![]() ![]() Hale cites God to encourage confession when he tells Tituba that she is “God’s instrument put in our hands to discover the Devil’s agents among us.” By exalting Tituba as a chosen vessel, Hale also imagines himself as the minister God chose to receive her confession and purify Salem. ![]() Elizabeth portrays Abigail as Moses in court because “where she walks the crowd will part like the sea for Israel,” indicating both Abigail’s power as well as the presence of religion in the courtroom. Religion was a powerful ethical force both in and out of the courtroom, and characters in the play invoke it for personal gain. While our Constitution maintains the separation of church and state, the America of the seventeenth century was a theocracy, where the church dictated both moral and civil codes of conduct. They may have thought that they could confess to falsely confessing and be forgiven at some future point.In The Crucible, Miller puts the Puritan church and theocracy on trial for hypocrisy and abuse of power. For some, it was easier to lie and say they were witches so that they could return to their lives and families. ![]() At the same time, it’s not hard to understand why someone would sign a false confession. These people may have had strong religious beliefs and felt God would damn them for lying, and they may also have realized that their reputation would be restored after the witch trials were over, even if they had lost their lives. Like John Proctor, some people in Salem preferred to die rather than sign something that they knew was a lie. But many other people could not bear to falsely accuse their friends, neighbors, and families, especially since the only way those people could clear their names would be by implicating more members of the community. Plenty of people did sign false confessions, in which they were required to name others that they saw with the Devil. ![]() Why didn’t more people sign false confessions that they were witches to save their lives? ![]()
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