The Crucible by Connor Petersen

The Puritans Beliefs

99058818_2 — 2024-11-15 19:11:08 UTC

The Puritans came to America searching for religious freedom. They came from Great Britain where they did not agree with the catholic church. The Puritans believed that they were on a mission from god and wanted to establish a Theocracy. A theocracy is where the government is led by god and the Puritans often said, "No king but King Jesus". The Puritans also believed in predestination which is where people are predetermined if they are going to heaven and no good works will get you into heaven and that Jesus died on the cross for only those who are predetermined to be Holy.

The Puritans society

99058818_2 — 2024-11-15 19:22:30 UTC

The Puritans believed that they would build a City on top of a hill. This would be the new place of the Massachusetts colony and would be a place of complete reform. The Puritans believed that Satan was out to try and stop them from putting the city on top of the hill. The belief of satan and witchcraft started in Europe where witchcraft was more common and people were interested in it. There were many foreign examples of witchcraft like the slave named tituba that would perform black magic in front of the teens.

Teens In Salem

99058818_2 — 2024-11-15 19:30:47 UTC

Tituba who was a slave that lived in the town would regularly perform black magic and the teenagers in Salem had nothing to do so they just watched her. These girls started acting strange after being with Tituba when she does magic. Then the girls who would be with Tituba started acting very weird and getting sick so when people were alerted by their behavior the girls started accusing people of witchcraft. At first the girls went after the edge of the town and accused people like Tituba and the town beggar. Then these people would be sent to jail and sometimes even killed. The girls ended up accusing so many witches and put 200 people in jail and got some people in the town executed.

The Witch Trials

99058818_2 — 2024-11-15 19:39:32 UTC

In order to find if these people are witches they would do things to try and figure out who is. One of the ways they would test for a witch was to strip down their clothes and look for a third nipple and see if they poked it with a needle if it would bleed or not. Also another thing they would do is they would take people to a lake and see of they float, but the catch was if they floated they were a witch, and if they sank and drowned they were not a witch but it wouldn't matter because they would be dead. Also if you were accused of being a witch and you did not admit to it you would be sent to jail and if you did admit to it nobody would ever talk to you and your life would be ruined. Also they would force people to admit to it, there was an eighty-year-old man who would not say anything after he was accused and they would lie him down and put stones on his chest until he was crushed to death because he would not say if he was a witch or not.

Communism in Hollywood

99058818_2 — 2024-11-15 19:45:44 UTC

A similar event happened around the 1930's in Hollywood. This was where movie stars and directors were accused of believing in communism. They had a list of people and Authur Miller happened to be on this list and other people on the list would rat out people who did believe in communism but Arthur just decided to take his trial and did not mention anyone else. This made Arthur blacklisted from anything in Hollywood which made him research what happened in Salem. This made him make the play "The Crucible". While the play flopped at first because of Arthur being blacklisted today it is one of the most famous plays and is performed but theaters often.