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... y material or ideological enemies' (pg. 7 Miller). Explicit rules in the Christian church were quite evident in 'The Crucible': the Ten Commandments from the Bible. In Salem, along with any other Christian based town at that time, the Ten Commandments were to be lived and followed exactly as written. If you failed to strictly abide by those rules, suspicions were immediately made based on the circumstances. As in The Crucible, you could be accused of witchcraft and arrested just because you had broken any one of the Commandments.
There were other rules or explicit expectations that hid within the text of Mr. Parris' interpretation of the Bible such as possession of puppets, reading or other questionable behaviour as determined by the Reverends of the Church. For example, Giles Corey's wife was taken to jail shortly after he complained of her reading books. The importance of the Bible's interpretation is evident when Reverend Hale questions the Proctor's faith after discovering their third child had not been baptized yet and that they were frequently absent from Church on the Sabbath. Hale immediately took them into consideration as practising with the Devil (page 64). It's obvious that a strong belief in the Ten Commandments played a large role in belonging to this organization and that not believing or not following them caused people to become outcasts. 'They believed, in short, that they held in their hands the candle that would light the world. ' (page 5) This was the idea of their leaders, the Reverends Parris and Hale in Salem.
They were the authority on the Bible, the rules of the Church, and decided on the interpretation of those same rules. Church and State were not yet separated in 1692 in Salem so the dominate moral principles of the Church were easy to enforce on others as their authority was strongest. The Church leaders believed that the morals of the Christian religion and the values determined by the Ten Commandments were equivalent to State law and that those values were to be the law in Salem. By using the Bible's rules, the leaders became the authority on all laws enforced. And since the laws were based on purity and holiness, no one felt guilty accusing anyone of breaking the laws because everyone wanted to be pure and holy. It was a good way to get rid of any negative enemies present in Salem, if you disagreed, then you were accused of witchcraft and killed for the good of the group by God's decision.
For example, many times the accused witches were given the choice of confession or denial: if they denied being a witch, they were impure for lying and if they confessed to witchcraft then they were guilty anyway. They used holiness to avoid their own feelings of personal responsibility for the killings by passing it off as a God's wish. One must have a great cause in mind in order to have the will to follow through with one's plans. Fear created a strong will in the Crucible, to find a scapegoat, to find someone to blame other than oneself.
Abigail, Betty and the other girls who were presumed to be inflicted by the Devil, acted out the fate that no one wanted to be dealt: contact with Lucifer. The girls brought out fears in the townspeople of being possessed my witches, of being accused as one, and no one in the town wanted to face either. Abby and the girls showed quite well what would happen unless something was done about the witches: fatal fate was portrayed by them to uncover the uneasiness in Salem. Thus, a strong will to extinguish this uneasiness and a strong will to save oneself from the destruction of the Devil. Basically, the strong will of the people developed through selfishness, as Mary Warden helped explain. Her selfishness led her to blame John Proctor for contact with the Devil because she knew there was no saving herself otherwise.
Through times of distress in Salem, selfishness and self-defence were great sources of motivation to survive accusations of witchcraft. In 1692 Salem, everyone was selfish in one way or another. And finally, the result of exclusion in the society of Salem were the witches themselves. These people were not excluded just because they were witches, but they were accused because they were different from the others in the town. As a result of their major and minor differences, these excluded people in Salem became the centre of blame for their society.
These outcasts called witches were used as a scapegoat for everyone else's problems. For example, the reason why farmer's pigs were dying was the witches curse and the reason a woman miscarried was the witches curse. Unfortunately, the Church group placed such enormous amounts of blame on the witches that they did not even have a chance to defend themselves from condemnation. In the witch trials, an innocent victim would tell the truth, denying her involvement as a witch, but be hung anyway for 'lying' under oath. On the other hand, an innocent victim could lie and confess her involvement as a witch, accuse another witch instead and be let 'off the hook'.
However, if the innocent victim lied and confess, but wasn't willing to turn in another witch, she would be hung anyway. This created quite an ironic situation coming from a Christian based community of purity and holiness. Exclusion is about scapegoating and denying the truth or reality to oneself. A scapegoat is a person made to bear the blame for others, an escape from dealing with one's responsibility. The scapegoat lets one rationalize bad situations and blind oneself from the reality of that situation. No one saw the reality in Salem and no one even tried.
They were all too caught up in trying to find someone else to blame for their fears and problems. However, organizations tend to do that too. They create an opposition or enemy so they can use it later to their own advantage, making themselves seem more powerful. So the question goes back to, 'Are you in? Or are you out?'
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