The Crucible Source Analysis
In Arthur Miller's “The Crucible” the last words uttered by the people at the end of the Salem witch trial were ones with no regret as they hung to death in front of the town. All of these people who were in fact innocent all faced similar problems due to the Puritan religion and government being, in essence, one in the same. Jealousy, revenge, and fear of the unknown sets the stage for how one persons should act vs how the people did act in the religious society.
With the Puritan religion and the government intertwined as deeply as they were one of them had to be dominant, in this case it was the religion which is what changed people to do what they did. In Source A Proctor doesn’t want to “blacken all of them [his friends] when this is nailed …show more content…
to the church the very day they hang for silence!” If Proctor lets Danforth nail his signed confession to the church he is damning all of his friends who stayed silent. Danforth thinks “ it is the same, is it not? If I report it or you sign it” Danforth just wants Proctor to confess to the “crimes” of witchery because he knows it will make others confess, or he will get Proctor to tell him who he saw with the devil so he can kill them too. Danforth knows that all of them are innocent, but he continues due to his religious vows. He believes it is to late to stop the hanging of people.
Source B is presumably Danforth declaring something to the rest of the townsfolk.
It’s hard to say the reason, but it can be assumed that Danforth is accusing someone of practicing witchcraft. Danforth is using his status as a judge to fuel people's revenge and fear by sending anyone accused of a witch to death. Danforth can only be a religious figure or a judge he can't be both because that manipulates his logic of what is right and what is wrong. In source C the author, who discusses the entirety of the play, has an interesting point of of mentioning “..[Puritans are] prone to a certain amount of intolerance towards any form of opposition or dissent… any form of individuality will be considered subversive and dangerous.” People in puritan society could not be different they had to be like everyone else drab and basic. There was a fear of anything that was original, or could, in there mind, be associated with the devil. This shaped how they acted in the presence of whom they thought was a witch. If someone was thought to be a witch they would be outcasted immediately, friends and family would abandon them because they were thought to be associating with devil, performing heinous acts against God. Source D is a good example of how persons should act vs how most people acted. The first line, “If ever two were one, then surely we” is example of how someone married should act, this woman's love for her husband is everlasting and she puts there love before anything else in her
life. This what people's private lives were like, but in public they couldn't be like this.
All in all the lives of people in salem were strained do to the expectations of society to reform to certain standards. People had to be the same to avoid persecution of the government and religion. Although people weren't instantly put to death for being unique it did cause suspicion and that was bad enough.
With the Puritan religion and the government intertwined as deeply as they were one of them had to be dominant, in this case it was the religion which is what changed people to do what they did. In Source A Proctor doesn’t want to “blacken all of them [his friends] when this is nailed …show more content…
to the church the very day they hang for silence!” If Proctor lets Danforth nail his signed confession to the church he is damning all of his friends who stayed silent. Danforth thinks “ it is the same, is it not? If I report it or you sign it” Danforth just wants Proctor to confess to the “crimes” of witchery because he knows it will make others confess, or he will get Proctor to tell him who he saw with the devil so he can kill them too. Danforth knows that all of them are innocent, but he continues due to his religious vows. He believes it is to late to stop the hanging of people.
Source B is presumably Danforth declaring something to the rest of the townsfolk.
It’s hard to say the reason, but it can be assumed that Danforth is accusing someone of practicing witchcraft. Danforth is using his status as a judge to fuel people's revenge and fear by sending anyone accused of a witch to death. Danforth can only be a religious figure or a judge he can't be both because that manipulates his logic of what is right and what is wrong. In source C the author, who discusses the entirety of the play, has an interesting point of of mentioning “..[Puritans are] prone to a certain amount of intolerance towards any form of opposition or dissent… any form of individuality will be considered subversive and dangerous.” People in puritan society could not be different they had to be like everyone else drab and basic. There was a fear of anything that was original, or could, in there mind, be associated with the devil. This shaped how they acted in the presence of whom they thought was a witch. If someone was thought to be a witch they would be outcasted immediately, friends and family would abandon them because they were thought to be associating with devil, performing heinous acts against God. Source D is a good example of how persons should act vs how most people acted. The first line, “If ever two were one, then surely we” is example of how someone married should act, this woman's love for her husband is everlasting and she puts there love before anything else in her
life. This what people's private lives were like, but in public they couldn't be like this.
All in all the lives of people in salem were strained do to the expectations of society to reform to certain standards. People had to be the same to avoid persecution of the government and religion. Although people weren't instantly put to death for being unique it did cause suspicion and that was bad enough.