I really enjoyed reading in between the lines of the text and trying to make sense, or rather bring to the forefront of our discussion, the subtext present in his writing. To me, the text read originally as something written by a man who had been made docile and “given up”, so to say (not that I fault those who would do so, in the face of the circumstances he was made to go through), and truly convinced himself that he was extremely happy in the company of the “nice family” of the Owens. I agreed with the Stockholm Syndrome description.
However, as our discussion progressed, my reading of the text changed quite dramatically and I began to read it as defiant, with areas of almost-sarcasm or irony. I could be reading too much into it, and I think that I would need to read and learn a whole lot more about the larger context of his life as well as society at the time to truly form a well-informed opinion- but, I did come out of this discussion with a lot of curiosity and questions. Was him writing out the Muslim prayer not him effectively praying, in a way? Was it just to ensure that any future potentially enslaved Muslim readers would be able to retain some trace of their orgins?
