Forest vs. Church

[ezram02]

Mr. Cheddar told us in class that while the start of the witchcraft scare in the play involved dancing in the forest, it actually involved dancing in a church. Maybe the reason Miller changes the location because the Puritans believed the forest to be a mysterious and possibly Satanic place. Miller writes in the prose on page 5, "the Salem folk believed that the virgin forest was the Devil's last preserve, his home base and the citadel of his final stand. To the best of their knowledge the American forest was the last place on earth that was not paying homage to God." A place believed to be inhabited by the Devil seems a more likely place for witchcraft to occur than a holy church.

[laurenf02]

I agree yet I also think that the woods gives and overall spookier feel to the plot. The whole connection with the devil is scary in and of itself but the woods themselves are also scary. It makes the girls dance appear as though it was not meant to be seen. They happened to be stumbled upon by Parris, but I feel they were there with the intention of not being seen. If Miller kept this scene stationed in the church I feel that it would have been too resrticted and there would be too many witnesses. Since it was in the secluded scary woods I feel that it a sense of mystery is to be felt upon the audience and I think we are also supposed to realize the mistake that Parris might have made accidently stumbling upon them.

[jend02]

I also found it interesting that we learned in US that Puritans connected the wilderness to the Indians who they believed to be savage and inhumane people. This connection also gives reasoning for why they believed the wilderness to be a place of Satan because they made out the Indians to be people of the devil in contrast to themselves, people of God fulfilling his divine mission. By forming this distinction, they allowed for the separation and discrimination between the two groups very evidently early on.

[tarah07]

Another reason why I think he changed the setting to the woods is because I feel that the "wilderness" in the play represents the unknown for the Puritans, but it also represents the unknown in regards to 1950s America. I feel like everything in this play has some sort of counter-part regarding the Red Scare. Having this witchcraft problem rise from a place that the characters are unaware and afraid of coincides more with America's lack of knowledge and uneasiness towards communism in the 1950s.

[keeganw02]

There is also the entire idea of the mystery which lies in the woods. Few Puritans would have ventured into the woods, and part of the reason is not only the fact that it is the "devils land on earth," but also the fear of the unknown. The play revolves around fear; and the setting of the woods is an interesting way to show it. I think that Miller used this setting to describe the idea of fearing the unknown.

[alysonm7]

Just a passage to go along with the idea of the forest representing danger and the devil:

p. 5 "The edge of the wildnerness was close by. The American continent stretched endlessly west, and it was full of mystery for them. It stood, dark and threatening, over their shoulders night and day, for out of it Indian tribes marauded from time to time and Reverend Parris had parishioners who had lost relatives to these heathen".

[alanw7]

I also agree that the forest was a good switch, and it also applies to the ideas of a people who ventured "into the wilderness" that was evidenced in both Bradford and Bercovitch. The perils of the wilderness lay outside of the safe town, being a metaphor for those outside of the consensus. If the scene had taken place in the church, it would have been far too protecting and much less mischeif causing as the wilderness. If these Puritans believed that they were people who had a divine mission to cleanse the last unholy place on earth for God, then that which was still outside of God had room for treachery. Not wanting to be pushed further out of the circle, the girls go on to blame their bad ways on other people in the village, thus clearing their own names.

[lizm1390]

Arthur Miller changes the location from the church to the woods to elucidate the Puritan's fear of the vast and unknown "wilderness." Much like the unkown effects of Communism during the "Red Scare," and the fears that it evoked, the entry of the forest in the Crucible is an unkown for the Puritans. If the church was kept as a main venue in the play, the xenaphobic feeling of the characters would not exist.