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Examples Of Human Diversity In The Crucible

766 Words4 Pages

Leif Peterson
Heather Walsh
College Literature
04 March 2023
Human Diversity Mid Quarter Essay
Have you ever wondered what life was like as a Puritan? It’s much different than our lives are today, and the play The Crucible illustrates this very well. The Crucible also has several examples of human diversity. Human diversity is the difference between people based on their background and upbringings. The Crucible shows human diversity through different examples of human diversity, reflects when it was written, and teaches us about human diversity today.

HUMAN DIVERSITY IN THE CRUCIBLE
The playwright Arthur Miller incorporates many different examples of human diversity into The Crucible. Miller took a historical event and based a story around …show more content…

The Crucible is set in the late 1600s, in a puritan community. Puritans were very religiously oriented, and they lived a very simple lifestyle. Puritans believed that anything fun was bad. In the first act of the play Parris said, “And what shall I say to them? That my daughter and my niece I discovered dancing like heathen in the forest?” (Miller 10) We can also see their Religious beliefs in their court system, when Hale and Judge Hathorne based rulings off of how often someone attended church, or if they could recite their commandments.
Women’s Roles. Before the 20th century, women were seen as less than men. Today we know that is not the case, but you can see example of this in The Crucible, when Giles said, “I never said my wife was a witch, Mr. Hale; I only said she were reading books!” (Miller 71) When reading this you can infer that Mr. Hale assumed Matha must be a witch because she could read.
Slavery and Discrimination. The first person that gets thrown under the bus for the girls dancing in the woods was Tibuta, a slave from Barbados. This shows that they had slaves, which would have been normal for the time. Tituba also has different religious beliefs than the Puritans, and she didn’t feel as negatively towards the devil and having fun. Tituba herself said, “Oh, it be no Hell in Barbados. Devil, him be pleasure-man in Barbados, him be singin’ and dancin’ in Barbados. It’s you folks-- you riles him up ‘round here;” (Miller …show more content…

Miller had been accused of being a communist sympathizer during the Cold War. Miller said in a New Yorker article, “”The Crucible” was an act of desperation.” He then explained that his desperation likely stemmed from his Depression-era trauma. He later said was motivated to write The Crucible because he felt that liberals were afraid to speak out against civil rights violations, because they felt like they would be accused of being a Communist. This is very similar to what was going on during the Salem Witch trials and in the play, with Townsfolk afraid to speak out against the accusations made onto others that hadn’t done anything wrong out of fear that they would then get accused of witchcraft as

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