In the Puritan society of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, logic and reason are suffocated by the hell-bent agenda of fear and paranoia. Sense is trapped beneath mounds of evidence to which a blind eye has been turned. Religion is the lense through which the governing body orchestrates its business. Innocence is a mask worn by the wicked, so tightly sealed that its removal isn’t a thought in the self-righteous mind of justice. Those that strive to move against the current of the common mindset are met with life-shattering resistance.
Logic can’t be put to work if it never sees the light of day. During the initial witch trials that take place within Danforth’s court, truth struggles to the surface. In the midst of the hearing of Giles Corey’s …show more content…
“Do you know, Mr. Proctor, that the entire contention of the state in these trials is that the voice of Heaven is speaking through the children?” (Miller 82). The youths’ word is taken as law, equal to the status of the Lord’s Himself. Ironically, even though no evidence would help those living out of the influence of the church’s corruption, the shining examples of rationale--Elizabeth and John Proctor--realize that without its presence, their fight is lost before arriving at the battlefield. “If the girl’s a saint now, I think it is not easy to prove she’s fraud, and the town gone so silly. She told it to me in a room alone--I have no proof of it” (Miller 51). The government can’t make a fully-justified decision on the fate of the accused without this crucial piece to the puzzle. Even as a more concrete case is formed and, armed with the testimony of Mary Warren, a former instigator, brought to the attention of the court, logic is bent at the will of the mass of the so-called ‘innocents’. John Proctor makes one more public testimony to sense. “For them that quail to bring men out of ignorance, as I have quailed, and as you quail now when you know in all your black hearts that this be fraud…” (Miller 111). The fruit of Proctor’s efforts to apply gravity to the girls’ halos is death; with him wilts both sanity and that sector of humanity’s only proponent of the gospel truth they use to justify his
Logic can’t be put to work if it never sees the light of day. During the initial witch trials that take place within Danforth’s court, truth struggles to the surface. In the midst of the hearing of Giles Corey’s …show more content…
“Do you know, Mr. Proctor, that the entire contention of the state in these trials is that the voice of Heaven is speaking through the children?” (Miller 82). The youths’ word is taken as law, equal to the status of the Lord’s Himself. Ironically, even though no evidence would help those living out of the influence of the church’s corruption, the shining examples of rationale--Elizabeth and John Proctor--realize that without its presence, their fight is lost before arriving at the battlefield. “If the girl’s a saint now, I think it is not easy to prove she’s fraud, and the town gone so silly. She told it to me in a room alone--I have no proof of it” (Miller 51). The government can’t make a fully-justified decision on the fate of the accused without this crucial piece to the puzzle. Even as a more concrete case is formed and, armed with the testimony of Mary Warren, a former instigator, brought to the attention of the court, logic is bent at the will of the mass of the so-called ‘innocents’. John Proctor makes one more public testimony to sense. “For them that quail to bring men out of ignorance, as I have quailed, and as you quail now when you know in all your black hearts that this be fraud…” (Miller 111). The fruit of Proctor’s efforts to apply gravity to the girls’ halos is death; with him wilts both sanity and that sector of humanity’s only proponent of the gospel truth they use to justify his