Other Authors
Marry RowlandsonComparison between Lucy Terry and Mary Rowlandson
There are many similarities between Lucy Terry's "Bar Fight" and Mary Rowlandson's "A Narrative of Captivity and Restoration," starting with the theme of captivity. Captivity narratives are important parts of story-lines in American history that display the suffering and capture of European-Americans settlers by Native American Indians. The stories are generally told in the author's point of view and are more so seen as valuable but not historically accurate. These women both come from religious backgrounds, Terry following Christianity while Rowlandson was a Puritan. Lucy Terry is an African American woman and Marry Rowlandson is a Caucasian woman, yet they both were enslaved at one point, which shows the next theme as uncertainty of life. In Terry's life we see she has grown up within slavery and has to deal with the reality of harsh environments whereas Rowlandson must quickly adapt to Native Americans' captivity. |
Cotton MatherComparison between Lucy Terry and Cotton Mather
After closely analyzing Lucy Terry as a poetic legend, we were able to connect her life and work to Puritan writer Cotton Mather. Cotton Mather was a slave owner, and from Massachusetts like Lucy Terry. Like Mather, Terry was religiously tied to Christianity. He believed that slaves should be taught religion and how to write in a religious context. Assumingly, Lucy Terry did not learn to read or write, since her poem was passed down orally. They were two different people yet they both valued the Puritan ways of life. Cotton Mather wrote on the Indian Wars in his piece “The Negro Christianized” with the intention to “encourage a spiritual awakening” whereas, Terry’s “Bars Fight” speaks volume amongst the brutality of the Indian Wars. Lucy Terry’s account is more reliable because she didn’t write her poem with a specific motive, while Mather was religiously motivated. |