Skip to main content

How is The Crucible violent?

The Crucible is violent because, through the events of the play, innocent and good people are wrongly persecuted, imprisoned, and eventually hanged, by a corrupt justice system, for crimes they did not commit.  The violence done to these individuals in the name of justice is disturbing and tragic. 


Take John Proctor, for instance: though he is not sinless, he is a good man.  He is accused of witchcraft by Mary Warren, his cowardly and hypocritical employee, and he is found guilty through no evidence aside from her testimony.  His own words are twisted against him.  He is left to rot in a disgusting jail cell for months, all because some terrible coward sought to save herself by pointing a finger at him.  Further, on the day of his hanging, his judge isn't even convinced that he's committed the crime of which he's been accused, but because Danforth is afraid of undermining his own and the court's authority, he will neither transmute nor delay the sentence.  Proctor is faced with the awful decision to tell the truth and die or lie and keep his life: the violence of this choice is appalling.  And the fact that his integrity and honesty and desire to be a good man costs him his life, in the end, is the most violently tragic of all.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.
Post a Comment
Read more