Reflection: The Crucible (Act One)

First off, I would like to say that The Crucible is more interesting than any of the other Puritan writings we have been reading.  This story deals with witch craft, which is intensely interesting, yet in the time period, blown way out of its necessary proportion. These people like to gossip and conjure up things in stories that just simply did not happen.  They did not even witness certain situations and yet these certain  people think they can make up details entirely untrue. This play takes place in the town of Salem.  Salem is ruled by God, theoretically.  The people carry out Gods actions.  Most of the story and characters are religion based.  If they are not with the religion they are experimenting against it, with the devil.  They use this "play with the devil" stuff under the term of witch craft.  Suddenly we as the readers can see this switch from Mary Rowlandson and Bradstreet to a more deeper, scarier type of writing. This introduction of this real type of hell, a fire filled abyss. The preachers are basically having to scare the churches followers.  I believe these people used God for when they needed him; when they were struggling, they did not know of survival, and had no idea where their life was headed.  Now, settled in after the pilgrimage, most people saw which direction their lives were heading in, and therefore they did not need God to direct them anymore.  The heads of churches were basically yelling at them, trying to threaten them by singling them out indirectly (if that makes sense) as horrible sinners that shall be sent to the hellish place of misery.  In the book we see these two girls.  One is essentially unconscious, or "struck by the devil" and the other is being questioned by her saintly uncle who only really cares about how he looks to the church.  He worries about how his niece's attempt at practicing witch craft will be looked upon him. I think he cares about his ego more than his niece in the first place.  One, this is wrong, and two, his sources are wrong.  He is listening to this lady who likes to gossip and has not been to church in quite some time.  The girls really do not want to confess their attempt of witch craft because they are quite scared.  It is the writing of the time period that sets this fear in.  When we see Betty, the unconscious girl, get better, things sort of come out of the box.  It was all really Tituba's fault for this whole matter (Miller 18). Parris is upset about the whole situation because Betty is still acting strange and he is having a hard time retrieving the truth when his persona is in jeopardy.  I think that Parris needs to get over himself and see the situation for what it is, dangerous for the girls.  This story has some appeal and more interesting qualities than the first three, yet is still plain and pretty straightforward desite a few minor details and compound sentences.  Why could these people not use interesting writing techniques?  Was it that everyone was just so plain and boring to their cores?

Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. New York, NY: Penguin, 1996. Print.