Examples Of Scapegoats In The Crucible

People have been fighting and blaming things on each other for thousands of years. Historically, when a country with power was facing an issue, they accused another country of being the cause of their issue, and battled about it through war. As time went on people used that idea to settle arguments, or find reasons to situations with difficult answers. The puritans of the New England Colonies in the 1600’s adopted this idea with the collaboration of their deep Christian faith and found explanations to many of these problems by accusing people of dealing with the devil. Today, people act similarly when they allege others for their own problems and pass their conflicts onto each other. Arthur Miller uses The Crucible to demonstrate these characteristics

A common reason for witch accusations is people feeling like they lost control so they use witches to conclude why something unexplainable happened. The Article “Why Do Witch Hunts Still Happen?” elaborates that “Witchcraft is blamed for any tragedy that can’t be explained, such as the unexpected death of a child (Fessenden).” When one cannot make sense of a situation they tend to use others as scapegoats to cope with the fact that something that was not supposed to happen, did. This coping method allows people to feel like there was a reason for an event that occurred, and it makes it easier for them to blame someone then to have nobody to blame. It becomes a constant battle to wrap one’s mind around events or issues that don’t have logical explanations. People cannot fathom why children die at such a young age and in many societies, they blame this on witchcraft so that they do not have to deal with having no answers. This situation is delivered in The Crucible. Rebecca Nurse is a woman who has had multiple healthy children and grandchildren, all without a problem. Each child the Putnam’s have die early. The Putnam’s always compared themselves to the Nurses and could not fathom why each of the Nurse’s children survived while the opposite happened to them. The Crucible says “For murder, she's charged! “For the marvelous and supernatural murder of Goody Putnam’s babies.”(Miller, “The Crucible”. 174).” Goody Putnam charges Rebecca with bewitching her child so that every time she has one, they die. She makes this accusation as a way to blame someone else for an unexplainable tragedy. It is much easier for her to cope with a tangible explanation, so Rebecca is accused as a scapegoat to fearing the unexplainable. This is a way for Goody Putnam to feel like she has control over her children. She may believe that by having Rebecca hanged that this