the same route as the Israelites in early Bible ( Miller 6 ) . Typology appears during the Indian onslaught in the beginning of the journal. One individual out of the 30 seven people in one house flights and Mary exclaims, ? And I merely am escaped entirely to state the News? ( Job 1.15, Rowlandson 300 ) which refers to the

enduring a subsister endures from an onslaught. She assumes the subsister is heartsick cognizing that he entirely survives the Indian onslaught. During the 3rd take she finds herself among a big figure of Indians which causes her to do another statement that was a comparing made between her and David ( Rowlandson 302 ) . She appears to happen it highly hard to conceive of the Indians as civilized and populating in communities of their ain ( Rowlandson 308 ) . It seems easier for her head to accept that they are barbarians and band together merely at the Satan? s will to assail God? s chosen people ( Rowlandson 309 ) . In the fifth take she provinces? Oh that my people had hearkened to me, and Israel had walked in my ways, I should shortly hold subdued their enemies, and turned my manus against their antagonists? ( Psalm 81.13-14, Rowlandson 306 ) . Throughout the diary she appears to believe that the primary ground for the Indians success is to penalize the Puritans for non populating the life God wants them to populate and that God is seemingly proving her belief by demoing her the similarities of the Israelites predicaments and her ain. Once she becomes cognizant of

these similarities, the tests or ordeals become easier for her to cover with because she is familiar with the testament and believes that in the terminal she will prevail, as the chosen people triumphed, if she places herself in God? s custodies ( Rowlandson 304 ) .Satan on Earth refers to the Puritan belief that they are god? s chosen people in a new Promised Land and that the Indians are the kids of the Satan put at that place to prove the Puritan? s religion ( Miller 6 ) . Mary Rowlandson? s perceptual experience is the Puritans are populating a god-fearing life while the devil uses the Indians to allure and pervert the Puritans ( Miller 6 ) . In the initial onslaught sherefers to them as bloody heathens touching to their evident bloodlust as they attack and plunder her town ( Rowlandson299 ) . The Indians reinforce the fact that they are, in her eyes, the Satan on Earth by their rite on the first dark observing their triumph over the Puritans ( Rowlandson 300 ) . Mary convinces herself that the Indians transform the forests into a beastly

lair in which they display their true evil nature through their revelry ( Rowlandson 300 ) . Another mention is made to their being the kids of Satan as she describes the nutrient that they eat ( Rowlandson 306 ) . To her Puritan head, it is the Puritans manner or you are in batch with the Satan. When she falls off the Equus caballus with her ill kid in her weaponries and the Indians laugh, she views them as inhumane animals who find amusement in her bad luck ( Rowlandson 301 ) . In her head she must systematically maintain her caput about her because she is in the thick of the Satan? s kids and if she is weak, so she will neglect God? s trial of her religion ( Rowlandson 303 ) .Mary Rowlandson? s belief in the dogmas helps her to last the trials of religion that God chooses for her over the 11 hebdomads. Throughout her diary she makes no positive mentions to the Indians even when they display Acts of the Apostless of kindness, yet is speedy to indicate out the inhuman treatments or unfairnesss they commit upon her or the Puritans. In decision, the Puritan dogmas although extreme are proven successful to Rowlandson, giving her a foundation upon which to construct her hopes of eventual freedom in an otherwise hopeless state of affairs. Her diary expounds these beliefs by invariably mentioning to them throughout the book. Her diary besides reflects the Puritan belief of tolerance, of which there is none, that is prevailing for that clip period ( Miller 6 ) . Mary Rowlandson? s experience at the manus of the Wampanoag Indians serves as a reminder to all Puritans that religion and obeisance to god is the formula for redemption ( Miller 6 ) .

Works CitedMiller, James E. Jr.. ? Beginnings to the Civil War? . Heritage of AmericanLiterature. Volume I. 1991. 4-7Rowlandson, Mary. ? A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. MaryRowlandson. ? Rpt. In The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Vol. IEd. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1998. 297-329.The Holy Bible, King James Version.