Engineer, Mary Rowlandson's Captivity

Mary Rowlandson’s Removes demonstrates her powerful Puritan faith during a period of great turmoil that is filled with strong emotions of despair and hope. In the First Remove, she narrates the dichotomy between the Indian pagans, who she calls “barbarous creatures” and her people who are of Christian faith. The Indian’s through their barbaric acts have completely destroyed her community and killed most of the people. She is one of the few who has been kept alive and taken into captivity. When she asks whether she could lodge in a vacant house, deserted by the English, they taunt her by asking “What, will you love English men still?”  The Indian’s portray the English men as cowards and not worth being faithful to. She portrays the Indian’s as “black creatures” and “merciless enemies” to signify the devil and his savage work. She feels that God is merciful and saved her life in her passage “all was gone (except my life).”

In the Third Remove, Rowlandson recalls her time during the Sabbath “I then remembered how careless I had been of God’s holy time; how many Sabbaths I had lost and misspent…..” as the cause for her Christian suffering during her captivity. Her wounds were a form of punishment for her suffering. God at the same time forgives and provides salvation through mercy. As Rowlandson narrates, “Yet the Lord showed mercy to me, and upheld me; and as He wounded me with one hand, so he healed me with other.” Robert Beer also experiences God’s hand through suffering and salvation. His suffering comes in the form of a leg wound during a fight with Captain Beer; at the same time, he experiences salvation through healing from the oaken leaves applied to his wound.

Continued in the Third Remove, Rowlandson experiences suffering through the loss of her child and doubts whether she will be saved “There I left that child in the wilderness, and must commit it, and myself also in this wilderness condition, to Him who is above all.” Also, God answers her lament through her son who comes to see her. When one of the Indians offers her a bible, she feels God is being merciful “I cannot but take notice of the wonderful mercy of God to me in those afflictions, in sending me a bible.” While reading the “seven first verses”, she believes that the only way she could be saved is through repentance. Rowlandson does not have any sympathy for the Indians, but anger which she openly expresses in strong words such as “savage”, “merciless enemies”, “barbarous enemy.” She stereotypes the Indians as living in the wilderness in the abode of the devil and her community as lambs being slaughtered, but will ultimately be saved. Rowlandson believes that she has been kept alive, to carry on the news to others in the community.