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What Are The Similarities Between The Scarlet Letter And The Crucible

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In the novels, The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and The Crucible, by Arthur Miller are similar in the fact that they are both small towns from Massachusetts. Their society is both the same in reaction to when a person commits a sin. All of the community members support the idea of how they punish the “criminals”. Such as in the adultery that was committed in both stories by characters, the people’s way in punishing these crimes was persecution. From The Crucible the adultery committed by John Proctor who was married but had an affair with Abigail Williams can be compared to Hester Prynne from The Scarlet Letter, who was also married, having an affair with Arthur Dimmesdale, who was a Reverend. Both towns from the novels were very …show more content…

An example of this is the witchcraft hunt that was going on in Salem in The Crucible. This is where in the whole town of Salem, everyone started blaming others of witchcraft. Although these were pretentious claims it caused the town to go through mass hysteria. Society then thought of everybody being holy and that nobody would ever commit sin, and when it did occur it was not extolled but led to persecution. Both of the reverends from both stories played a big role in the town's way of persecution. Such as Reverend Dimmesdale who was a respected man of God who just wanted for his own town to get back to God. He himself though wasn’t on the ‘right path”, since he too had committed an immense sin, adultery. This is why he did not speak of it and was discreet of his own sin. Reverend Parris, from The Crucible, wanted his town of Salem to fall back into the hands of God since witchcraft had taken over and “the devil was loose in Salem”. (Miller 59) Ironically his daughter and niece were the ones who had started the talk of witchcraft in the first place. He was more worried about his reputation and what the town would think of him since he was the Reverend. He preached to them about Hell and what would happen if sinning was to be in one's lives. For this, he would be ashamed to learn that in his own home witchcraft was being

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