The Crucible - Puritan writing

The Crucible is about the Salem Witch trials conducted in colonial America during the late sixteen hundreds. The town of Salem was a part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Massachusetts was established as a refuge for English Puritans. Therefore the majority of the people who lived there were Puritans. The town of Salem was a typical Northern Colony, with the church or town meeting place being the center of the community and was governed through religious figures. Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible in 1953 (Miller), almost three hundred years after the Salem Witch Trials had started (Divine). Arthur Miller is not a Puritan, but did manage to relate the story of the Salem Witch Trials in a Purist manner.

Puritan writings referenced and acted as a model from the Bible. In The Crucible Reverend Parris preaches sermons with the intent of scaring people into straightening up and talks to great lengths about the Devil and Hell (Miller 29). He follows his own interpretation of the Bible. The Putnams on the other hand looked for God in their everyday lives. Ann Putnam believed that it was "not natural work" (Miller 39) that claimed the lives of seven out of the eight of her children. She and her husband also think that there is a witch in Salem; what else could explain all of the young girls' sudden illness? The girls themselves could not conjure up the Devil and confer and plot with it. Minister John Hale also gives the slave Tituba the reassurance that she was protected from the Devil because "the Devil can never overcome a minister" (Miller 46). Minister Hale draws that from the fact that he believes that he is one of God's chosen and one of the elite "elect", therefore the Devil can not harm him or any of those people that are under Hale's protection.

My favorite quote in Act One of The Crucible is Reverend Parris saying with a fury, "What are we Quakers? We are not Quakers here yet, Mr. Proctor. And you may tell that to your followers!" (Miller 30). In AP United States History, we are also talking about early colonial America (isn't that just convenient?) with the Puritans, Quakers, Pilgrims and Separatists, and Catholics. Therefore I find the Quaker joke quite humorous. Quakers are friendly people who speak their mind and believe that everyone can find their way to God through the Inner Light (Divine). They did not have the same theological government as Massachusetts had. For all of those aforementioned reasons, the Puritans were not exactly fans of the Quakers. The Puritans did not like the Catholics very much, but the Quakers were just intolerable. That is why the Parris quote struck me as funny; a Puritan (who is not known for speaking their mind so bluntly) flat out saying that Quakers are basically low lives that are something that they same in the same tone as a Democrat would say, "What are we Republicans?" (Divine). Oh the irony and hilarity of colonial intolerance of the supposedly tolerant Puritans.

Divine, Robert A., T. H. Breen, George M. Fredrickson, R. Hal Williams, H. W. Brands, and Ariela J. Gross. America Past and Present AP Edition. Boston: Longman, 2011. Print.

Miller, Arthur. The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts. New York, NY: Penguin, 2003. Print.