Next we talked about the poem she wrote about her husband. Some people said this poem surprised them because when you think of Puritans you don't think of them being in love with their husbands or wives. This may be because marriages were some what arranged back then or because the Puritans were such strict and severe people. We also discussed if this poem talked about God or Puritan values enough. Since Bradstreet talks about loving her husband more than worldly things I think that the Puritans values are shown. And at the end she also says that they will hopefully be together again, meaning in Heaven.
And at the end of class we began to talk about the Crucible. We said that the characters are easy to relate to. We also discussed how Miller is writing about a story taking place in the 1650s but that the story was actually written in the 1950s. Since the book is written after the the time period that it occurs in it's natural for Miller to make some deviations from history. This story is supposed to teach the readers something. Something about the witch hunts but also about unfair persecution. This concept of witch hunt begins with fears and prejudices. The puritans were fearing and waiting for the enemy (Native Americans) outside, but when it didn't come they had to find something inside to blame. Some might also say that these people were not witches at all but were just infected by a disease. The sanitation in the Puritan towns was little to be desired. This may have caused many people to become delirious or as the witch hunters called it, possessed.
--Callie
2 comments:
I think that the witch trials relates to what we are learning about now in history class. As we were discussing in class, a possibility for a cause of the witch hunt was out of the fear of an attack. But, I also think that they were also acting on frustration from their situation, this led them to funnel the blame to an intangible force.
From some views, this is not unlike the situation in the Middle East. We are learning that some experts attribute the anger that some radical fundamentalists have towards the United States to frustration that they have towards their own government. By being unable to do anything about that, they decide to target something else- America.
Of course, that is just one side's explanation for the events of 9/11, but I figured that it tied in to our discussion.
-Kelsey W.
The witch hunts also tie into the Nazi's in Germany. They blamed the Jews for World War I for no justifiable reasons at all. Obviously the witch hunts aren't as severe as the deaths the Nazi's inflicted on the Jews but it is still an example of prejudice on a group of people.
I agree with Kelsey that what lead to these prejudices was fear of an attack and frustration with the situation. Similarly, the Germans were frustrated with their loss of WWI and they feared losing control.
-Sammi
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