Discussion on Honesty in the Crucible and the Roman Fever

2. comment on the various types of dishonesty covered in your set texts,

In both the Crucible and the Roman Fever, various forms of dishonesty such as lying, acting and hiding information etc are shown for various motivations including self-interest, others’ interest etc.

In the Crucible, the most significant type of dishonesty is the false accusation for witchcraft. At the very beginning, the girls start their acting on bewitched in order to hide their sin for dancing in the forbidden forest, which is a taboo for the strict Puritan community as they see the forest as the last preserve of the Devil and no entertainment is allowed, including dancing. Therefore, they start lying about some witches in the village made them break the religion rules and do the inexistent bewitched acting (i.e. screaming and crying during prosecution) so as to divert the villagers’ attention and get themselves out of trouble (i.e. being punished publicly by wiping).

This is a very significant type of dishonesty that is not only selfish but also creating a destructive tyranny that kills innocent people. For the girls who start the accusation, their dishonesty on naming innocent people’s name is for their self-interest (i.e. get rid of trouble). However, this eventually results in the next dishonest accusation done by the victims who are accused by the girls of witchcraft so as to save their own life. To those victims such as Tituba, they usually are pressurised by people which greater authority such as Parris and Hale. They can do nothing but only either confess with connecting with the Devil and name other witches’ name or be hang to death. With no choice but to save their own life, they have to unwillingly lie to both themselves and the court that someone innocent has convicted with devil’s crime. The start of dishonesty (the girls’) leads to the next dishonesty (the victims), of which split the community apart and create hypocrisy among the society and even kill the innocents.

Apart from the innocent saving their own life, there are cases that people lies during accusation for their self-interest or even seek revenge. Under the Salem’s community law, property of the accused people will be retreated and rearranged, most likely give to the person reported the crime. Therefore, people like the Putnam intentionally accuse some other innocent landlords who are their enemies in order to make them lose their property. On the other hand, since the accusation system and the trial process only base on the girls’ acting as ‘evidence’ for witchcraft, it is no doubt that once a person is on court, his will be seen as involved with the devil’s work no matter he confess or not, and his reputation will eventually tainted. Or sometimes, people use the loophole in the accusation system to drag the one they are envy of or hate into the trouble so as to seek revenge. The Putnam accuse Rebecca Nurse is because of their envy for her success for being many times a mother and a grandmother while the Putnam can only successfully raise one out of their seven children. Apart from this, in Act 3 when Mary Warren tries to reveal the truth of the girls’ acting, Abigail leads the girls again to act as bewitched by Mary so as to keep Mary’s month shut and horrify both Mary and the judges. At last Mary is overwhelmed by Abigail’s threatening and lies again against John Proctor for forcing her to sign the deposition. This clearly demonstrates how dishonesty can help satisfying self-interest like property snatching and seeking revenge, which destroy many of the innocents.

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