Online Response (Crucible)

“Salem folk believed that the virgin forest was the Devils preserve”

The forest came to personify an evil place and became the home of the Devil to the puritans when the puritans realized that the Native Americans lived throughout the woods. The Native Americans practiced a different culture which was similar to neo-pagan. Neo-pagan is when a “Great Spirit” is worshipped by song, dance, and spell rituals. Neo-pagan was in the play “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller. In the very first scene Reverend Parris has found the village girls dancing throughout the woods. Spell rituals were also being done to get men to love them. The forest also symbolized the Devil in Puritan times because at night the shadows of the trees would rise and stalk your every move, and make you feel as if you were being watched. If you felt that someone was watching your every move in an unknown place, who would go in there? Today in modern society the Devil is within ourselves. I’m not saying we are evil, I’m saying that we all have something inside us that makes us go, that is our motivation. But we all have another thing or entity inside that stops most of us from achieving, which is disincentive. Disincentive is what I symbolize as the Devil. Our world today is very different than it was in 1692, just because we dance and shout some words does not mean we are Satan worshipers, maybe we all are just having some fun.