Mary Rowlandson Identity Analysis

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In a time where religious choice was not an option, and laws were strict, the New World could not have been discovered at a better time for Europeans. After the few established colonies began to settle into their new and unfamiliar territories in America, tensions between the native people and the new colonists began to erupt. Quarrels, uprisings, and bloody battles spread across the colonies like fire. A little later on, the same battles were going on between African slaves and their rights for emancipation. Such tensions and violence encouraged colonists and people in general to question who they were and who they wanted to be in this new world. The understanding and recognition of identity can easily be found in the lives and memoirs of two individuals named Mary Rowlandson and Olaudah Equiano. Mary Rolandson was a Puritan captured by natives, who found faith and determination in her journey. Equiano was a slave who worked his way out of his situation, encountering many characters along the way. These two people can easily be used when searching for the understanding of identity. By analyzing religion, race, gender, national origins, and courage, we can understand the identity of these two people and all the people they are surrounded by. By analyzing their encounters and different events, we can easily…show more content…
Mary Rowlandson was a white female colonist, with children and a husband. Whether she liked it or not, her race described her and defined her as a white colonist. The Native Americans that took her and her family away from their home would not have done such a thing if she had been of a native descent. She realizes this many times throughout her novel, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God. Throughout her narrations, she speaks of the difference between her people, and the people who capture her. Race is something that defines all of us, and Rowlandson was no
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