Mary White Rowlandson was born in 1637. Rowlandson was the wife of a minister, Joseph Rowlandson, and mother of four children. Mary Rowlandson possessed a very strong mind. Rowlandson also possessed a great belief in the power of God. Rowlandson's Puritan belief would be tested in the course of a horrific nightmare. On the morning of February 20, 1676, [Rowlandson, 230] Mary Rowlandson's Puritan world comes crashing down. Rowlandson's vivid description of the events and ordeals throughout her captivity make for a very exhilarating tale of terror, "I have seen the extreme vanity of this World: One hour I have been in health, and wealth, wanting nothing: But the next hour in sickness and wounds, and death, having nothing but sorrow and affliction-[262]. In "Captivity and Restoration,"" Rowlandson's uses of touch, taste, sight, and sound aid the reader's imagination to experience the ordeal ¾ just as it took place in her removes. .
To begin, Rowlandson assists the reader in seeing and hearing the panic and fear taking place during the Indians raid on the village, "several Houses were burning, and the Smoke ascending to Heaven-[231]. Rowlandson's frontier village became the aim of an inhumane and merciless attack. Indians attacked from all sides of the village killing many of Rowlandson's family and neighbors: "The House stood upon the edge of a hill; some of the Indians got behind the hill, others into the Barn, and others behind any thing that could shelter them; from all which places they shot against the House, so that the Bullets seemed to fly like hail; and quickly they wounded one man among us, then another, and then a third- [231]. When the massacre ended Mary Rowlandson was among those taken hostage. The reader can just about witness the sounds of gunfire, " the Indians shot so thick that the bullets rattled against the House, as if one had taken an handfull of stones and threw them -[232].