The Crucible 8-30

Stephen Simmons
AP English 11/Mr. George
12/3/09
The Crucible

"I have trouble enough without i come five mile to hear him preach only hellfire and bloody damnation...there are many others who stay away from the church these days because you hardly ever mention God any more"(28-29).

One of the main issues in the superstitious society is that Religion, being the controlling force in the town, is failing to prosper. What we experience today when we go to church is significantly different to what one in that time period might have experienced when going to church in their town. Instead of preaching the words of the lord as well as words of peace and equality, messages of death, betrayal and Satan are being preached and lodged into the corrupt minds of the spectators and encouraging them to do the same. Yes, many people have different ways of expressing their religion and different beliefs, and there is nothing wrong with that. The issue lies not in what is being preached, but how that preaching will directly effect the minds of the people. Considering the superstitious society that the people lived in the reverends teachings only blind the people making them unable to distinguish devil from human or a which from their own children.

"These people had no ritual for the washing away of sins. It is another trait we inherited from them, and it has helped to discipline us as well as to breed hypocrisy among us"(20).

We are all exposed to sin at least once in our lives, and to absolve us of our sins we go to confession and we go to church and as Jesus to forgive us. However, back then there was no method of absolving someone of their sins, so instead they just built up internally and externally, and you were punished for sinning. If there weren't people to search for your sins or abnormalities, then no one would notice. In this society, there was nothing else to do but to hunt down those who were morally wrong and torment them. This concepts of seeking out and punishing the wrong doer arises the idea of hypocrisy. If everyone sins in the world, which is a true statement, and we all punished those who sinned, then what we are really doing is punishing ourselves. In the society in the novel, if someone was punished for sinning or being accused of witchcraft, then they would really be punishing themselves because they failed to recognize their own faults, which presents a major defect in society as well as everyone living in it.