The Unredeemed Captive

John Demos in his book, 'The Unredeemed Captive' intended to illustrate the nature of relationship that existed among the different Puritans who settled in New England, the Roman Catholic French and those of the Native America. The author emphasized how the relationships were made complex due to the factors of moral superiority and racism. These factors were more common among the Native Americans. The author used a narrative style in the novel to describe the story of Eunice Williams, a daughter of John Williams, a powerful minister who was captured thereby making the powers of a powerful man to seem not working. This paper will summarize how Demos' narrative story by focusing on how prisoners were captured by Native Americans.

Demos' view in his narrative story argued that, when prisoners are captured, they are either exchanged for a ransom or transformed into a native culture. Demos narrate the story of John Williams who was from Massachusetts and was a powerful Puritan minister. The minister and members of his family lived in a small town in New England. John Williams and his family were later captured and taken to Canada by a group of Frenchmen who were working as Native Americans. Demos indicated how William freed but his daughter Eunice was not able to free and remained as a captive where she was transformed into the native culture, married to an American Indian and converted to Catholicism. John William tried as much as he could to free his daughter from captivity but his efforts were fruitless. However, there were other victims of captivity like Reverend Williams who viewed this action as being a spiritual journey or a punishment by God for committing certain sins. As such, Reverend Williams argued that victims should endure all the suffering since this would please their God (Demos 89).

Demos' style of narration in the novel makes the audience visualize history in a broad perspective. The book is a form of typical historical setting that is described in the form of a novel. The main theme of the novel is captivity. This theme has been utilized all through the novel with the author focusing mainly on the style of human character. Form the novel, it is clear that Eunice joined a new family without her intention and found herself in marriage with a foreigner. Her situation was understandable since she was young when her family was captured. On the other hand, her father felt guilty for letting her daughter stay with her captors for a long period of time yet he was a powerful minister.

One distinct style used by the author is that he seemed not to be sure of what he was writing; he actually admitted that he was conjecturing in some parts of the novel. For instance, Demos (34) states that "It is likely that..." or something like that". These are some of the words that the author used to imply that he was not sure of what he was saying. On other instances, the author admitted that he was not even aware of what his subjects were intended to be. This style is quit different from how historians narrate their stories. Historians base most parts of their writings on fact apart from few instances of where they employ assumptions in getting from one event to the other.

In the end of the novel, the conflict between Puritan and American Indians is resolved when the two parties reached a compromise. This compromise was reached when the two parties decided to bridge the gap that led them to be enemies and therefore they could understand and appreciate each other. The author's view on that matter was that when native and immigrant families can accept each other and intermarry, life in the world would be much better.