Essay On Puritanism In The Crucible

Imagine everyone you know has turned their backs on each other, the pure society you once lived in is gone, and all it takes for you to be hung at any given time, is for one person to mention your name as a participant, whether you actually were or not, of the most horrible crime one could commit; conjuring the devil. This is a description of an event in the late 1600’s, which we know of as, the Salem Witch Trials. This society, was made up of Puritans. The religion, Puritanism, was a religion made of purists who wanted to get rid of the Roman Catholics and all of their ideas, to make themselves a perfect society. They were on a mission to purify the Church of England, and they travelled from England to Holland, and Holland to North American. Many puritan villages formed, this one specifically being in the town of Salem, Massachusetts. The blending of the Puritans and the “New World” contradicted each other when there were differences in the structures of power. In the novel, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, it is shown that the ideals of the “New World” clashed with the Puritan model of a perfect society, which was the major cause of the Salem Witch Trials. The religion of Puritanism is a radical set of ideals that suggest God as the center of everything on earth, so it did not agree with America’s ideals of individual liberty and land of opportunity. …show more content…
The citizens’ equality in Salem became equal, and their previous scale of power was somewhat forgotten. It made people feel okay with blaming others, because they all had the same risk of being accused and it was essentially everybody for themselves. It is shown that the ideals of the “New World” clashed with the Puritan model of a perfect society, which was the major cause of the Salem Witch