Comparing The Puritans In The Witch Of Blackbird Pond

People often dislike someone because they are different. This then leads to outrage and confusion when the person makes a stand that changes the way of life. In the Witch of Blackbird Pond, a novel by Elizabeth George Spear, Puritans in the 1600s were similar in this way. Puritans do not understand people who were different from their religion. The Puritans do not understand Katherine Tyler, who goes by the name Kit, a girl from Barbados, who has moved to Connecticut to live with her Aunt Rachel, Uncle Matthew, and Cousins Judith and Mercy. On the Voyage from Barbados, A Puritan girl named Prudence Cruff drops her doll into the ocean. Puritans think that every event that occurs was controlled by God. Therefore, none of the Puritans on the boat make an effort to save the

Kit is angered by this and jumps of the boat to retrieve the doll. When swimming back to the boat, all the Puritans are shocked by the bewitched actions Kit performed. Later that year, sickness struck in Wethersfield, the town in which Kits family lived in. The Puritans blamed all the sickness on Kit because they do not understand how it was spread, so they blame it on what they did not understand. Kit went to court when she helped another non-Puritan women named Hannah Tupper flee the town. Kit is then sentenced to court and Prudence defends her. Goodwife Cruff says her daughter is to dumb to go to school when Prudence claims that Kit secretly taught her to read. Prudence then proved this and her mother said she was bewitched. In The Witch of Blackbird Pond, People are afraid of things they do not understand, as told by the Puritans accusing Hannah and Kit, and Goodwife Cruff accusing