Captivity Versus Freedom Through The Sovereignty

638 Words3 Pages
People in captivity yearn for freedom. By carefully recounting her experience as a captive, Marry Rowlandson depicts how captivity can emphasize the most important elements in people’s life, and the extreme joy that freedom can bring about. Without captivity, people might not deem freedom as precious and unparallel. In the excerpt on Page 91, Rowlandson uses similies to compare her mourning and chatter with different birds’ sound. The similies successfully provoke the audience’s senses, making them imagining the melancholy scene when a dove fails to look upward. These are all lonely birds with melancholy sounds, emphasizing the level of sorrowfulness and suffering in captivity. At the end of the passage, the author asks for God’s redemption. This communication with God indicates how weak people can be in captivity and must rely on religious, or spiritual power to survive. The second characteristic of captivity is its physical affliction. At first, Mary is not given any food, and what she eats afterwards are things that can not be considered food for English people. Her child is almost starved to death (and also by illness). Furthermore, they camp in the wilderness, cross rivers and carry very heavy loads. The third characteristic of captivity is its isolation from friends, relatives and other relationships, thereby making people feel extremely lonely. On Page 71, Line 13, the author claims “All was gone, my Husband gone (at least)...might go to.” Captivity is, as always, extremely dangerous because the enemies can do anything to her depending on their mood. The enemies begins to control everything, and the author is subject to any deprivation and exploitation (both mentally and bodily). In comparison, after the author is set free, she has“passionate Friends on every side to us, when we had nothing to ...(Page 110, Line 14)”.

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