Its kind of weird actually because we are talking about the exact same thing in AP history as we are in this class. It has helped me a lot though because we have talked about the Salem witch trials in history as well as in
The Crucible.
The Crucible reflects the exact same tone as the passage of
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Basically, what the passage is saying is that confessing to your sins will save you, and that you
should always confess otherwise there would be consequences such as hanging. The church back then really did intimidate people. The church in a way kind of ruled people by fear. All the people ever heard is that they were being " held over the pit of Hell by God and could be dropped at any moment" (Edwards 98) . That is exactly what was going on in
The Crucible. Towards the end of the book, everyone tells John Proctor that he must confess to partaking in witchcraft. If he did not confess, the consequences were high. John had the decision to either be hanged, or confess. John decides at the end that he will not confess to a sin that he did not commit. John was hung for nothing. So there are many similarities between the passage and
The Crucible, and obviously, you did not always get a fair trial. John Proctor was innocent and did not once partake in witchcraft, but because rumors and stories spread quickly, John was accused anyway. I never understood how people could just accuse someone of doing something without any logical backup. It is very strange to think that these kind of things were very common and happened just about every day back in this time. Even though I still do not understand how people thought back then entirely, I guess I can try and imagine how situations like these happened. The communities were a lot different then they are today. Most of them were religiously based and often religion was really the only thing that they were taught about basically on a daily basis. Another thing is that unlike us today, they did not have the technology or just the knowledge in general that we have today. For example, they had absolutely no idea how to explain what happened to Betty in the beginning of the story (Miller 5). Therefore, they decided that Betty had had to be calling upon the devil. So, in their defense, they had no other explanation to turn to. The tone that exists in both
The Crucible and
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, is very cold and harsh. Both of them are basically saying that if you sin, you must take the consequences even if they seem unfair. The problem with this is that innocent people were often times accused of something that they really did not do, resulting in their death. This is what happened to John Proctor and both passages or stories portray this same tone.
Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. New York, NY: Penguin, 1996. Print.
Edwards, Jonathan. "From Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 97-99. Print.
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