Megan Barney Professor Kinzler Survey of American Literature 2 February 2024 God’s Plans and Mary Rowlandson’s Struggles According to Puritan values, everything that happens to them, good or bad, is God’s will. They believe that any struggle is a gift from God and they must make sense of it, and feel and accept the love and will of God through terrible things, including the kidnapping and slaughter of countless people. This is what happened to Mary Rowlandson in 1675. Native Americans came upon her home and either brutally murdered or kidnapped her family, Rowlandson being among those who were kidnapped. Puritans believe that God is the cause of all things, and that they are at the mercy of God’s will. Mary Rowlandson copes and makes sense of her struggles by comparing herself to
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This ties into her coping methods, asking the Lord to take some of her burden away. In her belief, she feels the weight lifting, giving her more strength to survive. Rowlandson also refers to the Native Americans as heathens, using the metaphor that they are the lions in the den David was thrown into (Rowlandson 31). She sees her captors as enemies, heathens, pagans, cruel, oppressors, wicked, unreasonable, etc, all according to the Bible and the word of God. Mary Rowlandson uses the Bible as a coping mechanism and a way to condemn the Native Americans, comparing herself to biblical figures as a way to make peace with her situation. This exemplifies her belief in Puritanism and makes her captivity easier than it could have been. As Mary Rowlandson would say, “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it” (Bible, 1 Corinthians
This ties into her coping methods, asking the Lord to take some of her burden away. In her belief, she feels the weight lifting, giving her more strength to survive. Rowlandson also refers to the Native Americans as heathens, using the metaphor that they are the lions in the den David was thrown into (Rowlandson 31). She sees her captors as enemies, heathens, pagans, cruel, oppressors, wicked, unreasonable, etc, all according to the Bible and the word of God. Mary Rowlandson uses the Bible as a coping mechanism and a way to condemn the Native Americans, comparing herself to biblical figures as a way to make peace with her situation. This exemplifies her belief in Puritanism and makes her captivity easier than it could have been. As Mary Rowlandson would say, “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it” (Bible, 1 Corinthians