Immorality

We always talk about someone our something is moral or not, but have we ever wondered what morality really is? There is clearly no true definition of morality. However, through different literature and events through varies of time in history, the moral standards are always set by and benefit the people in power and utilized by and favor who are manipulative. People always fear new things and act for their own interest. This is still very true for modern America. We are as immoral as the Puritans.

Back to the Puritan times, the Bible was the standard of morality. Who followed the Bible is good, of course; this includes clergy. Anyone that has done things that are not in the Bible is evil. When the Conoly was built “The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison” (Hawthrone 1). People, especially those in power were always suspecting other people back then, people at the same time also needed authority. Therefore, they built a place to punish people before they do anything else. Later in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester, a woman with no power was punished, forced to separate from society; although she tried with her hard work and good nature, she still felt that she was separated from the society and couldn;t run away from the guilt so she would say to her self  “What evil thing is on hand?” (Hawthrone 23). However, Dimmesdale, who also committed adultery, was able to hide everything from people before he died because he was a person in power.

This standard of morality not only hurt women but also men. Proctor In The Crucible by Authur Miller was a victim of this immorality. Proctor always went to the church and even built the ceiling of the church, but he was suspected only because he did not like Parris and his wife was sick. Abigail was an orphan, but she was able to succeed in the end because she was such an actor. Using witchcraft to scare the authorities, and therefore; utilizing the authorities power is a true talent. She played the loophole of the standard of morality so well. Why did authority matter so much? “Perhaps the needs of justice and the necessity for sustaining the authority of the court have not always been coincident and because there will always be those who defend the latter, believing that by doing so they sustain the possibility of the former. Perhaps because there are those of who believes authority is all of a piece and that challenge it anywhere is to threaten it everywhere.” (Bigsby viii). Relying on authority and therefore being controlled by the authority and people who manipulating authority is an immoral nature of the society.

This is still true in modern time. People in power always take those who are not in their tradition as threatens. Communism, in theory, even in practice if Lenin was in power for longer and Stalin and Mao did not exist, has never been a bad thing, nor something that needs to be feared, nor analogous to fascism. However, the capitalist’s side always thinks that it is threatening. They “have been enslaved by the demons of words, creating Atlantic Charters and waiting for a magical realization of their noble ideals,” while others “have succumbed to the magic of Karl Marx, which transforms the real world into a Garden of Eden.” (Plain Dealer 8). Utilizing this fear of communism, Joseph McCarthy was able to harm so many people just like Abigail. The red scare is the second Salem Witch Trail of the 1950s, which directly caused Authur Millar to write The Crucible. To this point, America was still as immoral as the Puritans, and this madness still does not end.

In the 21st century, people still fear the unknown, and they use false arguments to justify and convince people. Trump and his follower are afraid of differences; one example they suspect all Muslims as terrorists. In 2016, many people were unable to get into the United States because of their race and religion; however, because people can get information much faster than before, some people become easier to manipulate. Trump and his followers used false arguments such as “Mexican people took our jobs.”, or “Asian students are spies.” to convince those people to act for their advantages, which is essentially the same or a more modern version of the so-called “morality” of the Puritans era.

We as human tends to act for our own interests, act immoral, and then set up rules that favor us and call these rules moral. Then people in power and those who follow them try anything they can to convince people, to manipulate people that are different and they fear. Most of us have absolutely no understanding and care about differences. We have unchangeable immorality planted in our society.

Work Cited

Bigsby, Christopher Introduction of The Crucible. Penguin Books, 2016.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. 1850.

Miller, Arthur. The Crucible: a Play in Four Acts. Penguin Books, 2016.

Plain Dealer, 22 Jan. 1945, p. 8. NewsBank,

“infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/document-view?p=EANX-K12&docref=image/v2:122AFBBA107AC9E4@EANX-K12-126DF4765C4AFB9F@2431478-1268B07CE743DFA2@7-126E32D1993325EA.”  Accessed 17 Dec. 2018.