This paper examines the contrasting worldviews of Mary Rowlandson, a Puritan captive of Native Americans, and Olaudah Equiano, an African slave, during the American Colonial period. Drawing on their respective narratives — Rowlandson's Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration (1682) and Equiano's Interesting Narrative (1789) — the paper analyzes how Christian orthodoxy shaped each author's perception of captivity and freedom. Rowlandson's rigid Puritan faith produced a consistently prejudiced view of Native Americans as savages, while Equiano's fluid engagement with Christianity enabled personal transformation, culminating in his evolution into an abolitionist. The paper argues that orthodoxy both constrained and liberated its adherents depending on how it was applied.
The paper exemplifies comparative close reading supported by secondary criticism. Rather than summarizing each narrative in isolation, it builds a sustained parallel analysis, returning to the same evaluative criteria — resilience, the role of Christianity, and the capacity for an open worldview — for each author. This technique allows the argument about "freedom of mind" to accumulate force across both halves of the essay.
The paper opens with historical context situating both narratives in colonial America, then states its dual thesis. A long analytical section addresses Christianity's role in both narratives simultaneously. The argument then bifurcates: one section focuses on Rowlandson's orthodox, prejudiced worldview, and the next on Equiano's fluid, transformative one. A synthesis section draws the contrast explicitly before a brief conclusion. References follow in APA style.
During the Colonial period, American society was undergoing a transition characteristic of any colonial territory owned by a European nation — a state that was "poor" and "nasty," if not "short," to borrow Thomas Hobbes' famous phrase from the Leviathan. This transition was poor and nasty because Native Americans met the new occupants of the British colony with resistance, demonstrating that resistance through a series of violent conflicts that ultimately led to death on both sides.
Aside from Native American resistance to British occupation, the Colonial period was also marked by the emergence of the slave trade system. It was through the slave trade that both colonial America and Britain flourished economically. Unfortunately, it was also through this system that Africans — and later generations of African Americans — experienced profound resistance and hardship in their eventual struggle for freedom in American and British societies.
These two important events in the history of colonial America become relevant and intertwined when examining the worldviews of the period's people, particularly those of a Puritan living in the new colony and an African slave coming to the West. This paper thoroughly analyzes the worldviews of a Puritan and an African slave in the context of the American Colonial period. It also examines the role that orthodoxy — specifically the values and beliefs of Christianity — played in influencing the different realities experienced by Puritan Americans and African slaves during this era.
This theme of contrasting worldviews, and the role Christianity played in shaping them, is manifested in the works of Mary Rowlandson and Olaudah Equiano, respectively. Mary Rowlandson's Narrative of the Captivity and the Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, written in 1682, provides a detailed account of her one-year experience as a captive of Native Americans. Olaudah Equiano, meanwhile, wrote The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African in 1789. That narrative reflected Equiano's journey from African slave to educated individual, a transformation in which Christianity played a significant role.
Applying these texts to this paper's discussion, it is argued that Rowlandson's descriptions of life with Native Americans — that is, her prejudiced worldview of them — was shaped by her Puritan orthodoxy. Similarly, Equiano's depiction of his life in Africa and his eventual life as an educated freeman was also influenced by his adoption of orthodox Christian values. In addition to the theme of orthodoxy, this paper also argues that Rowlandson's potential journey toward understanding the Native American worldview was effectively prevented by the strength of her Christian faith, while Equiano allowed himself to undertake a genuine journey toward freedom of mind by embracing Christianity as a new and transformative belief system.
Narratives of captivity allow readers to glimpse the mind of the writer, and the captivity stories of Rowlandson and Equiano reflect this clearly. From their narratives, both authors relied on their Christian beliefs as they tried to make sense of their own versions of captivity — Rowlandson as a captive of Native Americans, and Equiano as a labor captive and slave of the white man.
Throughout her narrative, Rowlandson maintained the "savageness" of the Native Americans, a belief she shared with her fellow Puritans about the early inhabitants of the colony. She structured her narrative into twenty "removes," signifying the number of times she was moved from place to place by her captors after being taken from her home in Lancaster. Most apparent in Rowlandson's story was the steadfast manner in which she endured her captivity, ultimately allowing her to survive and offer her "testimony" to demystify Native Americans for her fellow Puritans.
Recurring themes across the removes include her consistent expressions of gratitude for still being alive, the constant hunger and physical weakness she felt while traveling with her captors, her role as a shirt-maker for them, and throughout, her depiction of Native American life as savage — whether or not those descriptions were objectively warranted. Rowlandson attributed her survival not to her captors' treatment of her, but primarily to God, whom she considered central to her welfare: "I have thought since of the wonderful goodness of God to me in preserving me in the use of my reason and senses…I must not use wicked and violent means to end my own miserable life" (Third Remove).
The idea of being held captive by Native Americans was so repulsive to Rowlandson that she wished she had been "sold for powder" (Eighth Remove). This repulsion became further apparent in the Ninth Remove, where her own account suggests that her interactions with her captors were becoming "less savage" and that she was, in effect, becoming part of the group. Nevertheless, she did not take significant notice of this change, recording her captors' actions matter-of-factly and nothing more. Once again, she attributed any unexpected goodwill from them to God rather than to the people themselves: "…I cannot but admire at the wonderful power and goodness of God to me…though I was gone from home, and met with all sorts of Indians…yet no one of them offered the least imaginable miscarriage to me" (Ninth Remove).
An analysis of Rowlandson's narrative reveals that she experienced what scholars have called "survivor syndrome," a form of psychological trauma experienced by captives "during and immediately after captivity" (Derounian, 1987, p. 83). However, as Derounian's research noted, Rowlandson's "psychological commentary" was not given much focus; instead, both she and her readers centered on her faithfulness to God throughout her ordeal. The downplaying of the psychological effects of her captivity was, in fact, Rowlandson's way of living up to her audience's expectations of her as a Puritan, achieving what Derounian calls the "captivity archetype" — an individual whose "ordeal culminates in both a physical and psychological rescue from the devil" (p. 83). Rowlandson's Puritan beliefs developed in her a worldview that cast Native Americans as devils, against whom she must remain resilient. Her narrative reinforced this belief, directing readers toward an appreciation of God's goodness rather than a reflection on the consequences of her captivity. As far as Rowlandson was concerned, God was central to her experience, and she was merely an actor in it — albeit, in her view, a more superior one than her captors.
Equiano, unlike Rowlandson, expressed a more favorable view of his captors, the British and the white man more broadly. In contrast to Rowlandson's antagonistic narrative, Equiano's story was fundamentally a journey of personal transformation — from slave and uneducated man to educated Christian. Indeed, Rowlandson and Equiano's point of similarity lies only in their fervent adherence to Christianity, though they expressed that faith at different points in their captivity: Rowlandson during her ordeal, and Equiano after his, once he had been educated and exposed to the religion.
Equiano, O. (1789/2007). The interesting narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African [E-book]. Nuvision Publications.
Rowlandson, M. (1682). The narrative of the captivity and the restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson [E-text]. Retrieved from
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