Compare And Contrast The Stories

The two stories we were told to read were "Narrative of Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson" and "Upon the Burning of Our House". We were told to compare and contrast the two stories in this blog.
The first story I read was "Narrative of Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson". The story was mainly talking about a women and her travels of being captive to master after master. It talk of her struggles and slight triumphs. The second story was about another women who's home had burnt down. The story HUGE comparison was the large amount of religious views and christian belief. During the first story she was constantly praying to God, thinking of God, and reading scriptures from the Bible. "I repaired under these thoughts to my Bible (my great comforter in that time) and that scripture came to my hand." is just one of many examples of where she used the Bible and God to help her through her everyday problems in life. (Wilhelm, Jeffrey D.) The second story also was very Christian based. She put everything on God and in Gods hands. She said everything was about "Him". " It was His own, it was not mine,; Far be it that I should repine."(Wilhelm, Jeffrey D) is an example of how she really led her life in the was of the Christian faith whole heartily. God played a huge part in both these ladies lives, especially in their times of trouble. Another similarity is just the simple fact that both are going through really hard times during their stories but still look to God and are optimistic. Both stories have a supreme optimism to them making the stories very appealing, although both are fairly sad. A third similarity is that both of the stories have a very prominent sense of optimistic sadness. With that I mean there are very sad and sorrowful parts in each of these stories. The optimistic part comes in in the women's words of pureness in their hope and faith. Their unfailing beliefs make them very strong and honorable characters.
One difference in the stories is that the women are in totally different situations. The first story the women is in captivity and is taken away from her home, children, and her whole life. The women in the second story lost only her home in a fire. The big differences in the women but yet the same amount of faith between the two shows how truly unfailing it is. The most prominent difference is that the first story is written in a narrative format and the second one is in a poem format. The first story is actually an exert from a larger story. The second is just a poem not taken from any other source. This is one of biggest things that separates the writing styles of each story very distinctly. The first has a very formal paragraph- sentence style. Where as the second is a poem so it consists all aspects of a poem. Big difference!


Wilhelm, Jeffrey D., Douglas Fisher, Beverly Ann. Chin, and Jacqueline Jones. Royster. Glencoe Literature. New York: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2009. Print.