Comparative Textual Analysis - Book Report/Review Example

Comparative Textual Analysis. Mary's narrative is a first person narrative of the Indian Wars, which lasted from 1675 - 1699. This is one of the famous original narratives of early American history. Mary was a strong Christian whose faith never faltered. The social-political climate was one of change. The early Americans were slowly becoming more materialistic and their faith waned. Mary's narrative became very important because she documented these changes during this episode which began in 1676. The God fearing Christians rationalized their sufferings as being retribution for their sins. Mary, being a preacher's wife, was educated enough to record her journal in good English. Her language is formal and her content reflects her faith in God. The first Boston edition of her narrative was entitled The Sovereignty and Goodness of God. It was meant as a rhetoric to promote the Puritan ideology and propel New England as an exemplary State. This is the mythology of the Puritan's redeemer nation. Mary chose to interpret her situation as a rite of purification as she was stripped of all her former strappings of comfort and status. She feels glorified that she is the chosen martyr. Mary sees her moral, physical and geographical location rescue as God's deliverance. The exceptionalism became part of the American cultural identity of the early settlers in the New World (Madsen, 1998). After reading Mary's narrative, we wander if the Native American Indians were savages. They responded against the white policies of exceptionalism and exceptionalism ideology which had social, economic and political measures to subjugate Native American Indians. The more peaceful responses of negotiation involved re-interpretation of exceptionalism rhetoric to argue for the rights of the American natives and counter-mythology to resist colonization. Mary's language was simple, innocent, naive and straightforward. Her narrative gained popularity because it seemed authentic and it became one of the most read accounts of early American settlement history (Folsom & Slotkin, 1978). Who was King Philip He was the leader of the Wampanoag Confederacy and was also known as Metacom, Metacomet and Philip of Pohanoket. The colonists preferred to call him King Philip. He broke the pledge of peace between the white settlers and the Indians after he could not tolerate the social, economic and political injustices suffered by his people. The Indians were defeated and almost totally annihilated from America (Thrapp, 1991). Mary's narrative on her captivity was important because her content contained history, Puritan ideology and cultural mythology. In this discussion, we have seen how her Puritan culture shaped the form and content of her narrative. Thomas Hariot (1560 -1621) was a scientific adviser for an expedition into the New World. Hariot's Report is about the beliefs and practices of the native American Indians. I choose to study Hariot's Report as a counterfoil for comparison against Mary's narrative. Mary's account was negative. Hariot's Report gave us insight of how European Christians held prejudice against the Amerindian religion. He gave credit to the Indians' thirst for knowledge in Christianity and their use of their limited technology. Whereas Mary's narrative was personal, his was more formal. Hariot thought that the Indians could be won over by impressing them with white supremacy in technology and the true religion. The Indians were surprised because they couldn't comprehend how the technology was derived and thought highly of the whites (Gunn, 1994). Hariot used scientific terms in his language of science. He made people realize that the New World was full of potential for exploitation. His language and content were scientific. In the context of Hariot's contemporary era, Renaissance science attributed unexplainable mysteries to Magic. The mastery of science used detachment to investigate phenomena and not fall into the trap of sensual attachment. The Indians were sensually attached to Earth and thus could not advance in scientific technology. Many whites cheated the Indians in economy. They used worthless trinkets to trade for food. They pretended that their junk was magical and seduced the Indians with their consumer marketing skills (Linton, 1998). Mary's narrative and Hariot's Report used to compare and contrast their differences. By the nature of its form, Mary's narrative is subjective. It is an account through her eyes and the opinions expressed are hers alone without an independent witness to agree or disagree with her in the same narrative. Hariot's Report is more objective to a certain extent because he wrote about the empirical that could be seen. Mary's narrative highlighted the Native American Indians killing her family and relatives. The Indians killed the male whites and took captives the white women and children to use as ransom. The whites took all Indians that could be captured alive to be sold as slaves in the West Indies. Which is more cruel To kill and end the life without further indignity against that humanity, or to capture with the intention to profit, humiliate and commit racism genocide by selling the Indians into slavery How could the Puritans argue that the Native American Indians were the big evil that needed salvation when they suffered economic, social and political injustices Wouldn't that make the Puritans aggressors in need of salvation or purification to expel the heavy penalties of their debauchery against the Indians The Puritans act like wolves in sheep clothing. Another contrast in content is that Mary's narrative told of the many senseless killings of her relatives while Hariot wrote that his white expedition party did not suffer aggression but was instead met with welcome, wonder and business. Another contrast we can notice is that while Mary was a captive and treated as such, Hariot walked freely amongst the Indians and was in fact, treated reverently like a god. Although the Amerindian ideology said that the first women who gave birth to men are gods, they did not view Mary as a white god. This showed gender discrimination. The white immigrants brought disease, germs and viruses with them. Those Natives who lacked the immunity to resist these killers eventually fell sick and died. The Indians said that the whites used invisible bullets to slaughter the Indians. They were right in some aspects. Herein, their sensual awareness made these near correct assumptions. The culprits were invisible to the naked eye; germs, virus and disease. Is Hariot a supporter, or at the very least, showing sympathy for the Indians It might have seemed so but at the end of the Report, Hariot wrote that the policies towards the Indians and their deaths were justified. He gave the excuse that the aggressions were due because the Natives betrayed the whites by turning against them. Mary too, conveniently missed out the fact that it was the whites who bullied the Indians into retaliation. Lastly, I conclude that Hariot and Mary shared a similar trait. They were pompous Puritans who wrote prejudiced stories about their short periods of interaction with the Native American Indians and expected their accounts to be read as the truth. The End. References. Rowlandson, M., Rowlandson, J., (1682). A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs Mary Rowlandson. Madsen, D., (1998). American Exceptionalism. University Press of Mississippi. Folsom, J., Slotkin, R., (1978). So Dreadful A Judgment: Puritan Responses to King Philip's War, 1676 - 1677. Wesleyan University Press. Thrapp, D., (1991). Encyclopedia of frontier biography: in three volumes. U of Nebraska Press. Castiglia, C., (1996). Bound and Determined. University of Chicago Press. Gunn, G., (1994 ). Early American WritingBy Various, Penguin Classics. Hariot, T., (1588). Belief and True Report of the New-found land of Virginia (1588) Linton, J., (1998). The Romance of the New World: Gender and the Literary Formations of English Colonialism. Cambridge University Press. Read More