The Witch of Blackbird Pond Literary Elements

Young adult fiction

Wethersfield, Connecticut, 1687

Third-person, limited omniscient. The narrator provides access to Kit Tyler's thoughts and feelings.

The mood is somber and occasionally menacing due to the Puritan setting, but occasionally optimistic.

Kit Tyler is the 16-year-old protagonist. Goodwife Cruff is the antagonist.

Kit, age 16, has arrived from Barbados to live with her Puritan aunt and uncle. She doesn't fit in, and the narrow-minded Goodwife Cruff dislikes her. Eventually, Goodwife Cruff accuses Kit of being a witch, and Kit is put on trial for her life.

The climax of the book comes during the trial, when the book Kit used to teach young Prudence Cruff to read and write is used as evidence that Kit has put some kind of spell on Prudence.

When Kit jumps into the water to save Prudence's doll early in the novel, the local people are astounded that she can swim. Being able to swim, in that part of Connecticut, was associated with witchcraft. Later in the book, Kit is accused of witchcraft and put on trial.

Kit finds the work in the Wood household to be hard. By the standards of someone who grew up with servants to care for her every need, the work she is now required to do is tedious, dull, and so repetitive as to be actually painful.

The Puritans make frequent references to the Bible, which is their main religious text. Most of the names of the Puritan characters in the book are either taken from the Bible or, in the case of girls and women, references to virtues such as prudence or mercy.

There is water imagery throughout the book. Kit comes by ship from Barbados, she jumps into the water to save a little girl's doll, and she is offered a chance to escape from Wethersfield by water.

In trying to ingratiate herself with the townspeople, Kit alienates them.

Kit's trouble with the Puritans parallels the Puritans' ideological and philosophical differences with the English government.

During the attack on Hannah Tupper's house, the mob of people coming to burn her home is described as a cohesive whole rather than a group of independently-thinking people.

Mercy really does personify the virtue implied by her name: she is kind, forgiving, impatient, and generally devout.