Compare And Contrast The Salem Witch Hunts In The Crucible

The Salem witch-hunts of the late seventeenth century were characterized by widespread terror, hysteria, and a desire to pass blame onto those one secretly despised. Neighbors accused neighbors, friends turned upon each other, and even familial loyalty was put to the test. The hunt and consequent trials, fueled by the growing need to purge the community of evil and deceit, provided the means for certain members of Puritan township to accumulate material wealth or implement societal advancement at the expense of others losing their homes, reputations, and, for some, their lives. Nearly two and a half centuries later across the Atlantic Ocean another persecution scorched its way across the newly socialist Germany. Jews, under the supreme declaration

Thus the very thought of a witch, someone who had infiltrated a virtuous community to carry out their own sinister agenda, struck fear into the hearts of every Puritan who actively subscribed to the religious teachings of the time. Again, in Salem, the antipodal perspectives between light and darkness, God and Lucifer, purity and corruption, are responsible for the extremity of the situation; the same desire to rid the community of a perpetrator, this time unbeknownst, in conjunction with the entire town’s apparent conformity constructed a recipe for the terror and hysteria that accompanied the trials. Miller expounds upon such an idea, relaying that “So now they and their church found it necessary to deny any other sect its freedom, lest their New Jerusalem be defiled and corrupted by wrong ways and deceitful ideas” (Miller 5). This comment directly reflects the xenophobia present in Salem at the time of the trials, as the community’s apparent desire to purge itself essentially echoes the onset of the foreign concepts of individuality and religious independence. Additionally, such foreign concepts are reflected by Paris’s conviction that “a wide opinion’s running in the parish that the Devil may be among us, and I would satisfy them that they are wrong” (Miller 27). Paris, sensing “the Devil”, acts as a perfect example of how the steady diversification of the