Mary Rowlandson's Captivity

Mary Rowlandson had no choice but to adapt to the conditions of her captivity and the hard conditions of living in the wilderness. She had no prior knowledge or experience of this type of living as she explains “I was not before acquainted with such kind of doings or dangers” (494). One of Rowlandson’s first adaptions to her captivity was her eating habits, her first three weeks of captivity she barely ate a thing. She referred to the Native Americans food as “filthy trash” at first, nonetheless by the third week of her captivity she had adapted her stance of their food as “sweet and savory to my taste”. Rowlandson had to try and adapt to another culture that she viewed as completely barbarous, while trying to maintain herself as “civilized”. All the …show more content…
For example, how to deal with death, Rowlandson explicates “I cannot, but take notice, how at another time I could not bear to be in the room where any dead person was, but now the case is changed; I must and could ly down by my dead Babe, side by side all the night after” (491). At the end of the narrative Rowlandson breaks down some of the customs of the Native American’s (their food, etc.), which is not only a lesson for herself, but for countless others as well. Nevertheless, the only thing Rowlandson essentially sees as a benefit or lesson of her captivity is her stronger faith in God. Rowlandson explains at the end of her narrative that “It is good for me that I have been afflicted. The Lord hath shewed me the vanity of these outward things…If trouble from smaller matters begin to arise in me, I have something at hand to check my self with, and say, why am I troubled?” (514). Rowlandson essentially believes that she has learned there are bigger and more important things in life and those are the things we all should be focused on, “I have learned to look beyond present and smaller troubles, and to be quieted under