Friday, April 10, 2015

Judgement

What I find most interesting about The Crucible is how something like religion, something thought to give people meaning/purpose  in life and bring a society together but instead turns into something so ugly.  In Salem there is no private matters everything is pretty much made public, so it is hard to for anyone to be seen as an individual.  Having such strong beliefs opens the door for judgement for anything that goes against "social norms".  Killing anyone that is accused of witchcraft is a way to restore the social standard or as seen with Abigail used for personal goals.
I feel this book brings up the fact that most people rely on how the public or their peers view them, people will go to great lengths to maintain their reputation. In some cases like in the book maintaining one's reputation means destroying someone else's.
One aspect to learn from John is that perhaps the we shouldn't be afraid of the truth even though it isn't socially acceptable like his adultery with Abigail.  People will judge you no matter what but it is worse to be judged on false accusations.

1 comment:

  1. I agree with your blog post. In Salem if you didn’t follow the “social norms” as you said then you “needed to be removed or healed.” People couldn’t be individuals or think how they wanted. They had certain rules that they had to abide to. During the witch trials everyone was so stir crazy that if someone didn’t like you they could accuse you of being a witch and all it took was another person to say “yes I saw that person performing witchcraft” to have you be put on trial and usually in the end hung or pressed to death. Even if you said “yes I am a witch” then you were killed anyway. So, if you were accused of witchcraft it was pretty much a death sentence. One thing I think you could have improved on with your post however is to go into more detail and to close read the passage a little more but overall great job!

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