Impure Puritans Exposed in The Scarlet Letter and The Crucible

As much as one may try to avoid sin, everyone will sin at some point in their life. However, there have been groups of people who spend much of their time getting as close to perfection as possible. One of the most extreme groups with this goal were the 17th century Puritans who immigrated from England to America. They set some of the toughest laws to follow and inflicted harsh sentences on those who broke …

…it. Among those who suffer the consequences of their actions are the people most proud of them, Hester Prynne and John Proctor. This common trait shows that if these people had not been so proud, they perhaps could have escaped their punishments, as Abigail did. This shows a weakness in the Puritan system of law, where many of the guilty go unpunished. It seems that it would not be difficult to be an impure Puritan.