Homework Task- Week 4

When Mr Hale is introduced we see that he is some what relieved about the whole situation, and though that may sound suspicious it is later said that ‘he had himself encountered a witch in his parish not long before’ Since then Mr Hale had been studying ‘the invisible world’. So therefor it is understandable that Mr Hale may have been relieved as he knew that he was in fact not imagining things. From this introduction it also gives an idea into the authors thoughts on witchcraft, ‘Since 1692 a great but super-ficial change has wiped out God’s beard and the Devil’s horns, but the world is still gripped between two diametrically opposed absolutes. The concept of unity, in which positive and negative are attributes of the same force, in which good and evil are relative, ever-changing, and always joined to the same phenom-enon - such a concept is still reserved to the physical sciences and to the few who have grasped the history of ideas.’ From this it shows that Miller, though he may not entirely believe in witchcraft itself, he still believes in the idea that there are an equal amount of good and evil ‘spirits’ in the world. Miller also talks passionately about the devil and towards the end of the passage states that, ‘evil were early linked, and so they continued to be in Salem, and are today.’ This is the basis of the story as anyone linked with the devil is considered to be a ‘witch’ and so we can see that the author has used his belief in the devil as the basis of the story.