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(2014
midterm assignment) Sample Student Midterm Answers 2014 #3: Web Highlights |
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Elizabeth Sorensen
Captivity Narrative Web Highlights
The three posts I chose for this essay were
“The Captivity Narrative” by Elizabeth Eagle, “Do Captivity Narratives Deserve
Their Title?” by Adam Glasgow, and “The Indian Captivity Narrative” by Alana
Nesteruk. I chose these posts because of their subject matter. I too am
intrigued by the captivity narratives and would like to do my research post on
it, so I found reading about other students’ perspectives very helpful.
The first midterm sample I read was an
analysis of the two captivity narratives by Mary Jemison and Mary Rowlandson. I
thoroughly enjoyed reading her analysis. She went into such wonderful detail and
descriptions about her opinion on the stories. I enjoyed how easily I could read
the essay as well. The points brought up in the essay were very well developed.
I like how she analyzed each story in their own paragraph and then went on to
compare and contrast the two stories to add more depth to her essay. I
particularly like the point she brought up about how the two stories brought to
light the two cultures even though Rowlandson was extremely biased against her
captors. The author of this essay looked beyond what was written and formed
conclusions I hadn’t thought of. This essay definitely opened my eyes to a new
perspective of the captivity narratives.
The second essay I read was “Do Captivity
Narratives Deserve Their Title?” by Adam Glasgow. I found this essay to be quite
interesting. The author discusses captivity narratives as a genre and expresses
his reaction to the label. Rather than analyzing the actual stories, the author
analyzed what the label meant to him which I think was quite unique. The
conclusion the author comes to is that captivity narratives is too broad of a
subject for it to be its own genre. I enjoyed how the author brought up many
stories outside of early American Literature as well as a few films. In my
opinion, the input of these pieces outside of our class subject added more depth
to his argument. After reading his essay, I believe he makes a very valid point
that I had never thought of before.
The third sample I read was a research post
by Alana Nesteruk titled, “The Indian Captivity Narrative”. The author discusses
her desire to know more about captivity narratives and how women who were held
captive were treated by their captors. She found that captivity narratives help
us learn about Native American culture and Mary Rowlandson’s narrative was the
earliest full-length captivity narrative that is considered an American classic.
Since this essay was a research post, I cannot argue what her research found,
but I did find it interesting. I enjoyed how the author stayed within our class
subject matter, highlighting the two narratives we discussed. Even though she
did not exactly find the answers to her original thoughts, I like where her
research took her. Narratives teach us about Native American culture.
All three of these essays brought something
new to the table. I found that my learning style compared to theirs is quite
different. I have a tendency to read something and take the literature as is
instead of digging deeper to find more. Each of these students took what was
written and brought the literature to a new level by adding a little bit of
themselves to it. I learned that I need to do more of this and to not be afraid
to be “wrong”.
