The Puritans in The Scarlet Letter ironically condemn Hester by hypocritically reacting to her sin and by foolishly praising the preacher who actually committed adultery with her. Once the puritans realize Hester was pregnant, they began to condemn her and give her harsh consequences. All together they banished her from the town and tried to take her daughter away from her. These consequences were given hypocritically since the majority of the town participated in witchcraft. The town, in order to justify it's sin, acted like they actually held standards by harshly attacking Hester's sin.
Before Dimmesdale kills himself, he admits his sin to the whole town. Also, Dimmesdale receives treatment from Hester’s husband, Chillingworth, who knows their secret, and is trying to get revenge on them both. Chillingworth ends up realizing that he is going insane with trying to get revenge and believes that he has sinned more than both of them. The novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne uses satire to poke fun of the Puritan attitude toward sinning and the punishments of sinning. The reader learns from the text that the Puritan religion looked down on the idea of sin and punishes sinners harshly.
Author Millers, The Crucible, is a play about the fear, of witchcraft in the sixteenth century, and what fear does to people in the small town of Salem, Massachusetts. During the colonial time period, witchcraft was punishable by death. In Salem the idea of witchcraft not only feared the people, but also the community as a whole. The community of Salem was split into two demographics by poor farmers, and wealthy merchants, becomes a scared fearful town during the accusations, not knowing if your neighbor was or was not a witch. The church of Salem plays an important role in the outcome of the town; the church has immense power and control of the town.
A radical religion called Puritanism was vitally important to the people of Salem, and they were extraordinarily paranoid of the Devil. Two characters in the book The Crucible demonstrate how Puritanism affected the society. Judge Danforth is an example of religious ignorance and ends up being the person who condemns everyone, suspecting they are all witches. On the other hand, John Proctor is a level headed farmer who watches as his friends and their wives are accused of witchcraft and sentenced to death, that is, until his own wife is accused. Using these foil characters, Arthur Miller exemplifies the difference between people who are weak minded and cowardly versus people who are strong-minded and brave.
Mr. Hooper, the minister in The Black Veil is a man of secret sin and darkness. Hooper could represent secret sin within his heart or specific sin which could be adultery. The congregation of the church was surprised to see the minister with the black veil on that covered his face. Though they never saw the minister’s actions change, the way people reacted to him did, even his love Elizabeth’s actions. People were afraid and intimidated by the veil that the minister wore and believed it hid some secret sin and reminded them of their own transgressions, which should never happen with the minister.
In the early Modern Ages, scholars overwhelmingly rejected the notion of witchcraft, as this would have threatened the monopoly of the Church[3]. The construction and imposition of witchcraft as a crime started in the 1480s. The Malleus Maleficarum written by Heinrich Krämer and Jacob Sprenger[4]were the “instigators of the systematic persecution”[5] of witches. Malleus argued that witches were supported by the devil (with whom they had a sexual compact) and attended Sabbaths[6]; making witchcraft a heresy. These ideas were then widely supported and imposed upon people by theologians and lawyers[7] making diabolic interference central to the idea of witchcraft.
All people are born sinners. Natural men must be reborn to be saved; “…hell is waiting for them…” (Edwards 46). These views are that of Jonathan Edwards in Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Edwards belonged to a religion that was lingering and was close to disappearing due to the growing numbers of Christians, so he used figurative language and imagery in order to scare people back into the Puritan way of life. “Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downward with great weight and pressure toward hell.” (Edwards 47).
The puritans did not separate Church and State. The puritans lived by a moral code. They believed that sinful people should be punished. The puritans saw it as they were doing the will of God by riding the world of such demonic acts or lifestyles. Finding witches seemed to become a crusade.
They also believe that every man is evil and is only judge by God on where he decides whether or not you go to heaven or hell. So dealing with the devil would automatically make you evil as we see in “The Crucible” on where if something seems out of the ordinary in their time such as a person who might not be attending church would look suspicious to the people and would quickly judge for working with the devil since going to church is mandatory to all the people in Salem we see this kind of work in the first act on where the minister of Salem Parris have caught his niece Abigail Williams and his daughter Betty Parris with their friends there too dancing around a pot with one of his slaves Tituba where they were trying to call the spirits when Parris came and Betty had fainted and Parris has blamed that this was the work of witchcraft. Arthur Miller has seen this also with McCarthyism where we would take actions right there and automatically think that communism was too blamed for
They believed that god was punishing humans for their sins and that god uses plagues, miserable famines, conflicts, wars and others to make people suffer who have done any harm(Answers). During the late 1340’s, this reason shows that civilians were extremely religious which made them believe that this was true since they thought god was involved in everything.Also, it shows the lack of knowledge in medicine in the world because they were going clueless on what caused the disease. This made the belief more common which encouraged churches and others to believe that the most ideal and practical answer was that they were being tested on for their cruelty. Those who thought God was disciplining them thought that the cure was to pray and punish themselves until they got back on God’s good side which reapplies to the idea of people being super religious during the 1300’s. Religiously Committed Catholics would whip themselves and would cry for God’s forgiveness showing that they believed this belief by a lot.