"Us" vs. "Them"..."Us" and "Them"

Us versus them. We, as 21st century Americans compared to the Puritans in The Crucible...Yes, we are quite different from each other. But how different? We are still cruel, self-fish, competitive, biased, and sometimes ignorant people just like the many characters in the book. Those characteristics never change (it's almost like human nature, you know?). What changes is the way we or they show those qualities. 

In The Crucible, greed, self-fishness, and cruelty was portrayed extremely well by Abigail. This young lady managed to fool the entire town with her wicked mind and disgusting lies about witches/witchcraft. And what was her motive? Just to get back (or get rid of) at Elizabeth Proctor. Well, Abigail was pretty successful at carrying out her plan. Not only did she cause a ton of trouble and pain for Elizabeth, it also took the lives of INNOCENT people. Revenge is not healthy (obviously...haha), but it seeps into our lives every now and then. In the 21st century, you don't really see an occasion where hatred towards one person would cause the death of 30 others. If we're talking about being extreme and taking this way out today, the most that someone would do to seek revenge would be murdering whoever was giving them problems. That's still cruel, unjust, and self-fish...but in a way, it's less "mind-sickening" than what Abigail did. 

Another example would be us being biased. Over time, we have became more open minded and accepting. Back in the day, because we failed to judge African Americans properly, we mistreated them horribly (slavery, major racism, segregation, etc). People thought that everyone of their kind was the same and should be treated without value. Thankfully, we learned to snap out of that trance and not be afraid to understand what seems to be foreign to us. Biased-ness is present in the book as well since they thought children were pure/innocent (they could never lie, could they?! No, no, of course not...). Because of that thought, it brought down the justice in life. It abused the proper usage of evidence and what could or could not be used as evidence. Lives were taken just because of that one silly thought that children would/could never be so evil. Being biased was a mistake back then, and it still is today...We just evolve and learn.