If you start to question your faith and mess with the devil, you will surely lose. Goodman Brown fought an internal war with his faith and eventually lost to evil. It also shows that how everyone is not as they seem. People always do thing out of the eyes of others and can have different purposes and beliefs than what appears at first glance. Goodman Brown has learned the hard way about dabbling with the devil and will now forever be in question with his
Nathan: Nathan is an ardent, zealous minister. He fears being seen as a coward in the eyes of God, and he therefore strives to overcome every obstacle, no matter how difficult and extreme. This is seen when he says “Only God knows when our relief may arrive. But God does know. And in His benevolent service we will stay (page 169).” Furthermore, Nathan despises the Congolese people.
Belonging is the human need for wellbeing, acceptance and social security. One belongs to a group, a family, a unit, and one can also be isolated from groups and rejected from communities. The Crucible explores the destruction of a community by mass hysteria which was caused by members of the community accusing one another of practicing witchcraft and devil worship. As Salem was a Puritan society, to act against God is frowned upon and cannot go unpunished. I wrote this play because it relates to the McCarthyism period which was happening during that time as others are constantly accused of being communist without actual official evidence.
According to the people of Salem, everyone belongs to either God or the devil; there is no contended medium. Difference within oneself is degrading, which relates to the continuous trials of witchcraft. Danforth states: “A person is either with this court or he must be counted against it.” Being the terminal meaning of reestablishing the purity of Salem, the hanging of witches is a declaration of intolerance. The theme of hysteria also plays an important role in The Crucible. Hysteria leads the people of Salem to believe that those who were friends are executing witchery and associating themselves with the devil.
In The Scarlet Letter evil is portrayed in many ways. A woman and her child are forced to live in shame because of two men’s indecencies. While most people in that time believed the way a Puritan should, others were more rebellious. Roger Chillingworth and Arthur Dimmesdale, both considerably older men, express evil all throughout the story. Chillingworth, a man of age and wisdom, has a dark side that many don’t see.
They also believe that every man is evil and is only judge by God on where he decides whether or not you go to heaven or hell. So dealing with the devil would automatically make you evil as we see in “The Crucible” on where if something seems out of the ordinary in their time such as a person who might not be attending church would look suspicious to the people and would quickly judge for working with the devil since going to church is mandatory to all the people in Salem we see this kind of work in the first act on where the minister of Salem Parris have caught his niece Abigail Williams and his daughter Betty Parris with their friends there too dancing around a pot with one of his slaves Tituba where they were trying to call the spirits when Parris came and Betty had fainted and Parris has blamed that this was the work of witchcraft. Arthur Miller has seen this also with McCarthyism where we would take actions right there and automatically think that communism was too blamed for
These people are gloomy for it!” Next, in Act IV, we find Parris speaking to Judge Danforth about postponing the hangings. Parris feels that they should wait for the hangings for a time to try and get those accused of witchcraft to confess, because if they do not the people might turn against them. As Parris said to Danforth, “Now Mr. Hale’s returned, there is hope, I think- for if he brings even one of these to God, that confession surely damns the others in the public eye, and none may doubt more that they are all linked to Hell. This way unconfessed and claming innocence, doubts are multiplied, many honest people weep for them, and our good cause is lost in their tears.” Lastly, also in Act IV, we see John Proctor signing a confession to committing witchcraft. The he suddenly changes his mind and rips it to pieces and hangs for it, while Parris tries to convince him not to tear it, and Elizabeth Proctor to convince Proctor to confess again.
Although Job is described by Satan as “You will find no one like him on earth, a man of blameless and upright life, who fears God and sets his face against wrongdoing.” (p.511), he is still reluctant to believe that Job will remain sinless “in the face of disaster”, and suggests they eradicate his material possessions, including his children, to test his faith. Through a great amount of self control and confidence in God, Job remains calm and sin-free. Satan then manipulates God into allowing another set of tests in which Job himself is physically harmed by ragingly painful sores, but once again Job maintained strong and faithful, without cursing once. The book then centers on Job’s interpretation of God’s actions. He curses the day of his birth as well as the night of his conception, stating “Why is life given to those who find it so bitter?” (p.512).
One reason to believe that the early Church fathers did hate women is the story of Adam and Eve as it is presented in the Bible. Although the same story is told in the Torah and the Koran, in neither of those holy books is Eve shown as a temptress. Eve and Adam are blamed equally and after expelling them from Paradise, God forgives them. In the Bible, however, God punished Eve by increasing pain in childbearing, and making her husband rule over her. The early Church fathers demonized Eve until she was held solely to blame for bringing sin into world.
4:3 that the time will come when men will not endure sound doctrine, but instead, will heap up for themselves teachers that will tell them what they want to hear? As J.C. Ryle so pointedly stated, “What men do not like, they try hard not to believe.” This damnable doctrine is known as Annihilationism, which teaches that the wicked do not suffer eternal damnation in hell, but instead are annihilated, brought to utter extinction, never to experience the weight of their rebellion against and rejection of our Lord Jesus Christ. This damnable heresy comes straight from the devil himself who first asked “Yea, hath God said?” and “Ye shall not surely die.” (Gen 3:1, 4) He who holds the keys to death and hell (Rev. 1:18) has more to say about the eternal estate of the wicked than any other in Scripture. Sentimentalizing God Annihilationists appeal to the love and mercy of God as their foundation for the utter annihilation of the wicked at the end of the age.