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Every group of people is unique, all who have their own beliefs and values In “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller. The author tells the story of the citizens of Salem who, as Puritans, withheld strong beliefs in the word of God. Miller begins the play by providing the reader with information of the characters background. He states, “For good purposes, even higher purposes, the people of Salem developed a theocracy” (I. 30). Theocracy is a type of government where a God is said to be the supreme ruler. In other words, the people of Salem were very narrow-minded. They did not care for others opinions because if it was stated in the Bible, then why question it? The Bible states the Devil is real? So be it. Due to this mindset, many innocent lives were taken away during 1692. Although some were exaggerated, Puritan beliefs established order and discipline in a community for they thought these morals would improve the lives of people. Puritans came to America in hopes to find a place where they can freely practice their religion to the fullest extent. Following their arrival, they established the Massachusetts Bay Colony in present day …show more content…
To replace these activities, people dedicated themselves to going to church, bible study, and sermon-going. They believed anything other than these activities would separate them from God and lead them into a life of sin. This type of idealism could have been a possible catalyst to the Salem Witch Trials in “The Crucible”. At the start of the play, Abigail and the other girls were accused of witchcraft because they were found dancing in the woods. If Puritans had allowed dancing in their religion, would the girls have ever been questioned? With this in mind, a person cannot help but wonder if the Salem Witch Trials could have been avoided with this
The tragic tale of the Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts was re-written by Arthur Miller in the form of the play “The Crucible”. The trials have been studied to figure out what really happened, but no one will ever know since it happened decades ago. The play is the closest reenactment we have to help us see how people could have reacted to life. “The Crucible” shows how using others as a cushion to keep from being punished can go extremely bad. Amidst all the chaos a man by the name Reverend John Hale came to help but ended up with making it a huge amount worse.
Sometimes people are so narrow-minded that they do not see the whole picture. People see what they want to see because they cannot handle the actuality or do not like the truth. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, Danforth refuses to come to the truth that the witch trials in Salem were the result of a cover-up, and that the court hung a handful of innocent people because of a lie. Miller once said, “The tragedy of The Crucible is the everlasting conflict between people so fanatically wedded to this orthodoxy that they could not cope with the evidence of their senses.” In other words, the tragedy of The Crucible involved the theocracy’s failure to control Salem’s witchcraft mania. At the time, Salem was governed by a theocracy, in which the ministers also had judicial power over society. Because the judges were ministers, religion took precedence over realism and pragmatism; they were unable to come to their senses and realize that the accusations of witchcraft were out of human emotions.
While residing in England, the Puritans and faithful Catholics faced prosecution, which led to their immigration to the New World. Most left England to avoid further harassment. Many groups and parishes applied for charters to America and, led by faithful ministers, the Pilgrims and Puritans made the long voyage to North America. Their religion became a unique element in the New England colonies by 1700. Before landing, the groups settled on agreements, signing laws and compacts to ensure a community effort towards survival when they came to shore, settling in New England. Their strong sense of community and faith in God led them to develop a hardworking society by year 1700, which Documents A and D express through the explanation of how the Pilgrims and Puritans plan to develop...
In The Crucible, the mass hysteria surrounding the witch trials caused paranoia amongst the people of Salem. Miller uses the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 as a symbol and allegory of the fear surrounding the spread of communism during the 1950s in America. The community’s sense of justice was blinded by the mass hysteria and for some, a desire for vengeance and personal gain. The Putnams
The statement,“The Crucible is essentially about courage, weakness, and truth,” is proven true numerous times, throughout the play. The Crucible was written by Arthur Miller, about the true events that happened in Salem, Massachusetts, between the years 1692 and 1693. The Salem witch trials consisted of many hangings, lies, and complete mass hysteria. The citizens of Salem followed the religion of Puritanism, and the ideas of predestination. The root of the mass hysteria comes from their belief in the sense that in something happens then it must have been planned by God. In Miller’s portrayal of the story, Abigail Williams was the ringleader of the witch trials, and she used the idea of predestination to cover up her own sins. Abigail was a very manipulative girl and ruined many lives. John Proctor, Mary Warren, and Elizabeth Proctor were just a few of the victims in Abby’s game. John, Mary, and Elizabeth exhibit the traits courage, weakness, and truth, whether it was in a positive or negative way.
This research paper will examine how the theme in Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, shows how “...betrayal of the self no less than of others” (Bigsby xi), is connected to both McCarthyism in the 1950’s and the Salem witch trials in the 1690’s. The Puritans were a group that had suffered religious persecution in the Old World and came to America to establish their own religion in a place where they would be free of any type of persecution. Because of the personal persecution they endured in England, the puritans in turn became the persecutors when they were in America. The Puritans were the type of people who felt that there way of life was absolutely right, and all other ways were wrong. If you were not a member in good standing with the church, you were not allowed to remain in the community. The Puritans had two major beliefs, The Doctrine of the Elect and Theocracy. The Doctrine of the Elect better known as predestination or foreordination is the belief that when a person is born or at any time later in their life, they might be chosen by God to become one of the Elect, which is one of the people who would receive divine salvation. Those who were not among the select would not receive divine salvation. There is nothing that a person could do to be chosen, it was entirely predestined by God. No amount of good works, righteous living or moral behavior could help a person achieve this status. Since no one knew if they were one of the Elect, everyone lived a good life in order to be prepared for being elected when the day came. The Puritans also believed that if God could elect certain people to be saved, then the Devil could select certain people to be bewitched. The Devil, to the Puritans, was an active enemy to mankind because they accepted the story that the Devil was once one of God’s angels who had fallen from grace, and that now the Devils job is to continually try to destroy what God has made. Reverend Hale reiterates upon this when he says to Proctor “...remember, until an hour before the Devil fell, God thought him beautiful in Heaven.”(Miller 68) The Puritans second belief is that of Theocracy. Theocracy is the belief in a government that is totally controlled by the church.
Life as a human is dictated by an inborn hunger or purpose, and people, in general, will act on this hunger for their own personal gain in their individual ways. This hunger, be it for wealth, land, love, power, revenge, or pride, can, and will be the undoing or failing of all mankind as Miller so clearly points out in his play The Crucible. This essay will explore the motives of characters within the play and even the motives of Arthur Miller himself and therefore show how conflict stems from certain recognisable human failings, including those mentioned above, fear, and hysteria. Reverend Parris is the character that initiates the hysteria of the Salem witch trials, in a community where authorities wasted no time minding the business of its citizens, what should have been seen as teen frivolity was blown into one of the ugliest moments in American history. Parris sparks this by firstly acting on his own paranoia, which the reader would find in the introduction 'he believed he was being persecuted wherever he went';, and calling Reverend Hale in an attempt for self-preservation '….
The Crucible: Hysteria and Injustice Thesis Statement: The purpose is to educate and display to the reader the hysteria and injustice that can come from a group of people that thinks it's doing the "right" thing for society in relation to The Crucible by Arthur Miller. I. Introduction: The play is based on the real life witch hunts that occurred in the late 1600's in Salem, Massachusetts. It shows the people's fear of what they felt was the Devil's work and shows how a small group of powerful people wrongly accused and killed many people out of this fear and ignorance.
Though the Puritans, as well as some later groups, fled to the American colonies to escape religious persecution or restrictions, the fact remains that the Puritans had been granted "a charter from King James" for their settlement. Thus, the colonists who came to America for religious reasons were serving the primary purpose of generating profits for the Mother country of England (Boorstin et al.
“Jumping to conclusions is like playing with wet gun powder: both likely to go off in wrong direction.”-Charlie Chang. The puritans were a group of English Protestants who adhere to strict religious principles and oppose sensual enjoyment. The puritans had a strong belief that the Devil could be walking among them at anytime. Due to this belief, the puritans believed that people could sign there souls away to the devil. By signing their souls away to the devil, a person could become a witch or wizard. In Arthur Millers’ novel The Crucible, the puritans go on a hunt to rid their town of witches. The puritans also had a big emphasis on how one would act in society. For example, if one didn’t go to church often, the people would be very suspicious about that one. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories “Young Goodman Brown” and “The Minister’s Black Veil”, the puritans become suspicious of others because of a strange event. The strange events lead the puritans to mistrust and reject each other. In both of Hawthorne’s short stories “Young Goodman Brown” and “The Minister Black Veil” and in Miller’s The Crucible, a strange event makes the puritans jump to conclusions of witchcraft.
Parris: "Aye, a dress. And I thought I saw – someone naked running through the trees.” The play, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller had very many themes in it. Some of these themes stood out more then others. These themes would be hysteria, reputation, and hypocrisy. These themes were present throughout the entire play, from the beginning till the end. When you think of a Puritan religion you may think of a very good, morally perfect society. This wasn’t the case in Salem, Massachusetts. It was actually the opposite in the play, there was lying, cheating, stealing and just about everything else you wouldn’t want in your society.
The play, set in the 1600’s during the witch hunt that sought to rid villages of presumed followers and bidders of the devil is a parallel story to the situation in the US in the 1950’s: McCarthyism, seeking the riddance of communist ideologists. Miller sets this story more particularly in a village called Salem, where the theocratic power governed by strict puritan rules require the people to be strong believers and forbid them to sin at risk of ending up in hell. However, the audience notices that despite this strong superficial belief in God, faith is not what truly motivates them, but it is rather money and reputation.
Is dancing a witchery act? Is the forest a territory for evil? In present day one would answer no to these questions mentioned above. However, in 1692 a typical Puritan of Salem would have answered yes to both of the questions mentioned above. The Puritans left Europe, settling in Salem to escape religious persecutions. In Salem the Puritans lived a strictly Puritanical religious life. However, when in Salem they persecuted because of their failed theocracy. The Crucible by Arthur Miller is a play which addresses the historical major themes behind the witch hunt which was instigated by the failed theocracy.
In Arthur Miller's, “The Crucible,” the people in the small village of Salem, Massachusetts, are accusing one another of witchcraft. As the trials commence, the faith of the settlers becomes superficial. It becomes clear that the settlers only concern is how the people of the village perceive them, even though they are aware
The year 1692, everything the Puritans have worked towards has finally come true. Even though they finally have a place to be free they are still under a someone’s rule. They are under the rule of their mind. The author of the The Crucible, Arthur MIller, wrote the lovely tale to illustrate the trials of Salem. . The Crucible tells the story of what happened to this little village as they dealt with the forces trying to tear them apart. These forces were people in the village. The people thought to be the sweetest soul were doing the foulest thing imaginable. the villagers look towards the town’s minister, but Reverend Parris was not the man they need. Reverend Parris was a greedy, power-hungry, and egotistical man who cared for no one but