Comparing The Crucible And The Death Of Goody Nurse

All or nothing thinking is an irrational way of thinking involving thinking in extremes. The Crucible by Arthur Miller and “The Death Of Goody Nurse” by Rose Terry Cooke both demonstrate the theme of all or nothing thinking leading to ignorance and prejudice. In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, people are regarded as either for or against the court. In “The Death Of Goody Nurse” by Rose Terry Cooke, Goody Nurse is regarded as good and then evil. The theme of all or nothing thinking leading to ignorance and prejudice is posited by Miller’s The Crucible through characters labeling others as one of two extremes and by Cooke’s “The Death Of Goody Nurse” through the description of Goody Nurse drastically changing between two polar tones. In Miller’s The Crucible, the people of Salem are accused of being against the court if they do not actively support the court. In Act III, Danforth states “that a person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between” meaning that one who questions the court and the trials is completely evil. (Miller …show more content…
Beginning with Goody Nurse depicted as a pure but weak and innocent old woman, the poem abruptly switches to a condemnatory and scorching depiction of her with no transition. The tone even switches between lines the same stanza, for example, “Like one who sees her fireside yawn, / A pit of black despair, / Or one who wakes from quiet dreams / Within a lion’s lair,” (Cooke 2). Goody Nurse is regarded as either one extreme or the other, and eventually suffered the death penalty although she was innocent. Goody Nurse was cruelly “hanged this weary woman there. / Like any felon stout: / Her white hairs on the cruel rope / Were scattered all about” (Cooke 4). If offered the opportunity to be somewhere between innocent and guilty, Goody Nurse would most likely not have been falsely