Socially, slaves were bottom the class pyramid and were treated bad and this caused them to revolt. In Salem, Massachusetts the imagination and communication played a huge role in witchcraft trials. The talk of the devil and witches grew and soon any thingthat is abnormal or seen as not common was seen as a characteristic of the devil or a witch.Politically, strange and harsh laws were made in the colonies. Slavery was seen as white man¶s burden and how Africans were uncivilized and those coming to their plantations and working for them will make them civilized. In Salem, Massachusetts strange laws were made when thehunting of ³witches´ began.
Montresor is a dangerous and evil person in The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allen Poe. In this short story, Montresor is sensitive, trickey, and evil. Montresor is sensitive because he is going to kill Fortunato because he insulted him. In the story, Poe also shows us through the indirect characterization methods of Montresor’s own actions, words, and looks. When Montresor is ready to go to the catacomb with Fortunato, he puts “on a mask of black silk” and wraps himself up in “a roquelaire.” He wears the mask and the roquelaire because it hides his identity.
She has to make emotional pleas for abolition, but she also wants to make sharp, pointed critiques of whole institution of slavery- including Northern complicities. Jacobs often uses exclamations such as “O, reader,” when she is going after the emotional appeal: “O, what days and nights of fear and sorrow that man caused me! Reader […] I do it to kindle a flame of compassion in your hears for my sisters who are still in bondage, suffering as I once suffered” (29). But then she will sharpen that up with a catchy, biting aphorism, like “Cruelty is contagious in uncivilized communities” (45), or “hot weather brings out snakes and slaveholders” (159). She is also not afraid to lay on sarcasm, as when she writes, of the rare slaveholder who is good Christian, “Her religion was not a garb put on for Sunday, and laid aside till Sunday returned again” (48).
Edward’s diction and tone gives his listeners and readers an eerie feeling, a fear for sin, and an awakening for the wrath of God about to come. On the other hand, there is Equiano, who persuades the horrors of slavery in attempt to abolish the slave trade. He appeals to our senses with phrases such as “galling of the chains”, “shrieks of the women” and “groans of the dying” (73), giving his audience a feeling of sympathy. With these statements he makes people question the morality of the situation, in order to get his point across, that slavery brutalizes everyone; the slaves, their overseers, plantation wives, and the whole of
And mark this. Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you.” Abigail is so controlling and threatens the girl that if they tell then there will be no mercy. Also Judge Danforth from the play, who abuses his government authority and power. “Hang them high over the town! Who weeps for these, weeps for corruption.” says Danforth to the crowd because John Proctor was standing up to him and he ripped up he confession and speaking of the truth.
In Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the Puritanical code of justice circulates pain as a ‘machine of punishment, cursing those who break the law as well as those who uphold it; Hawthorne characterizes this in the conflict between the so-called law upholders and the ‘sinners’. In the book, the first to experience the pain of the code of justice is Hester; her sin against the code dooms her to be judged by her peers by her scarlet letter:” Throughout them all ,giving up her individuality ,she would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody their images of woman’s fragility and sinful passion.”(73)Hester’s sin ultimately condemns her to live a life as
Hawthorne’s Critical Assessment Nathaniel Hawthorne takes a critically offensive view against early Puritanism. In this passage from The Scarlet Letter, the narrator describes the area surrounding the prison as well as the harsh and severe society, particularly the women of the town, that gathers and await the punishment of a criminal. Utilizing selective detail and denigrative language, the narrator noticeably exemplifies his scornful and condemning tone. He further interfuses his own negative attitude toward the Puritans while describing their appearance, persona, and demeanor. To successfully present his opinion and comments into the novel, the narrator uses carefully planned diction to sway the readers’ judgment of the Puritans.
In a fictional work based on the history, we see an enactment of the frenzy. In The Crucible by Arthur Miller Abigail Williams force others to join in witchcraft. She only thinks about her self and she loved John Proctor that’s why she was jealous to his wife Elizabeth Proctor. Abigail Williams also force other girls to obey her words. "Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you.
Another example is the Furies, they were in Canto 9 which was the fifth circle, the circle for wrath and sullen. The Furies were very hard on themselves. They showed signs of early suicidal attempts and they cause self-inflicted punishment, “Each Fury tore her breast with taloned nails; each, with her palms, beat on herself and wailed so loud that I, in fear, drew near the poet” (Dante, 49-51). Virgil explains to Dante that they are here because it goes against God, they are inflicting wounds and hurting themselves. They are destroying what God made, which is a sin, and that is why they are in this level of
“The Crucible” was written in 1953 and exposes the truths about the Salem Witchcraft trials, in Massachusetts. Ultimately, through their respective protagonists’ acts of aggression and violations of boundaries, authors Hawthorne, Soto, and Miller illustrate that the guilt derived from sin itself, especially if concealed from society, can cause emotional and mental torture, leading to everlasting internal punishment, and an increase in remorseful feelings. In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne depicts the consequences of concealing transgression through Hester by showing the internal punishment she faces and overcomes. Hawthorne opens this novel with a depiction of Hester’s punishment where she publically shamed on a scaffold and has no hope of hiding or concealing her guilt and sin. The author introduces an image of guilt and shame through the description of Hester as she appears from the darkness of the prison to the dazzling light of the day.