"'Tis no heathen island. 'Tis as civilized as England, with a famous town and fine streets and shops. My grandfather was one of the first plantation owners, with a grant from the King."
Kit has just done something quite unexpected and startling: jump into the water and lived to tell the tale. People in New England associated swimming with witchery; hence the infamous water test to determine if witches. Kit explains that where’s from—Barbados—everyone swims. When potential future suitor John Holbrook hears Barbados, his first reaction is to insult it as a heathen island and thus the dramatic tension is immediately established.
Here in New England books contained only a dreary collection of sermons, or at most some pious religious poetry.
Throughout the narrative, New England is juxtaposed with the life Kit was forced to leave behind in Barbados. The greater freedom she enjoyed at home combined with the exhibition of evidence of a greater intellectual curiosity that suppressed by an oppressive religious regime serves to foment the increasing suspicion toward her. The fuel of witch hunts thus takes on less of a immediately malevolent persecution and more of a pitifully ignorant fear and ignorant path toward intolerance.
"Whatever they are called, they are the devil's invention. 'Twas an outrageous piece of blasphemy. I trust they will be dealt with severely."
An inability to stifle a slight giggle in time provokes these stern words of disapproval from Kit’s uncle. What is the blasphemous subject of conversation capable of Kit think it is all so much ado about absolutely nothing of consequence? It is yet another example of the chasm between the world she left behind and the world into which she simply does not and will never fit: jack o’lanterns.
"Mistress Tyler, you are accused by Adam Gruff with the following actions. Firstly that you were the familiar friend and companion of the Widow Hannah Tupper of Blackbird Pond, an alleged witch who has within the past week disappeared in a suspicious manner. Such friendship is a lawful test of guilt, inasmuch as it is well known that witchcraft is an art that may be learned and conveyed from one person to another, and that it has often fallen out that a witch, upon dying, leaveth some heir to her witchcraft.”
However, this is Massachusetts colony under the control of the Puritans and things like blasphemy are not laughing matter. Kit is ultimately charged with being a witch, mainly because she reached out his kind heart to offer friendship to an outcast in the village. Which is pretty much how these things typically tended to start. The only question that remains is whether it will end in the same way as Salem.
