Individual vs. Society

Although America was founded on the principle of religious freedom, in the decades before the American Revolution northern colonists struggled with a form of Puritanism that was rigid, punitive, and even paranoid. If everyday folks could suddenly be vilified as witches and heretics, the word soon got around that conformity was the only way to survive. Thus any extreme form of individualism in speech, thought, or action was regarded with suspicion and could sometimes be fatal. Puritan preachers and their minions performed the role of societal enforcers who, when they weren't burning witches, stayed busy placing the adultery letter "A" on the clothing of those so accused and generally practicing a kind of domestic terrorism unknown in modern times until the rise of the Nazis, followed by the Soviets.

The Carrier family of Billerica is, in this story, defiant of authority, independent, and self-sufficient. When the...