Similarities Between The Scarlet Letter And The Crucible

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The play The Crucible was written by Arthur Miller and was a very successful play. In this play, girls from the village of Salem, Massachusetts, try to conjure up spirits but were caught by Mr. Parris. This caused fear to be inserted into all of the townspeople and they started condemning people of witchcraft left and right. The main instigator of all this was Abigail Williams. She would lie and accuse people of witchcraft in order to get John Proctor who she liked. In the words of Braedon Page, “The Crucible is not only an illustration of mass hysteria and how quickly people can destroy a society, but also a demonstration of what lengths people will go to in order to get what they want.” In the book, The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, …show more content…

In The Crucible, John Proctor commits adultery with Abigail Williams. John does not confess of this until later in the play when his wife is accused of witchcraft. John Proctor confesses to the court by saying, “I have known her, sir. I have know her.”(pg 1206, line 21). In The Scarlet Letter, Hester commits adultery with Reverend Dimmesdale. In this book, the people punish Hester once her pregnancy becomes clear and her husband has been back in Europe. The people punish her by making her wear a scarlet letter A on her chest. The book says, “Throughout them all, giving up her individuality, she would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody their images of woman's frailty and sinful passion. Thus the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast.”As said by Janet Mulroney Clark, “Puritans were known for their strict standards of morality regarding all affairs of life, but especially in the realm of sexuality. Any woman who cheated on her husband would be punished by the community; the punishment would be swift, harsh and sometimes deadly.” In this case, Hester’s punishment was not deadly, but it was

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