When the topic of a Puritanical society is brought up, most people think of a rigorous, conservative, highly devout society. While this may have usually been the case, this was not always so. The Puritan society was also known not to act out of Christian love, but to cruelly lash out at those who sinned or were deemed unfit for society. Two works of literature that display both aspects of this society very accurately are The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and The Crucible, by Arthur Miller. The Scarlet Letter displays a society that treats two people very differently who commit the sin of adultery together. The woman, Hester Prynne, admits her sin, is forced to always wear a scarlet letter A on her bosom, and is ostracized from society. The man, Reverend Dimmesdale, hides his sin from the world, is almost worshipped by the townspeople, but is filled with the shame of his action. Hawthorne illustrates how insensitive a Puritan society can be to those who admit their wrong doings. The Crucible is a play that tells the story of the famous witchcraft trial in Salem, Massachusetts. In the story, Abigail Williams, the orphaned niece of the town's minister, Reverend Parris, is the main person who accuses people of sending their spirits into her and the other girls. What begins with children dancing in the woods leads to the accusation and execution of many innocent people for witchcraft. The two works of literature have very similar qualities, including setting, conflict, and general aspects of the characters, while there are also specific parallels between characters, such as Abigail and Hester, and Parris and Dimmesdale.
The settings in both The Scarlet Letter and The Crucible are similar in many ...
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...ately. Because of this accuracy, naturally they have many parallels. Both have similar conflicts, settings, and characters. The fact that they have so many parallels is probably the reason why both are considered outstanding works of literature. They both contain the same element of truth and accuracy of the Puritan society and will most likely survive as great works of literature.
Works Cited and Consulted
Abel, Darrel. The Moral Picturesque: Studies in Hawthorne’s Fiction. West Lafayette: Purdue, 1988.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: St. Martins, 1991.
Hayes, Richard. "Hysteria and Ideology in The Crucible." Commonweal 57. Feb. 1953. 11 Nov. 1999.
Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. New York: Viking, 1953.
Scharnhorst, Gary. The Critical Response to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. New York: Greenwood, 1992.
Davis addresses various important factors in a peasant’s life. She highlights many components of peasant society, including their social classes and how their society values property in different ways. Davis also includes the peasants’ culture. She elaborates on the importance of children and the consequences of not being able to produce children. She also explains typical marriage procedures and customs. Lastly, Davis talks about some of the laws and common uses of the judicial system by peasants. By incorporating these factors into her book Davis is successful at recreating life for peasants in France during the sixteenth century.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. Enriched Classic ed. New York City: Simon & Schuster, 2004. Print.
I have read the The Crucible, The Scarlet letter, and Of Mice and Men. In two of these stories, The Crucible and The Scarlet Letter, society was very much alike. They were based on a Puritan background. The Puritans had laws to live by. In the story Of Mice and Men, society showed racism and also that people took the law into their own hands.
Beginning with the very first words of The Scarlet Letter the reader is thrust into a bleak and unforgiving setting. “A thong of bearded men, in sad-colored garments,” that are said to be “intermixed with women,” come off as overpowering and all-encompassing; Hawthorne quickly and clearly establishes who will be holding the power in this story: the males (Hawthorne 45). And he goes even further with his use of imagery, painting an even more vivid picture in the reader’s mind. One imagines a sea of drab grays and browns, further reinforcing the unwelcoming feeling this atmosphere seems to inheren...
Authority and power and chaos and order are the main discourses that are present in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Arthur Millar’s The Crucible. Through the context of each novel both authors use different dialogue, plots and situations to get their viewpoint across to the audience. In comparing the two texts with the similarities and differences, it is clear that both authors have had a different effect on the audience of today. It would appear as though both texts are focused around the theme of power and disempowerment, with the authors using different techniques to get their point across to the audience. Both texts will be discussed further through comparing and contrasting and discussing the description of the discourses present in both texts.
Sewall, Richard B. "The Scarlet Letter: Criticism." Novels for Students. Ed. Diane Telgen. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 2001. 319-27.
Smiles, Samuel. "The Scarlet Letter." The Critical Temper. Ed. Martin Tucker. New York City: Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, 1962. 266.
Cultural processes can be defined as the creation, or transfer, of knowledge. It is the way in which the rules of an economic system are communicated. In Men with Guns, the rules of the feudal economic system are translated through the men themselves. The “sugar people” or the “corn people” know their place in society because the army or the guerrillas tell them what it is through force. Every Indian that the doctor meets tells him that they are subject to the men with guns, and that they are in control. As long as one has access to a gun, then that individual becomes a knight, no longer a feudal serf, and it does not matter if that person has began life as a white person or an Indian.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The Scarlet Letter." Nathaniel Hawthorne's Tales. Ed. James McIntosh. New York: Norton, 1987.
Portrayal of Puritan Society in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter In the introductory sketch to Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel the "The Scarlet Letter", the reader is informed that one of the author's ancestors persecuted the Quakers harshly. The latter's son was a high judge in the Salem witch trials, put into literary form in Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" (Judge Hathorne appears there). We learn that Hawthorne feels ashamed for their deeds, and that he sees his ancestors and the Puritan society as a whole with critical eyes. Consequently, both open and subtle criticism of the Puritans' practices is applied throughout the novel.
Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible, and the movie with the same name have many differences and similarities, all of which contribute to the individual effectiveness of each in conveying their central message.
“She thinks to dance with me on my wife’s grave! And well she might, for I thought of her softly. God help me, I lusted, and there is a promise in such sweat. But it is a whore’s vengeance, and you must see it, I set myself entirely in your hands.” John Proctor says this to Danforth in the movie “The Crucible,” which is a fascinating, and disturbing story based on an important event in history. This event was the Salem Witch Trials. The author Arthur Miller wrote this story in response to the major event the McCarthy Era. The Crucible showed the similarities between the McCarthy Era and the Salem Witch Trials.
Griswold, Rufus Wilmot. "The Scarlet Letter." The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors. Ed. Charles Wells Moulton. Gloucester, Massachusetts: Peter Smith Publishing, 1989. 341-371.
Events have played out in history that made people realize the inhumane acts of people and the Salem witch trials and the McCarthy era were two of them. The Salem witch trials in 1692 were almost 260 years before the McCarthy “witch hunts” in the 1950s yet there are similarities between them. The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller in 1953, is about the Salem witch trials and is an allegory to the practicing of McCarthyism during the Second Red Scare in the United States, which Miller was a victim of. Although there may be differences between “The Crucible” and McCarthyism, ultimately the anger, lack of evidence, and the people were alike in both events.
Gerber, John C. "Form and Content in The Scarlet Letter." The Scarlet Letter: A Norton Critical Edition. Eds. Seymour Gross, Sculley Bradley, Richmond Croom Beatty, and E. Hudson Long. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1988.