e did not succumb to the brutal conditions, she might get her freedom. One important difference in their narratives is that Douglass' is meant to teach about slavery. He wrote, in the years before the Civil War, for an audience that he hoped to persuade to accept Abolitionist principles, and this audience was, for the most part, not well acquainted with the every-day condition of Southern slaves. Douglass sought, therefore, to make everything painfully clear--including the abiding humanity of the enslaved people. He therefore provides a great deal in the way of scene-setting and background information. He describes the relationships among the families and contractors who, owned him and others and he is always specific about whether certain types of owner and slave behavior were typical or unusual.
Rowlandson, on the other hand, was less interested in teaching anything about the nature of her captivity or her captors than she was in providing an example of God's mercy. She operates under the assumption that she and her audience share most basic assumptions, and they largely know what she is talking about. She is eager to discuss the horrible ways of her captors, but she does not look at them in the systematic, logical way in which Douglass studies the motivations and actions of his captors. Rowlandson predicates everything she writes about the Indians on the assumption
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