Reflection Blog: The Crucible, Act 1

            In the first act of The Crucible, the Puritan writing is much different than the other pieces of literature we have read that were written by the Puritans. Unlike the others, the novel focuses more on the darker side of the puritans. This piece gives a different perspective of Puritan writing later on in their arrival in the United States.

            The first thing that stood out to me about the writing in The Crucible was the darkness of the religion aspect. Puritan literature focuses very heavily on religion, and the values that are believed. The major thing I noticed was the topic of the damned and the saved. The saved were the people who would eventually go to heaven, where the damned were those who would go to hell. They believed you could move from the saved to the damned, but most likely not the damned to the saved. In the first act, Mr. Procter was talking to Mr.Parris, and spoke about damnation. “I have trouble enough without I come five mile to hear him preach only hellfire and damnation. Take it to heart Mr. Parris. There are many others who stay away from church these days because you hardly ever mention God any more” (Miller 28). This shows the breakdown on the Puritan’s beliefs. The Puritans gradually began to stray away from church and their religion, so the church officials decided to take the entire time in church to essentially scare them into coming to church. They would tell them they would be damned if they did not come to church, and hoped that by doing so, others would come back.

            Another example of Puritan writing and the breakdown of the Puritan are similar to the damned. As we saw in Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, and in the part I discussed in the previous paragraph, the Puritans decided to take an aggressive approach in church. We saw in Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God that the tone often shifted in the writing. This is also shown in The Crucible. As Mr. Parris is lecturing Abigail about what happened in the woods and how she was being immoral, his tone changed from very angry to more calm and understanding, and so on and so forth (Miller 11).

            Although the writing in The Crucible is very much so an example of the breakdown of the Puritans, it is also an example of basic Puritan writing qualities. The focus is still very much so around religion, which means they do not complain. Although in the novel they do not complain, they do blame. Complaining is against the morals of the Puritans, but the Puritans later on in their coming to America made them change slightly. In the novel, Mrs. Putnam has to have someone to blame for killing seven of her babies. Really it was most likely an infant illness that caused them to die in a couple of days, but she felt she had to blame it on someone. She was not complaining, but she was not letting it go (Miller 16).
   Overall, the novel has few examples of true Puritan writing. The majority of the first act has examples of the breakdown of Puritan beliefs, and the affect it has on the people.

Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. New York, NY: Penguin, 1996. Print.