The Crucible Act IV Essay

Act IV seemed to reflect the thoughts of Johnathon Edwards sermon, "Sinners in the Angry Hands of God". It seemed that the sermon related to the actions and behaviors of the characters in this final Act.  
The main character that relates the sermon and the play would be Proctor.  Proctor confesses to doing witchcraft although he did not partake in witchcraft.  He did this because he wanted to live and also because he just wanted to confess his sins and be done with the situation.  He was pressured by Danforth and Hawthorne to confess, and Elizabeth finally convinced him to.  He set up his confession to the other men and at the end when he had to sign the confession to confirm that this had happened, he tore it apart and then had to face his death.  In the end, he did what he thought was right and this was probably not influenced by the sermon in any way.  If he had listened to the sermon he probably would have confessed just so God would not be mad at him anymore.  
Hawthorne and Danforth could have been scared by the words of Johnathon Edwards as well.  They pressured the suspects to confess so that they could take care of the situation and make sure that God knows that they tried everything to reject the devil and help those who had been believed to had been involved.  These men wanted to make sure that God could see that it was not their fault that this had happened to their society and that they were certainly not apart of it.  When they had those who did not confess to being involved in witchcraft, they killed them because that was the easy way to show that they were against witchcraft.  Hawthorne and Danforth represented the side of people that were scared by the sermon, "Sinners in the Angry Hands of God".
The events that took place in this play also proved to have been a reflection of Johnathon Edwards sermon.  The whole situation was started by the fear of devilish actions and behaviors.  The horrible fear of disobeying God and ending up in hell was unbearable to think about because colonists were conditioned to be deathly afraid of the fate in Hell.  This sermon can relate to this because it was said in the sermon that hell is a terrible place with fire where you will suffer for the rest of eternity.  
If I were to compare the two in which piece was more interesting, I would say the sermon was.  Most people would not think this, but the intense sermon was very interesting.  I though it was so interesting because it was insane to think that this man was thought of as holy and that he was trying to save people.  All he did was scare people to a point where they only worshiped God to prevent a life of being tortured forever.  In the Crucible, many people were scared, but there were also characters who did not care, like Abigail.  
Thus, this novel reflected the sermon in many ways through characters and events.  It showed the fear of God's wrath was important and that to others, they could not be factored.  Each piece was interesting in the way that the views differed. 

Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. New York, NY: Penguin, 1996. Print.

Edwards, Jonathan. "From Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 97-99. Print.