Rowlandson effectively uses the wintery season she was captured during to portray the bleak and desperate mood felt in this excerpt. Her having had to “sit all this cold winter night upon the cold snowy ground,” portrays a lack of control over her environment. For her captors, the Wampanoags, would not provide shelter to her and her sick child, and she had no ability to affect that. This exposure to the elements also sets the scene as cold, which is something she puts emphasis on by using it twice in that one phrase. That coldness can then be transferred to the Native Americans in a symbolic gesture, further portraying Rowlandson’s situation as bleak. And if her captors, her environment, and her mood are all cold and bleak, what will keep her motivated?

However, by the end of this passage there is a sense of hope, created by the coming of the dawn. Rowlandson and her child make it through the night despite the cold, snowy and wintery characteristics that they are forced to endure in the open, while sick and injured. Only once she is able to “see the light of the next morning” is she able to “see the wonderful power of God”. She deliberately interjected the idea that, since both her and her child “were both alive to see the light of the next morning” that their survival could be considered to be a sign of God’s “gracious and merciful spirit”. She applied her religious perspective, so that she could apply a deeper meaning to what would have otherwise been an unnecessarily cruel trial. By applying meaning to her tribulations Rowlandson is able to endure them without losing hope for her future. Despite the overwhelmingly cold, negative aspects of both the physical and emotional place that her and her child were in, they got through the worst of that night long trial, to see the reemergence of the light –that which Rowlandson implied was both good and godly.

Despite the cold, foreign situation she found in the environment of that night, she did have the physical comforts of both “a little fire, and a few boughs” which created a juxtaposition of the nature of her environment. It had both the cold and oppressive winter night, which is representative of her Native American captors and a source of light and support in the fire and boughs, possibly representing her home in Lancaster. Although she did not have a “Christian friend” near her, she did have the comfort of a small fire –that which produces both light and warmth, which she may have found to be reminiscent of the home she had and the home she creates in God throughout her account.

My interpretation is based on the passage in Mary Rowlandson’s I am offering this interpretation of the passage:

The following passage is that which I have based the above conclusions on:

“After this it quickly began to snow, and when night came on, they stopped, and now down I must sit in the snow, by a little fire, and a few boughs behind me, with my sick child in my lap; and calling much for water, being now (through the wound) fallen into a violent fever. My own wound also growing so stiff that I could scarce sit down or rise up; yet so it must be, that I must sit all this cold winter night upon the cold snowy ground, with my sick child in my arms, looking that every hour would   be the last of its life; and having no   Christian friend near me, either to comfort or help me. Oh, I may see wonderful power of God, that my Spirit did not utterly sink under my affliction: still the Lord upheld me with His gracious and merciful spirit, and we were both alive to see the light of the next morning” (Rowlandson 312)