Chapter One: Setting the Stage
After a few pages of prefatory material, the book settles in for the narrative with Chapter One, page one, paragraph one. And that opening is handed over to the job of imagery. The job is to set the scene, situate setting and put readers where they need to be to get the story started:
“DEERFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS. October 1703. Harvest over. First frost. The valley ablaze with autumn color: reds and yellows at the sides (along the forested ridges of East Mountain and the lower hills to the west), green of the meadows in between. The river low and languorous, a glassy rope snaked through the center. The most beautiful month, sunset of the year.”
Anti-Catholicism
A massive streak of anti-Catholicism runs through the narrative of Williams’ original manuscript. It is hardly hidden and certainly not regretted. In fact, if anything, it is flouted. What imagery could possibly be a more profound display of the arrogance of Protestantism than to compare the misery of being a Catholic to the misery of being a “savage” not even familiar with the teachings of Christ?
“I mourned when I thought with myself that I had one child with the Mohawks, a second turned to popery, and a little child of six years of age in danger … to be instructed in popery.”
Eulogy
The words spoken by a minister at a funeral are almost always heavily laden with imagery. The more fundamentalist and scripture-focused the ministry, the greater the likelihood of that imagery being anything from horrific to grotesque. The imagery here is indicative of where the church stood on the spectrum of fundamentalism:
“Death is justly stiled the King of Terrors, the most terrible of all terribles. The pains and agonies of a dying hour are very terrifying, the thought of being disembodied and dissolved very disagreeable, the consequences infinitely great and important. Many a good man (some for one reason, and some for another) have stood shuddering upon the brink, afraid to launch out into the bottomless ocean of eternity.”
“She Brings in Corn”
Eunice Williams was given a second “Indian” name during her captivity: She brings in corn. This seems like a rather benign and simple name—like Dances with Wolves, for instances—the author uses imagery powerfully to lend insight into what “bringing in corn” actually entailed:
“There was planting and tending corn fields. And harvesting the fully grown corn crop. And braiding the husks together so as to form corn shocks. And drying the bound shocks on large wooden frames. And shelling the dried ears…for storage in large casks made of elm bark. And grinding the stored kernels…in wooden mortars; and sifting the product (corn flour) through small trays of interwoven branches”
