Why Is Religion Important In The Crucible

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The True Killer in the Salem Witch Trials God may be the supreme creator, but religion is the ultimate destroyer. In The Crucible by the Arthur Miller, religion plays a major role in the Puritan society. The Puritans live in constant fear of the church and of each other. Although religion can bring a community together to work for a greater good, the high moral standards that citizens are supposed to uphold is often what causes people to look down on others and sparks tension amongst the Puritans. The fears of being unholy, sinning, and having their name blackened by society are what kept the Salem witch trials alive, a tragedy that resulted in the death of numerous innocent people. Fearing all things seen as unholy is what set into motion …show more content…

The accusations were “opportunity … to express publicly... guilt and sins, under the cover of accusations against the victims,” (7) which was, understandably, the reason the charges of witchcraft continued to be brought about. Blaming someone else was a relatively easy was to absolve oneself of guilt. Being able to “cover” sins instead of feeling the instilled negative feelings that accompanied having sinned, made people feel better about themselves. Having a scapegoat for any wrongdoing allowed the accusers to not feel like they had wronged because everything bad was someone else’s fault. The accusers could pass of anything they felt guilty about as an accusation and even though lying was not morally correct, the sins they admitted were much worse. Because of the strict moral code that everyone in the community lived by, sinning was something that everyone pretended not to do for fear of being seen as inferior and blackening their …show more content…

One of the main reasons Abigail was not stopped from naming more people witches is because when Proctor tried to accuse her of adultery, Elizabeth, his wife, denies his being an adulterer. She says, “in agony: My husband - is a goodly man” (113) because she is afraid of soiling his good reputation. The agony that she feels is because she is torn between lying in court and protecting her husband social status. The state laws, coming primarily from biblical moral codes, are also social laws and breaking any one of the tree would blacken one's name, so Elizabeth refuses to admit that Proctor cheated. But by protecting his social status, she inadvertently allows the accusations to continue which ironically ends up killing her husband. Because the Puritan community was so heavily influenced by religion and social status was so important, Abigail continued to accuse others of being witches. This combination of fears, unholyness, sin, and loss of social status each stemming from the others, created a vicious cloud of anxiety and suspicion within the town. And ultimately, with no other way to lessen the tension that grew from the pressure of religious standards, the witch trials were a much needed, but terribly unfortunate, outlet for the Puritans. If they had not had such strict principles in their

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