I'm reading a book titled The Witch of Blackbird Pond to help me with my research paper. In the book a young girl from Barbados is sent to live with her family in colonial Connecticut. While there her entire world is flipped upside down. She has to work, there is no smiling or fun allowed. The young girl, named Kit, gets into trouble for "acting" out a part of the Bible to a group of students she is teaching. Later in the story she meets a woman who the town believes to be a witch. This woman is differnet from the townspeople. People avoid her and speak ill of her, and they refuse to have their children go near her. Kit of course has befriended the "witch", they are two people in the town that do not belong.
As many of you have probably heard me say in class to me the Puritans are full of contradictions. They preach from the bible and yet they do not do nice things to people who are different from them. Maybe this is the future teacher in me, but to me this seems wrong. I understand that the puritans wanted to convert people to Christianity but to me the Puritans are very selfish. They aren't accepting of the differences, and the minute they do one thing out of line they think God is out to get them. Maybe I'm wrong but killing 19 people based on the idea of witchcraft doesn't seem to me to get them through the pearly gates. I understand that to them they were ridding the world of satan and evil, I get that, but at the same time murder is a sin.
A line in The Witch of Blackbird Pond states, "people are afraid of things they don't understand". The puritans didn't understand the other people living during that time. They never took the time to understand them, to them their way was the correct way of life. They were afraid, which is understandable, but at the same time I feel as if the puritans tell one group of people not to do a sinful deed whereas they can.
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I have actually read this book as well. I of course loved the book because it really opened my eyes to how cruel and harsh certain Puritans were back in the day, but yet they lived in the "glory light" of God their creator. Every time that you speak up in class about how you do not agree with the ideas of the Puritans and that you feel that they are controversial, I completely agree with you because for so long, it has been stated that God is supposed to symbolize all the goodness of the world, but if you are singling people out because you feel that they are either different from you, or "witches" and you are committing murder against them, then this to me is not very "godly" at all. I think that the Puritan religion has a lot of loop holes because the Bible preaches showing kindness and goodness towards everyone and by the Puritans killing innocent people on the basis that these people are performing witch craft, that is just wrong.
ReplyDeleteIn the book the Witch of Blackbird Pond it was portrayed how the lady who was considered to be a witch was only because she lived secluded in a field, she was by herself, and because she was overly nice and always tried to get people to come in for a snack or tea or something. I think that if you are living underneath the ideals of the Bible, you should not be judging people based on the fact that they are different than you, and you certainly should not be killing people because you think they might be practicing witch craft.
Going off of the reading that we had for homework, I think that Mather tends to claim he knows so much about the topic he is writing about and then he throws in little skepticisms by saying things like "I can't remember," and "I'm not sure." This to me does not seem to promising, like he could be making things up.
I feel that Puritans did not know, or care to know, anything about the people around them. They did not care to get to know them and see things from a different perspective. They simply said “ah, you’re different; you must be affiliated with the devil.” I feel they were afraid that their culture was being attacked by outsiders (be it the natives or the devil) and assumed that anyone that was different from them was a threat to be dealt with. Didn’t many Americans do the same thing in the aftermath of 9/11? Anyone who was of Middle Eastern descent was deemed to be or to have affiliations with terrorists and therefore threatened the culture and safety of America. The biggest way to unite a group is to focus on a different group, the “other”; people need to join together to “fight” this nasty “other” in order to protect the original group. I’m not trying to sound anti-American and realize that I'm stretching a bit to make a comparison, but I just think that we need to realize that “witch-hunting” and false accusation seem to still be present today in various aspects of our society.
ReplyDeleteI can recognize the hypocrisy of the Puritans, like we all can, while at the same time feeling pity towards them. I don't think they are contradticting themselves when they murder people and expect to go to heaven; they truly believe that they are ridding God's Kingdom of evil. You have to remember, for the Puritans, the Bible wasn't just a means to live your life by, it was THE word of God that they based every nuance of their lives around, from the moment they woke up to the moment they go to sleep again (and probably in their dreams too). There's not really anything today that I can relate this to that really satisfies.
ReplyDeleteSo when they see the evils of the Bible right in their own backyards, they freak out. They over-react, they get scared, and they end up justifying murder. Yes, it's extremely hypocritical, but they didn't see it that way. To me, that lack of clarity, that inability to absolutely define murder as sin, is something to pity.
I think you also have to take into consideration the idea of synecdoche before labeling the Puritans as hypocrites. These executions were carried out because they felt that their community depended on it. By witnessing what was happening in nature and to the people around them, the Puritans felt they could determine whether or not they were right as a group. If certain parts of the body were infected by satan, it was necessary to get rid of them in order to be the city on the hill they aspired to. Every type of illness was also a sign from God, and this is shown over and over again in the biographies, conversion narratives, and poems that we’ve read, therefore, they didn’t explain things through science, but through religion, and if something were wrong, it would have to be dealt with to prove that they had God’s truth.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with all of these comments said. First I think that it is true that the best way to unite a group of people is to find a common enemy. Do I think it's the best way? No, but it is the easiest and most effective. As mentioned look at 9/11. Before this event how many cars had American flags on them? Very few, but after almost everyone was showing their nationalism in some way. For the Puritains these "witches" were a great way to help strengthen the Puritain community.
ReplyDeleteNext I have to agree with Joey on the murder issue. I feel that they were not condradicting themselves at all. If we look at the Old Testement there are many sacrifices and murders. When Mosses was freeing the Jews the ocean crashed down and killed all the soldiers trying to stop them. There was MASS murders by God. Another example is the great flood. The Puritains thought that they were pleasing God by ridding the evil of the Earth as he had done before. I feel that as we get deeper into history killing becomes less and less inhumane. That is, look at the wars in the past and how brutal they were. Also, people were beheaded and hung in the street. The Puritains were normal for their time and felt they were doing the right thing. They were not some gang of barbarians, they just thought they were serving God.
NK
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post because it connects to another reading source that I am familiar with. I also agree that the Puritans are very contradicting because they say that they follow the Bible and so forth, yet they are so cruel in how they treat their people. The Puritans are very one sided and it is their way or no way. They do not care about accepting others, they see their way to be superior and the only way that people should live by. Yes, they are being selfish but they do not see it that way. They feel that they are doing God's work by being the way that they are. As much as the Puritans try to make sense of what they did, they were still murderers in my eyes.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Americans separated themselves from the cultural group of Muslims after September 11th happened. They did what the Puritans did. They separated themselves from who they thought to be the enemy. No matter how you put this though it is wrong. You can not judge a single persons actions and persecute a whole group because of that one person. The situation could have been handeled a lot better.