Single Word Analysis (Essay Sample)

Name
Lecturer
American Literature 2014
14 February 2015
Single Word Analysis
My text for analysis is a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, a colonial American woman who was captured during an attack by Native Americans during King Philip's War and held ransom for 11 weeks, with focus of the word doleful for my single word analysis. Doleful is an adjective expressing sorrow; mournful. Mrs. Mary Rowlandson uses doleful repeatedly to paint a clear picture of the sight the Indians had inflicted.
She carefully and deliberately uses doleful several times along the text to paint strong resulting in imagery and clearly display the effects of the raid of the Indians. It particularly displays to us as the situation to be gloomy and miserable to watch. She explains it as "Oh the roaring, and singing and dancing, and yelling of those black creatures in the night, which made the place a lively resemblance of hell”. Indeed hell is a doleful sight.
The imagery immediately creates a picture in our mind of the sight of the house as "shot against the house, so that the bullets seemed to fly like hail”. We can easily visualize the sight of the bulleted house and considering it had inhabitants inside makes the incident greasier.
She creates mental images of the dreaded day, ”…. and quickly it was the dolefulest day that ever mine eyes saw" (Rowlandson 2). The word also advances the theme of the narrative of the inhumanness faith in God's will. Throughout the whole experience, Rowlandson keeps her faith and returns everything that happens into a blessing or a doing of God. "Yet the Lord still showed mercy to me; and as He wounded me with one hand, so he healed me with the other". Rowlandson thinks humans have no choice but to accept the will of God and attempt to make sense of it. She often compares Bible verses with situations in her own life. She even believes the British troops did not defeat the Indians sooner because they have not yet learned their lesson, and therefore do not deserve victory.
She describes the doleful sight as, "…….solemn sight to see so many Christians lying in their blood, some here, and some there, like a company of sheep torn by wolves”, (Rowlandson 4) the sight being compared to sheep torn by wolves further deepen our understanding of the narrative.
Rowlandson deliberately breaches grammar when she writes, "…… dolefulest night that ever my eyes saw...”, (Rowlandson 4) to further draw the real situation in our minds and convey her message to us.
She also uses the adjective doleful to express the tone of the narrative. This is useful since she is describing an historical event from his point of view even though  the story could be completely different if it were told by an outside observer. Doleful describes the  tone as being colored by hindsight. She tells the story of her captivity having already been freed, and she knows how the story ends. Though she is at times filled with despair, her ...