Wilderness: Captivity and Escape

The captivity narrative authors covered in class describe wilderness much differently than Ambrose Pierce did in An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge. Although the authors viewed their captors differently, Mary Rowlandson and Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca both describe wilderness as a harsh, dangerous and sometimes frightening place. In contrast, Amrose Pierce uses wilderness to allow his protagonist to momentarily escape his own captors before he is ultimately hung.

In The Relation of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, the author describes the harsh climate and periods of famine. "From October to the end of February every year. . .they subsist on the roots which I mentioned"(31.) Among them we underwent fiercer hunger. . .we ate not more than two handfuls of prickly pears a day, and they were so green and milky they burned out mouths. . .Not being accustomed to going [naked] we shed our skins twice a year like snakes. The sun and air raised great, painful sores on our chest and shoulders. . ." (33). He speaks well of the people despite their strange customs. He seems to have more respect for the wilderness and the people able to live within the harshness of the wild.

Mary Rowlandson describes her experience in A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson as "the vast and desolate wilderness" (121.) She also underwent incredible hunger and cold, losing her six year old daughter to a fever (123) and feeling intense fear of the tribes people. She even went so far as to compare their dancing in the night to hell.

The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge portrays the wilderness as an escape. As the planter swims down the stream and notices the vibrancy of the amplified form of nature in his dream, he has hope. He reaches to bank and rolls in the sand, comparing it to "diamonds, rubies, emeralds." In the end, we learn that he is actually preparing to die, travelling inwardly toward his family for one last embrace with his wife, through the tunnels of the wild. He notices the vibrations of life all around him as he prepares to depart this world.