In The Unredeemed Captive John Demos retells a very old and once famous American story. This book, I believe is about finding your self identity and where you belong through different life experiences and situations. In 1704 a French and Indian raiding party attacked Deerfield, Massachusetts. Their particular target, Demos suggests, was the Reverend John Williams, whom they hoped to capture and to exchange for a French privateer languishing in a Boston jail. The raiding party surprised and sacked the town, burning a part of it. Williams and his surviving family were among the 112 captives that the French and Indians marched through the winter snows to Canada.
Forty-eight other residents of Deerfield died in the ruins of the town or in neighboring fields. Among the dead were two of Williams’s small children and Pementha, his female black slave. The killings of children and slaves were emblematic of those that followed. They were cruel, but not capricious. The unredeemed captive gives a false perception of who God is. I think that John Williams was trying to get the point across to the people that God loved them and that they shouldn’t live in sin any longer.
God is not just out to seek the glory like the book implies. He is out to seek the love of every human being. One of the things I found interesting in this book, is that Mr. Williams’ main concern with captivity, was the threat of converting to “popery.” Throughout his sermons, he seemed to focus more on the threat of Catholicism, than the fact that people were separated from their families. I suppose this is a reflection of the deep seeds of mistrust and misunderstanding between Catholics and Protestants.
The Essay on Witness John Book
Witness In the 1985 film witness director peter weir explores the sharp cultural conflicts between the old Amish society of western Pennsylvania and the modern American world of crime and violence. The main character, Philadelphia police detective John Book (played by Harrison Ford), is forced into hiding by a group of corrupt fellow officers looking for a little Amish boy (played by Lukas Haas). ...
