God, can you help me - H.F.'s struggle for survival

I agree with Alana's post in that I am not finding Defoe to be as exciting a read as Behn. That said, I think his writing should be commended by us 21st century readers. After reading the first half of this narrative, I feel as though I've traveled back to London during the time of the plague.

Defoe has painted a vivid picture for me. Although A Journal is fictional and lacking in certain areas, I nonetheless am able to take myself back to the 17th century. As unbelieveable as it may sound to some of you, I see people scurrying to leave town, I hear the cries of those whose family and friends are dying around them. (Perhaps, I am too much of a romantic reader, wanting to get myself lost in each and every book that I read.) As H.F. walks down a London street, noting the drastic changes in scenery, he says: "... the Voice of Mourning was truly heard in the Streets; the shriecks of Women and Children at the Windows, and Doors of their Houses, where their dearest Relations were, perhaps dying, or just dead, were so frequent to be heard" (18). It is phrases such as these that enable me, as a reader, to feel the fear and desperation of the people. This sense of entrapment and fear of never returning to normalcy are what lead me to understand why God appears so frequently throughout A Journal. To answer Alana's question, I do not see A Journal as a testimony to God's mercy. Rather, I see H. F.'s trust in God as an individual reaction to a catastrophic event. I don't believe that he suggested that everyone should trust in God as a means to survive. Instead, he turned to God to help guide him through his decision to stay in London. I'm sure every person dealt with the plague in their own way. After all, his brother preferred to leave town and he was in good company. H.F. chose to stay, for it was "the Will of Heaven" that he not go (12). On the other hand, one could argue that he was forced to stay due to his own fault - he was unable to get a horse and his servant left him before he embarked on the journey. The bottom line is that it is hard for us to correlate God, mercy, and the plague in the same sentence. With so many lives lost, it does make the reader wonder how H. F. survived the epidemic. Was it pure luck or Divine intervention?