Crucible Cuatro

1) "Spare me! I forget nothin' and forgive nothin'./...I have gone tiptoe in this house all/ seven month since she is gone. I have not moved from there to there without I think to please you, and still an everlasting/ funeral marches round your heart. I cannot speak but I am/ doubted, every moment judged for lies, as though I come into/ a court when I come into this house!" (Miller 55)

John Proctor knows what he did was wrong. He had an affair, but he can not escape it. No matter what he does, the memory of his infidelity lingers at every turn and around every corner. Now, we know that his wife, Elizabeth, knows of his adultery as well: "John, if it were not Abigail that you must go to hurt, would you falter now? I think not" (54). Proctor has enough problems already. Every time he comes home and sees his wife, he has to painfully remember how unfaithful he was to her, and how ignorant Elizabeth is of it. Now that she knows, however, and it can be surmised that she has known for a while, it is all the more harder for him. I feel so bad for Proctor, having to look the woman he loves and said 'I do' to in the eye and think only of the teenager he used once as a release. This stigma will not go away easily, no matter how fervently John wishes it so.

2) "Theology, sir, is a fortress; no crack in a fortress may be/ accounted small" (67).

Alot of the townspeople think of theology and religion as a fortress, as Reverend Hale has said. They built their town upon it; religion is the foundation of their entire world. Theology is the villagers' everyday life. It is the reason they rise from bed and go about their jobs in the community. It is the reason they form families and why they stay so true to them. Theology is venerated as a reason for them to leave their homeland in England and invade the homeland of the Native Americans, battling them back further into America's untamed wilderness so that they may live in peace. They use theology as a shield as well. Religion protects them from things they do not understand, such as the forest nipping at the brim of their society. Theology is their sword for attacking the unjust and the wicked. Religion is the finger they point at those they despise, using its name in vain to call someone a witch. Theology has woven itself into every nook and cranny of these peoples' lives. It has literally become their lives. One small crack in it, and their entire world comes crumbling to the ground.