The Crucible

"I say- I say- God is dead!"
"A fire, a fire is burning! I hear the boot of Lucifer, I see his filthy face! And it is my face, and yours, Danforth! For them that quail to bring men out of ignorance, as I have quailed, and as you quail now when you know in all your black hearts that this be fraud- God damns our kinds especially, and we will burn, we will burn together!"


The Crucible is set in a theocratic society, which meant that God was the true leader of society. Yet, mixing up of the laws of God and that of the men led indirectly to the legal chaos of the Salem witch trials; thus, everyone, due to their own greed and flame of desire, wasn’t able to realize the paradox created by their judging standard, mixed up with that of God and the men. In this regard, this excerpt has significance in a mean that John Proctor was the first one to disclaim the system of society he belongs to by denying the existence of the God, the ruler. Nevertheless, we also see that Proctor still wasn’t able to get rid of the paradigm of his society: dichotomy; he only is able to deny his society indirectly through denying God, but wasn’t able to find the irrationalities of his society and directly criticize them. We could once again find evidence of this claim from the contextual tone covered with segments of in complete phrases which seems very tempered and agitated due to confusion within his belief of God and Puritanism.