Louise Erdrich's poignant poem, "Captivity" addresses the tumultuous ramblings of a woman in captivity. The woman, Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, is recounting her story of capture and survival. The poem was based off of her own personal memoir and uses descriptive language, imagery, and hyperbole to draw her readers or listeners more personally into her story. She sets the scene and recreates the circumstances of her captivity. She was captured by an indian tribe, the Wampanoag, and held hostage in the frigid Massachusetts forests, forced to live off the land, at the hand of her captors. Her fear and disdain for her captors at first demonstrates her stubbornness and independence. In fact, she goes so far as to say, "I told myself I would starve/ before I took food from his hands." However, the longer she remains the Wampanoags' prisoner, the more she relates to them, so much so that when she is rescued and returned to her family she "remembers herself as she was [with them]" and views her family's life as unusual, the Wampanoags' as normal. The grander meaning of the poem can be found in Mary Rowlandson's growth towards the Wamponoag, and her acceptance of innate differences in conjunction with universal similarities. Her introspection opens her up to the depth of the world around her. Ironically, her physical captivity is what mentally sets her free.
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