Reflection of Bradstreet and Rowlandson

If I would have known ahead of time that A Narrative of Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson by Mary Rowlandson was about a woman that was captured by Native Americans and while there her child dies, and then she spends the rest of her life being a slave but seemingly to slowly assimilate into the Native American culture and society over time, I would have thought that it would be a very interesting story with strong emotions, from when she was captured, and when her child died. As it turns out though, it was a very bland story with little emotion and almost no detail at all. It ended up just being very “preachy” and her writing made her seem kind of stuck up, but that just seems like the writing style of the Puritans of the time period. If I were the Native Americans, I would get very annoyed easily if some strange people came over on boats and tried to force their “one true religion” on me and my fellow people. To them, Christianity sounds just as crazy as the Native American’s religion seemed to the Christians.

After Reading A Narrative of Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, I started to get a feeling for how the Puritans wrote their stories and how they distinguished themselves from other kinds of writers and other writing types. They seemed to be more bland and non descriptive, but they only seemed to write about the experiences that “god had helped them through.” Even after her baby died, Mary said “I have though since of the wonderful goodness of God to me, in preserving me so in the use of my reason and senses in that distressed time, that I did not use wicked and violent means to end my own miserable life” (Rowlandson 83). At the very end, Mary is upset that her son is sick in the woods and that “no Christian friend was near him to do any office of love for him, either for soul or body” (Rowlandson 84). I think that this shows the Puritan belief, and every other religion I guess, that her religion is the right one, and that he son will only be safe and secure if he is around other Christian people that can help him, and not just the Native American “heathens” and their strange nature religions and alien practices.

In "Upon the Burning of Our House" by Anne Bradstreet was another perfect example of Puritan writing. The story is about how her house burned down, but she realized that all of her earthly or, terrestrial, possessions are meaningless because she believes she has a life in heaven where she will have everything she ever wanted. The first thing she thought when the fire started was “to my God my heart did cry; To strengthen me in my distress; And not to leave me succorless.” (Bradstreet 91). I think that this shows how even in the most surprising and dangerous circumstances, the Puritans immediately thought of crying out to god for help in whatever was troubling them.

Rowlandson, Mary. "A Narrative of Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson." Glencoe Literature. Ed. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Co, 2009. 82. Print.

Bradstreet, Anne. "Upon the Burning of Our House." Glencoe Literature. Ed. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Co, 2009. 91. Print.