At first glance, you might think that authors living and writing on topics existing over 150 years apart would be so different with no chance of offering any common message. Each author lived in distinct time periods with different writing styles. Each shared different religious backgrounds and wrote for their own reasons. One had to hunt for food, while the other was able to buy food at the local store. The motivations, habits, and daily obstacles would be entirely foreign to the other had they ever had the opportunity to meet. Despite the separation in time, Mary Rowlandson and Herman Melville shared similar experiences in witnessing two cultures attempt to mix and live together in the same space. While the New World offered an abundance of social and financial potential it simultaneously fostered…show more content… How can one feel guilt over any morally questionable act against creatures that are not human to begin with? Demonstrating their sovereignty, these cultures fight back with ruthlessness that matched their mistreatment. Rowlandson describes the merciless slaughter of friends and family during an engagement in King Philips’ War: “Another there was, who, running along, was shot and wounded, and fell down; he begged of them his life, promising them money, as they told me, but they would not hearken to him, but knocked him on the head, stripped him naked, and split open his bowels” (236). The narrative continues to brand the Indians as lacking morals and sympathy: “The Indians getting up on the roof of the barn, had advantage to shoot down upon them over their fortification. Thus these murderous wretches went on burning and destroying all before them” (Rowlandson 236). The violence the Indians displayed here are not proof of their moral deficiency, but rather the result of being forced to violence to uphold their
