Mary Rowlandson World View example essay topic

Savage Indians: Mary Rowlandson's World-View Metacom et, also known Phillip, was a Wampanoag Indian who started a series of attacks on colonial settlements in 1675. Not much is known about Mary Rowlandson's life except for the fact that she was a devout puritan as a minister's wife. However, when the Wampanoag Indians captured her for eleven weeks, she made a record of her time with them. Her world-view is passive and she sees God everywhere in her life as the "Divine Providence". As a result, she sees the Native Americans as the epitome of everything that is evil in the world because their actions conflict with her Puritan way of life and world view. Rowlandson has to endure many hardships while she been taken prisoner by the Indians.

She sees the Native Americans who have captured her as savages who care about no one but themselves. One the first night, she is forced to sleep on the floor and realizes that the Native Americans are nothing but heartless brutes. She says. ".. the roaring, and singing and dancing, and yelling of those black creatures in the night, which made a lively resemblance of hell". She finds no comfort while her child lies dying in her lap. The Indians also tell her that if they find her husband, they will kill him on sight. Throughout all of these ordeals, Rowlandson does not lose faith in God.

She manages to think that although she is going through so much pain, God will save her. I believe that this Puritan view on life keeps her going throughout the hard times and that God will reward her later in her life. When she moves the second time with the Indians, she finds strength in God. She says. ".. not my tongue, or pen, can express the sorrows of my heart, and bitterness of my spirit that I had at this departure: but God was with me in a wonderful manner, carrying me along, and bearing up my spirit, that it did not fail". Throughout the narrative, Rowlandson is extremely God oriented.

This shows because whenever she is faced with a problem, she refers to God's Divine providence. The Indians conflict with this world-view several times in her narrative. One prominent example that sticks out in my mind is when they made her work on the Sabbath, a holy day for Puritans. This bothered her because when she asked them not to work, they refused. She had wounded herself in her right hand and states that "The Lord still showed mercy to me and upheld me: and as he wounded me with one hand, so he healed me with the other".

The Indians also buried her child in the wilderness without a formal burial. Eventually, she manages to get a Bible, which is her only comfort and therefore makes her very happy. The first chapter she looks at is the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy. This doesn't surprise me because it deals with blessings for the obedience to God and curses for the disobedience. I think that she needs to solidify exactly why she is she stays faithful to God. She needs to make sure for herself that she is going to get a large reward from God in return for her obedience.

She even says. ".. though we were scattered from one end of the earth to the other, yet the Lord would gather us together, and turn all those curses upon our enemies. I do not desire to live to forget this scripture, and what comfort it was to me". She finds solace upon meeting with her daughter Mary, although it is only for a short time. Her daughter tells her to pray hard, and upon leaving Rowlandson becomes even more depressed when she thinks about her other children. She becomes weak from not eating and working to hard.

She consults her Bible and reads Jeremiah 31.16, which states, "Thus saith the Lord, refrain Thy voice from weeping, and Thine eyes from tears, for thy work shall be rewarded, and they shall come again from the land of the enemy". Her unwavering trust in God becomes more apparent once again when she weeps over this Scripture. Rowlandson finally comes to the point where she has to eat something. There is plenty of food, but when she manages to get some corn, it is quickly taken from her. Later in the narrative, she expressed the desire to meet with one of her sons.

An Indian points her in the right direction, but she gets lost and comes back heavy hearted. She gets shown to her son and discovers that he has a boil on his side. Disturbed, she consults her Bible and finds Psalm 55.22 which states "Cast burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee". Things momentarily look good for Rowlandson when she asks her Indian master whether he would sell her to her husband. His positive reply and this causes Rowlandson to have high spirits.

Shortly after, her Indian mistress sees her reading her Bible and quickly snatches it away from her. The mistress also makes her carry a heavy load when they are traveling. When Rowlandson complains, she gets slapped in the face. In conclusion, I think that Mary Rowlandson world-view was that if you have a strong belief in God, you could conquer anything. She is a perfect example of that because despite everything that the Indians did to her, she survived. Also, she read her Bible several times everyday and that provided her more pleasure than she could imagine.

Rowlandson kept a firm belief that God was going to get her away from the Indians. The Indians didn't follow her world-view or her strict Puritan way of life whatsoever. In her eyes, this made them unacceptable to live with and completely without character..