I thoroughly enjoyed Mary Rowlandson's A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration. For me, this was the first time reading something from the point of view of someone held captive by Native Americans. I usually hear of the opposite. I am currently in a class about Native Americans, so it is interesting to hear of an instance when they were the ones conflicting harm/fear upon someone of the white community. From my experience, it is more common to hear of what Rowlandson described being done to a Native American.
Because of this new perspective, I took interest in her writing right away. Like Bradstreet, I found Rowlandson to be very relatable. She made an experience that she had realistic and relatable even to me, a person who has never been held captive and forced to leave my family.
In class, we talked about how Rowlandson described the Native Americans. At first I could hear her anger as she basically dehumanized them. Towards the end, her expressions of them occurred less and were softened. I think this happened because Rowlandson's "normal" became different. When she was first taken, she was new to the situation. After a while, she got used to her surroundings. This is not to say that she enjoyed her circumstance, but I think her anger and fear diminished.
Rowlandson's account of her captivity opened my eyes to a different side of the tensions between Native Americans and Caucasians.
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