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Corruption In The Crucible

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If the modern American judicial system sent people presenting a defense in a case to jail for contempt against the court, it would be a wholly corrupt and unconstitutional scurrility. If the same courts were to judge the accused based upon the laws of the Christian Bible, it would violate, so blatantly, the first amendment of the American Constitution, and there would surely be some sort of uprising, or even an insurrection, among the people of the nation. But, 400 years ago, in the prerevolutionary English colonies of North America, especially in the area of New England, theocratic law and highly prejudiced courts were affluent. In Arthur Miller's The Crucible, Miller uses despicable characters, such as Danforth, to send ethical messages to …show more content…
The judges do not believe that anyone arguing against the existence of witches in Salem could be telling the truth because they are supposedly corrupted by the Devil. They only listen to the young girls who cry witch and throw blame for witchery because they are "pure". They believe this because witches are a supernatural power and there is no visible evidence of their existence. This relates back to the religious corruption because witches are biblical beings. Therefore, when there is strong religious influence in the law, there will be laws making supernatural and unprovable things illegal and punishable. This shows bias towards those who are considered pure in heart and uncorrupted; namely, those who blame people for these paranormal crimes. This bias is so strong that the judiciaries will incriminate and even hang the innocent if he/she is blamed in the slightest. This situation is seen in …show more content…
Danforth and Parris, along with the other Judges are prejudiced against the town's people. He assumes, under false pretenses, that the people of Salem are afraid of the court because they are working with Lucifer and are clearly guilty of working to try and topple the church. In actuality, they are afraid of the court because of the harsh sentences and the discriminatory, unsupported accusations that are so blindly heeded by the court superiors. This is reminiscent of the unjust assumptions that take place in a true theocracy. These prejudices quickly turn to mass convictions of anyone opposing the state or the church in any manner, no matter how small, much as they did in The

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