Blog Number 4

     Every character in the story experiences the events that unfold throughout the play differently, but the common emotion throughout all characters is fear.  The fear sets in for each character at different times in the story.  For characters like Parris, the fear is from the first page.  He fears for his daughter's death, as well as for his daughter's involvement in witchery.  He is scared that he will lose his job due to  the towns uptight, strict policy on witch involvement.  His reputation is on the line and he fears he will lose it all.  For other characters such as Abigail, the fear doesn't set in until later, when she has to confess to being a witch and being in line with the Devil.  The fear for her build, because she fear death itself.  Her love for Proctor, but his non love back to her makes her fear that she will never be able to live happily again.  In the end she runs away from Salem because she knows that her chances of living are slim.  Her fear of death causes her to run away.  Proctor fears not of death for himself, but for the death of the ones he loves.  Elizabeth his wife, when accused of being a witch scared Proctor, because he finally felt like he was going to lose her, which hurt him.  Every other character main character also experiences fear in similar ways to the three mentioned above.  Most characters as the ACTs progress get more and more scared, and many of them are scared of the judicial system.
     In USA today we have separation of church and state for exactly this reason hinted throughout the  second few ACTS. The judicial system in Salem is run by the church.  The fact that people are being hung because they are against the belief system put in place by christianity shows that the judicial system is corrupt.  Fear plays a vital role in this, because people fear the church, they fear the government, and they fear their fellow citizens because of the power that they hold.  One blind accusation and you are being hung or forced to lie about what you believe in.  The book revolves around fear, and it help to show a reader how corrupt it was a few hundred years back.  Since the church ran the court, the judges had extreme bias' and instead of going by the constitutional laws, they instead went off of pure eye witness accounts and the church's idealistic approaches.  This caused false accusations and many innocent people being put to death.  Also the whole idea of people who are guilty of an alleged crime confessing and being let off the hook being encouraged over telling the truth and getting executed.  It should be the other way around.  People who claim to be innocent should be investigated further, not just killed.  People who confess should be given a punishment slightly less than death.  This, I believe is what Miller wants his readers to realize.  This book can easily be related to many countries/ cultures today such as north Korea, where most people live in fear of the government, and who worship their leader like a god.  Any act of deference from the rules and death or jail is the punishment.  This book describes how faulty that kind of system is and how unfair and immoral it is as well.
     Whilest reading the Crucible, I attempted to read how Nabokov wanted me to.  I read the story twice (Second time was just a skim), and I do feel that I got more out of it the second time, so that was helpful.  I stayed disconnected with the characters, and tried not to feel overly emotional when events happened, such as when characters were being accused of being witches.  I would definitely recommend this book.  Being a play, it is an interesting change in reading styles required.  The descriptions of the characters was made very easy, because whenever a main character was introduced, there was usually a few sentence description of them at the beginning of the scene.  In addition, though there was not much action, the book was very emotional and keeps the reader wanting to read more.  It is a good balance between plot and dept.  There is just enough happening to keep a reader like me interested, but not so much happening that the meaning of the story is diluted.

Blog Number 3

Having discussed in class the power of three, I could not help but notice that the Crucible is split into distinct sections, which are put into different ACTs in the play.  Though there are four ACTs in the play, the idea still works to show that there is a distinct difference in not only setting, but also character's feelings for each other.  In the first act we are plopped in the story after a long night of witch worshipping.  The town is eager to learn what happened the witches and what is going on with Betty (She would not wake up).  Abigail is confident in her ability to cover up what happened and still has a positive outlook on her chance of happiness.  She believes that she can win her ex-lover Proctor back and this is her motivation throughout the first ACT of the book.  As we move to the end of the first act, Abigail has gotten rejected from Proctor, and Betty has awoken.  Abigail and Betty are forced to call out their fellow witches to take the blame away from themselves. As Tituba was about to give Parris their names they probably thought it better to confess themselves then to have someone else do it for them  "I want to open myself!  I danced with the Devil; I saw him; I wrote in his book" (Miller 45).  The end of the first act is the end of any kind of happiness in the story.  As we move into the second act, many women have already confessed to witchery in order to not be hung.  This act is much sadder and we don't see any happiness.  The characters are all scared of the church and of Abigail and her friends because clearly, anyone whom they mention automatically is questioned and arrested.  When Elizabeth is brought up, and arrested for having someone else's doll with a needle in it, all the characters seriously question the legal system, as well as their own chances of getting through the ordeal alive.  Act three is the trial act, where we find ourselves in the courtroom, where more lies are told and more people accused.  The general feel moves from sacredness to no trust.  Everyone in this scene just wants whats best for them.  As we move further into the act, Abigail, to save herself once again starts to blame Mary, claiming that she controlled all the girls the whole time.  I am disgusted by the acting of all the characters. They are the most unmoral, despising people, which moves us into the fourth and final act where the characters will come to the doom.  They are all executed, with the exception of Abigail and Mercy who escape.  Proctor almost confessed, but decides that he would rather die then lie about something he doesn't do.  The final act shows a failure in society.  The fact that people have to either lie or die is ridicules.  So we see a pattern of good to scared, to scared and corrupt, to death.

Blog Number 2

     Towards the beginning of the story, we learn that two of the main characters, Abigail and Proctor, had had an affair in the year before.  Though Abigail is still in love with John Proctor, John is done with Abigail and is content with his wife Elizabeth.  Abigail is outraged by this which seems to be why she became a witch in the first place.  She drank blood whilst worshipping the devil in order to order Elizabeth to be killed.  Elizabeth hated Abigail for the affair and talks trash about her any chance she can get.  Both characters, Elizabeth and Abigail are extremely deceitful in the book.  Abigail literally ordered the devil to kill Elizabeth, and Elizabeth accuses Abigail of being a witch, which would inevitably result in her death.
     All the characters seem to care about is themselves.  At the end of the ACT 1, Abigail and Betty awaken from their 'trance' and start yelling out names of people who were with them when they worshipped the devil.  They realized that everyone knew they had done what they had done, so they decided to throw other people as scapegoats in front of them so they would not get the brunt of the blow.  "I saw Goody Hawkins with the Devil! I saw Goody Bibber with the Devil! I saw Goody Booth with the Devil!" (Miller 46).   In calling out others names, they are not trying to redeem themselves for their own morals, but rather to redeem themselves in the public eye.  That is all they cared about, and they were willing to ruin others reputations and possibly even get others killed just so they could possible stay exempt from the hatred and unfair treatment.
     Abigail is introduced in the book as being a "strikingly beautiful girl" (Miller 6) which to me seems to make her sounds like a 'good guy' or a protagonist, but in actuality, she is one of the ring leaders calling the shots on the witch ceremonies.  The reader's opinion on her quickly shifts from a positive motivational feeling to a disgraced sad feeling.  She is portrayed incorrectly at the beginning of the story and quickly proves that she was so, by betraying other witches, attempting to order Elizabeth to be killed, along with lying, and potential discrediting of her uncle.

Blog Number 1

     Living in a Puritan culture is clearly a struggle for everyone, especially females.  As a way of breaking away and actually having fun, many of the young women become "Witches" and illegally dance and spiritually connect with Satan.  In the beginning of the book, Parris, a local Reverend examines his daughter who is in a comatose state after 'dancing' in the woods with a group of other girls.  The townspeople of Salem crowd the house that they are in, interested in whether or not Betty is possessed by the devil.  In this time period, people who are accused of witchery are very at risk of the death penalty, so this is a big deal.  Even Parris, who has no affiliation to witches is worried because if people in his family are witches, he would lose his job and be exiled from Salem.  "I have fought here three long years to bend these stiff necked people to me, and now, just now when some good respect is rising for me in the parish, you compromise my very character." (Miller 9).  This judgmental attitude of the time is what causes all the problems to begin with.  Townsfolk are expected to be 100 percent on the straight and narrow, not straying from the beaten path at all.  Abigail is accused of witch worshipping by Parris, but claims instead that she was merely dancing in the forest.  For me, this seems like a reasonable thing to do, running around in the woods, but it is not in Salem.  Abigail admits to dancing and follows her admission by saying she is willing to get "whipped" if she must.  Though not illegal to dance, getting whipped for dancing seems a bit extreme, but then again, the Puritan system is clearly a bit extreme.  The culture is founded on conformism, and does not seem to allow its people to do what they want.  This way of ruling causes many problems when people realize they are being treated unfairly. We can look at today.  Many high-schoolers will drink or smoke to be rebellious, and to break a law which they don't believe in.  Just as we do today, teenagers and young adults in Salem were rebellious against the set system by allegedly choosing to be witches and breaking the law. The only difference is now, the punishment is fines and community service, whereas punishment in the Puritan town of Salem, was death.