The deterioration of Salems social structure precipitated the murders of many innocent people. Arthur Millers depictionof the Salem witch trials, The Crucible, deals with acommunity that starts out looking like it is tightly knit andchurch loving. It turns out that once Tituba starts pointing herfinger at the witches, the community starts pointing theirfingers at each other. Hysteria and hidden agendas breakdown the social structure and then everyone must protectthemselves from the people that they thought were theirfriends. The church, legal system and the togetherness of thecommunity died so that children could protect their familiessocial status. Being isolated from any other group of peoplewith different beliefs created a church led Puritan society thatwas not able to accept a lot of change. The church wasagainst the devil, at the same time it was against such thingsas dancing and other premature acts. The reputation of thefamily was very important to the members of the community.When the girls were caught dancing in the woods, they liedto protect not just themselves but the reputation of theirfamilies. They claimed that the devil took them over andinfluenced them to dance. The girls also said that they sawmembers of the town standing with the devil. A communityliving in a puritan society like Salem could easily go into achaotic state and have a difficult time dealing with what theyconsider to be the largest form of evil. Salems hysteriamade the community lose faith in the spiritual beliefs that theywere trying to strictly enforce. The church lost many of itsparishioners because the interest of the town was now onAbigail because people wanted to know who was going tobe named next. When the church was trying toexcommunicate John Proctor, there were not enough peopleat church to do it. The people were getting misled so far asto leave a dagger stuck in the door of their ministers house:Tonight, when I open my door to leave my house--...
