In American Literature we have two recurring themes, religious fanaticism and guilt. These American themes are important to us because we have based our culture on the puritans, and early immigrants. They have felt and experienced life with these views everyday. We see the themes in the novel The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, and the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller. The themes are also in the sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" by Jonathan Edwards. Guilt and religious fanaticism are both oppressing themes that Americans are often bound by not only in literature but in life too.

Guilt is the feeling of remorse, a feeling that will trap a person in his past actions. In the crucible John Proctor, the primary character is an example of a typical American felling guilt.

"She thinks to dance on my wife's grave! And well she might...