American Identity In The Crucible

The American Identity is a notion that describes the American people’s values and ideas to other people and nations all over the world. Overall, the American identity has projected that America’s people are free, and America can provide this freedom to anyone that wants to live in it. On the contrary, the people of America learn that even with this vast freedom, America still provides many unexpected hardships that limit American freedom. The foreigners’ outlook of the American Identity is based upon America’s symbols and documents, without which, would make America’s Identity much less identifiable. The American Identity expresses unrealistic amounts freedom through symbols and documents, but in reality, Americans experience many unexpected

The Crucible is a play that describes the events that occur during the Salem Witch Trials from firsthand accounts of the people of Salem. In the setting of the book, the American identity is still completely contrived from this idea of freedom. The root of this belief is how religion plays a role in the history of the town. Originally, Salem is settled by a group of families called Puritans, who had come for their own freedom from religious persecution. The Puritans ideals of freedom also spawned from their symbols and documents, an especially significant example being the bible. The bible expressed many ideas which influenced the town’s decisions in the trial, because not only did it provide freedom, but it was also used to prosecute the townspeople. The prosecutions were the unexpected hardships in this situation, because they resulted in many innocent deaths or people’s reputations being ruined. Towards the beginning of the book when Betty awakens from her supposed curse from a witch, the two girls start to spout out various names of the townspeople. These individuals are being dragged into something that they don’t even know is going on and have no way to defend themselves from the attack, and later in the trial process if they deny being a witch, then they are hanged. The needless death and torture in the story depict the unexpected hardship, because all of it could be avoided, and for many that were persecuted, they didn’t even know that they did something wrong. However, if during the trials one of these individuals was to confess, then they would technically be lying, and that would go against their religious ways. As fantastic as it was for freedom to still be so dominant in this time