Mary Rolandson vs Equiano's Captivity

The captivities of Mary Rowlandson and Equiano parallel each other, but they also have differences that can be seen throughout their journeys. During Mary's captivity, she lost her daughter from wounds sustained during their capture. Equiano also saw and experienced death, while aboard a slave ship. The slaves died of infection and some by the crewmembers of the ship. Their emotions through the experience were similar. They both felt grief-stricken, Mary because her daughter died, her son was wondering the wilderness, and her other daughter was not allowed to see her. Equiano was grief stricken because his sister was taken away from him and he thought the strange men aboard the ship would eat him. They are also alike in the way they were assimilated into the cultures of their captors. In the beginning of Rowlandson considered her captors to be miserable people. By the end of the excerpt, she was referring to their home as her own. She was became a member of their society, to the point where they would let her go places on her own, and trust she would come back. In the beginning of Equiano's captivity he was just a slave from the interior of Africa, he was fearful that the crewmembers of the slave ships were going to eat him. While aboard the slave ship, he began to learn the language of the crewmembers. Which is a big step in the whole integration process. He was beginning to get along with the crew who beat slaves and through them over board. He was becoming like them. They both began to see the captor's culture as an alternative to the way they were living. They were very similar in the way they dealt with death and their ability to accept.
There were a few variations in their captivity, which do set them apart. A major difference was the distance they traveled. Mary just traveled through the surrounding area to get away from the soldiers who were after the Indians. While Equiano went from the interior of Africa to the Caribbean and then to the Americas.