Theocracy In The Crucible

In the Crucible, the town of Salem was a hotbed of intrigue and people accuse each other of witchcraft. Back in the sixteen hundreds, the town of Salem, Massachusetts was home to some two thousand person’s living in and around the Salem village. The witch trials started at the beginning of sixteen ninety two and going till the middle of sixteen ninety three. Before the beginning of the trials, twelve women had already been accused of witchcraft and summarily executed by being hanged. During the trials, people from different places in and around Salem were accused and put in jail. Twenty people were later killed, fourteen of them women, and all but one by hanging. Five other people died due to being put into jail. The main cause of this was

grudging and feuds between families which caused people to be accused. This also leads into the way the government of Salem was run.

Theocracy, which was the way that the town of Salem was run, was another part of the problem caused by the witch trials. Theocracy is the melding of church and state, which in Salem caused the problems with all the killings. People who wanted things like Putnam, and were a part of the theoretical process could have the power of life or death over people. In Puritan society, everything had its place, from people who were in charge of the slaves that they owned, everyone had to follow a certain set of principles set out by their religion. Everyone had to go to church, nobody was allowed to work on the lord’s day, which is Sunday, everyone had to know the commandments and read the bible to just name a few of their many rules. In the play, people were looked down on if they did not adhere to the rules and could even be excommunicated if they were a

disturbance.

In Salem the men had all the power over everything but even they were separated into different groups. If you were rich you would be more likely to be in power, and if you were poorer than you would be looked down upon in society. In the play, the poor people were killed off first and then they started killing the people with money and power slash prestige. Those in power, basically the people with money, had all the power and corruptibility that comes with power in Salem’s Puritan society. If you had little money, than you had no power and had to follow whatever the rich wanted you to do. Mostly only the rich were educated, because it was very expensive to get schooling and at the time in Salem there was not a school that the children could go to. People that were older, were seen as wiser and also as more corruptible. The old in Salem had much more power than the young. The kids were seen as not having anything good to say and therefore nobody took into account what they said or thought. People who were seen going to church every Sunday and being pious all the time were much more warmly received than those that sometimes worked on Sunday and did not always follow the preachings of the minister.

In the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller, some of the long held traditional ways of society were drastically changed and yet others were strengthened.

First of all, the most important change in the society was that of the young girls being basically in charge of the theocracy in Salem. In the first place kids had no power at all in Puritan and any society back then, let alone young girls, especially when women were seen as only mothers and nothing more. In the play, the girls called out whoever they wanted and ran the whole town. Nobody could stop them either, if the men relented and said that they were at fault, then they would be publicly ridiculed and would probably lose their positions and power and so they did not say that they were wrong and that everyone should be released. Another change was in power, the people who were poor were first killed in Salem so the people in power basically cleaned out the whole town of what they would see as filth. This left only the people who still had some power. This increased people’s power so that they could control more of the town. This was like the Army-McCarthy hearings of the 50’s. McCarthy was said to have given preferential treatment to an aide and the Army called him out on it. The main cause behind the accusations were that McCarthy had said that some people were Communists and that they should be cleared out of the government. This is like the play in that there was a more sinister motive behind accusing people of being

witches. In the McCarthy hearing it was about people hating him for naming them Communists and in the play it was about trying to gain land and to get rid of people that you did not like.

There is a split in between the people of the play. On one side there is the likes of John Proctor and his wife Elizabeth, Rebecca Nurse and Francis Nurse, and Reverend Hale. On the other side are people like Reverend Parris, Reverend Danforth, Thomas Putnam and his wife Ann Putnam. In the play, it is easy to see what stage of Kohlberg’s morality stage that people are at. Parris is at level one or Pre-Conventional stage; He has reached the second part of the stage. The second part of Pre-Conventional is self-interest orientation. Parris is definitely all about himself and how to get the most power. Danforth is at a higher level which is level two or the Conventional stage. He has also reached the second part of the stage which is authority and social-order maintaining orientation. He tries to follow what he thinks is right even when he starts to doubt that he is right. He tries to maintain what he originally thought even if he is wrong.