Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Family
The majority of the novel is focused on Mary Jemison's family life. I believe this theme relates well to the idea of home. When Mary is granted liberty, she realizes that "if I should be so fortunate as to find my relatives, they would despise them, if not myself; and treat us as enemies" (120). Even though Mary and her children are blood-related to these people, they believe her children have been "contaminated" with Indian blood and therefore do not deserve the respect that a white family member would receive. The ideas of hypocrisy, deceit and anger play major roles in Mary Jemison's family life. Thomas is constantly nagging John for marrying more than one woman; however, Thomas has four wives himself! The anger that escalates in John becomes overwhelming and he kills his brother. This is not a usual occurence amongst family members, so it is important to analyze the situation to understand John's motives. Finally, the concept of deceit plays a role in the book when George Jemison claims that he is Mary's cousin. Not only does he lie about this relationship, he later tricks Mary out of a large amount of acreage on her land (145).
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2 comments:
I agree that the focus of the novel is on her family situation, because it seems to be so different from the life she would have lived had she not been captured. While Mary Jemison highlights the calm and happy parts of her life one can not escape from the brutal killing of her children, and the chasing of those close to her. This relates back to what we discussed in class about both sides being shown but the negative being more focused on.
I'm really glad you brought up Thomas' hypocricy. Reading the story, I wanted to address that. While Mary Jemison praises Thomas (except for his affinity for drink), she never seems to mention the hypocricy of his family life in his constant criticisms of John. While John is obviously not a saint, it does appear that Thomas was as wonderful as Mary Jemison plays him out to be.
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