The Trump Trials

This one honestly took me a hot second to figure out.  Making a play about the Salem Witch Trials, something I already knew about, applicable to my life and to gleam a lesson took some time.  But isn't that the fun of this project? You do this and learn something about your life in ways you didn't expect?

Arthur Miller's The Crucible is a classic, but if you didn't know what it's about, I'll catch you up quickly.  Arthur Miller took the story of the Salem Witch Trials and turned it into a drama where it started because Abigail Williams was bored of her life and had an affair with John Proctor who rejected her for his wife.  It was a classic revenge scheme and the book, funny enough, came out during the McCarthy Trials, another form of witch hunt.  Disturbing much? A bored teenager can be responsible for so many deaths and the destruction of an entire town.

Then I thought about it and I realized this is applicable to my life, in a very unfunny and uncomfortable way.  We have a pretty awful political environment right now.  A schlump became president and thinks presidency actually is synonymous with dictatorship.  That president does seem awfully like a whiny teenager who did not get what they wanted and is now looking to get attention by throwing a massive tantrum and making everyone else's lives miserable.  Essentially Trump is 19 year-old Abigail Adams in this drama.

But how does that tie into using literature to find happiness? It doesn't but I just had to get my political dig into this and the analogy holds up pretty well.  But this book did show me something about courage.  And that also relate to our current political clime.  Rebecca, Elizabeth, etc. All they had to do way confess and they would have been let off the hook and allowed to return their lives.  It would not have even been a real confession, blaming something on the devil does absolve you of guilt.  The alternative was death by hanging or placing stones on your body until you were crushed.  Some chose confession but others chose to stand their moral ground.  These few would rather die than give up their morals.

That's big.  There was something bigger than their lives.  If you think about it, it is a sad story but we still know their names.  We still talk about them in reverence and we still talk about the Salem Witch Trials and Puritanism and how it caused teenage girls to crave attention and a break from work.  Their names mean something in present day and that's kind of epic.  In this world would any of us die for a cause? If it comes down to it and my civil liberties and my fellow humans are at stake, will I stick up.  I hope that answer is yet but this serious book does have me questioning how far I will go.  I do find myself trying to give myself a talk on how there are things we need stand up for no matter the cost.