AML 4213: Journeys to America

Prof. B. Harvey

                                    REVIEW QUESTIONS FOR MARY ROWLANDSON 

1) What different ways does she/could she interpret her ordeal? 

a) Calamity just happens.  Why would this be an unsatisfactory explanation? 

b) "Hell-hound" heathens responsible.  Why is this explanation not entirely satisfactory?           

c) Punishment for sin:  has she sinned; what evidence does she offer?
d) Affliction as God's mercy: since you need to surrender yourself to God's will, yet cannot determine His will (God is unknowable), what psychological/ theological sense does it make to feel subjugated to the force/control of the Indians?

2) Do you sense that her personal feelings and Puritan rhetoric are competing to control her text?

a) Are there details about the Indians in excess of the religious message?
b) Would would happen if she explicitly acknowledged the inadequacy of Puritan stereotypes about the Indians? how do you account for what I called superfluous ethnographic or novelistic detail?     

c) Is she reintegrated into her community at the end? What do you make of her brooding about the Indians getting across the river?  What do you make of her insomnia and image of God's ever-wakeful eyes?

    --can she stop thinking about God?

    --has she seen the way God sees, as it were?

    --is she prideful?

    --does she simply keep awake out of fear of another late night attack?