The Crucible Act 4- Reflection Blog

In the final act of The Crucible, there are many unexpected twists and turns taken by some of the main characters in this play. As we read this story, we quickly found out that this play has a very religious based community. This play was written in the Puritan style, which means it is very much based around God and religion. Throughout this play, as I was reading I kept asking myself why these people would automatically assume people were associated with the devil when something happened that they did not have an answer to. For example, at the very beginning of the book when Betty faints they all automatically jump to the conclusion that she was calling upon the devil and was doing witchcraft and what not (Miller 5). I defiantly think I had a hard time understanding how in the world it was possible for people to approach things so ignorantly, but then I thought about the time period and about how back in the day, stuff like this happened every single day because we did not have the knowledge or technology to know what actually caused Betty to faint. Also, in addition to not having all of the resources and information we have today they were very based around the church. In today's society we are not as religiously based as communities back in this time period were, and I think that is another reason people made such ignorant assumptions about things they could not explain. By reading this play I realized just how church based times were back then, and this is where Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Jonathan Edwards comes into play. I think that Jonathan Edwards shows us the more strict side of religion in this story because of the tone of the narrator. It is written in a way that makes me think he is being very cold and strict, and to prove that a little bit more in this little story he talks about how all sinners deserve to be punished and how all sinners should not be allowed to live with the true Christians (Edwards 99). From my experiences at church, I have always been told that everyone sins, so for me to read about people being hung for sinning it is almost unbelievable. I think that this is one of the similarities between The Crucible and Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God because in both of these stories we hear all about sinners and unfortunately, we also learn about the punishments that were given to anyone who was accused of sinning. Although Hands of an Angry God is written in a much more stern style than The Crucible, I think that both of these writings show us how important religion was back then and also how seriously sinning was taken back in the time period that these stories were written during. Personally I think that The Crucible is better for teaching us about how life was back in this time period because the author took the time to introduce the characters and showed us what actually happened verse what people believed to be happening.

Bibliography

Miller, Aurthur. The Crucible. New York: Penguin Group, 1976. Print.

Edwards, Jonathan. "From Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 97-99. Print.