Preview

How Does Fear and Hysteria Play a Significant Role in Creating and Driving the Conflict and the Chaotic Events That Take Place in Arthur Miller's 'the Crucible'?

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1450 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
How Does Fear and Hysteria Play a Significant Role in Creating and Driving the Conflict and the Chaotic Events That Take Place in Arthur Miller's 'the Crucible'?
How does fear and hysteria play a significant role in creating and driving the conflict and the chaotic events that take place in Arthur Miller’s ‘ The Crucible’?

Fear is a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil or pain, whether the threat is real or imagined.1 It causes feelings of dread and apprehension. Fear can lead to hysteria- a condition where community wide fear overwhelms logic and ends up justifying its own existence. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, fear and hysteria are the foundation and antecedent behind the bedlam and conflicting events that take place in the community of Salem. It is the key factor that results in the degeneration of the community. It is fear and hysteria that incited the Salem Witch Trials and the fear that spawned a situation so complex that the very people who generated it were unable to fathom the series of events that were set in motion by virtue of their actions.

In the Introduction of The Crucible by Christopher Bigsby, Arthur Miller is said to have stated, “It was the maturation of hysteria at the time that pulled the trigger.”2 When fear evolves into hysteria, it is much less controllable and spreads like a wildfire. It is the fear that eventually matures into the hysteria that leads to the entropy of the community of Salem. “Neighbor looked upon neighbor with some suspicion, for fear that land would be reassigned. It was a “community riven with schisms.”3 Neighbors traduced about their neighbors. It was the fear of being accused themselves that lead them to accuse others. In the past, present and undoubtedly in the future, deceptive individuals take advantage of the anxieties and fears of society and it is no different in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.

In Act two, Hale says, “I have seen too many frightful truths in court- the Devil is alive in Salem, and we dare not quail to follow wherever the accusing finger points.”4 This is a representation of what the people of Salem feel in this situation.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    In 1953, Arthur Miller wrote a novel called The Crucible. This book is set in 1962 and it tells the story of the infamous witch trials that took place in Salem, Massachusetts. Throughout this whole story we find that greed, revenge, and hysteria affected much of what happened in Salem. From Abigail Williams's lust for John Proctor, to the hysteria throughout the trials, and to Abigail's accusation on Tituba; greed, revenge, and hysteria was shown rampant in Salem during these times. I believe that greed, revenge, and hysteria presented in the book, destroyed the town and the people of Salem, Massachusetts. This book really shows how slight misconceptions of innocent individuals can create uterpandimony. Many people who were thought to be Godly…

    • 139 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The CrucibleIn The Crucible by Arthur Miller, there is lots of scenes where mass hysteria is used by…

    • 658 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" was an allegory to the well-known mass hysteria, the Red Scare. Many mass hysterias have occurred before and after the Red Scare like Y2K, War of the Worlds, and Muslims in the U.S.…

    • 325 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Human nature is the common feelings, characteristics, and behaviors of humans. One characteristic of human nature is fear. Humans fear the things they can not understand and when things happen that no one can explain, fear takes over and spreads like wildfire. “The Crucible,” a play written by Author Miller to express the panic and fear of witchcraft in the city of Salem, Massachusetts in the 1600s, follows the lives of multiple Salem residents and shows how the Salem Witch Trials affected their lives. One character in particular, John Proctor, is largely affected when the young girl he’d had an affair with starts the accusations against people in Salem for practicing witchcraft. John Proctor’s character is the epitome of human nature; his sins, guilt, loyalty, redemption, and his realization that he is in fact a good man make him an entirely human character…

    • 455 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Fear is an interesting concept. Fear can be spread like wildfire, it is like a disease that makes people do irrational things that they normally wouldn’t do. In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, fear takes grasp of the whole village and throws it into chaos. Arthur Miller wrote “The Crucible” as a parable on what was going on during the McCarthy Era. The play was to show the social injustice that was going on in the 1950s. In Salem witchcraft was a big deal, people believed in it because christianity was the basic religion in those parts. Christianity believes in the 3 worlds, heaven,hell, and the present. So when there were accusations of witchcraft the town blew up with commotion and it turned everyone's world upside down.…

    • 616 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The witchcraft trials in Salem in 1692 were a result of many different elements that were going on within the town. Jealousy was the cornerstone of the mass hysteria that soon became known as the Salem witch trials. In his play, The Crucible, Miller demonstrates how the fear of people in authority can destroy a community by bringing it to mass hysteria through the characters of Parris, Putnam, and Proctor.…

    • 772 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The direct meaning of this quote is that Hale believes there is something odd occurring and that anyone even slightly out of place or accused must be investigated no matter what they did or who they are. This relates to the extremity of the hysteria because Hales doesn't even think about the fact that Giles is 83 years old and may just be having a hard time remembering his prayers and immediately thinks that the only possible reasoning is that his wife is a witch. Because of the witch hysteria people became extremely paranoid and were more apt to notice things that were out of place and the first thing they would think is that it was witchcraft. This ends up tearing apart society as so many people are killed and forced to wrongfully confess to actions they never took because they were innocent of what they were accused of however the society was blind to anything other than witchcraft. At the end of the play, in Act IV, people begin to realize the wrong they have done and the empty and no-longer functional state of Salem. When Hale realized that “there are orphans wandering from house to house; abandoned cattle bellow on the…

    • 565 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Have you ever done something you should not have because you were afraid? Such as, lie to keep yourself from getting in trouble? Did your actions cause you to question yourself? Arthur Miller was a famous playwright during the twentieth-century whose work opened up the eyes of the blind by showing them what they could not see through the arts of American theatre. He has written numerous plays, but out of them all The Crucible, written in 1953, is one of the most popular. Acting on fear causes us to become someone that we are not. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, he shows us that the fears of the past are always evolving into something that we fear…

    • 119 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Crucible was a brilliant representation of mass hysteria. The examples are very limited when it comes to panic on as great a scale of which the Salem Witch Trials created. The reasons for there are not a large amount of examples is because the timing must be perfect to achieve the range of hysteria as seen in The Crucible.The hysteria was only entrenched so deeply in Salem for the following reasons: people urged the panic on for selfish reasons leading to panic, religion and state not being separated as it should turning the panic into mass hysteria, and lastly the mass hysteria led to many well respected and loved people dying to sate the hysterics of the people.…

    • 664 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Reverend Hale speaks of how so many have been accused that the Devil is in Salem. A simple pointing of the finger has led multiple people to be hung. This power of pointing the finger is abused by Abigail to accuse and incite hysteria in the people of Salem. Her extreme acting overrides the reasoning of the public and causes them to think with emotion and fear. Mary Warren falls prey to Abigail’s antics and betrays Proctor because of it. Abigail with the other girls accused of witchcraft act as though they are being controlled by someone else or feel a cold draft. These anomalies scare the people of Salem driving them to hysteria. The unsuspected accusation of witchcraft towards many townspeople caused Salem as a whole to become enveloped in hysteria. In The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, hysteria is prevalent in the way Abigail Williams incites the other girls, Marry Warren’s sudden change of sides, and Salem as a…

    • 849 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    the mincraft

    • 1090 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Fear plays a great role in the story, The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller. Fear is in everyone who lives in the town of Salem, including the accusers. The accusers are scared to be found fraud so they accuse those who know the truth of witchcraft, and the accused are scared for their lives if they do not confess. Fear rules over Salem in this dark time and it does not end until the trials are over every person that was accused got mete.…

    • 1090 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    In Salem, Massachusetts the year 1692, Arthur Miller tells the tale of witch hunts and trials in his play The Crucible. With these trials and hunts came hysteria; a term defined as uncontrollable emotion and excitement among people. Throughout Salem Miller creates hysteria among contrasting characters, uneven justice, and even alludes to the hysteria we have in our societies today.…

    • 1052 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Crucible Hysteria

    • 809 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Epidemic hysteria happens when uncontrolled emotion is set into the minds of a group of people over an issue that is happening in the mind but not in reality. When hysteria sets into a group, those who have become "infected" find that their lives are thrown into chaos and ruin. Epidemic hysteria was found evident in the lives of the characters in The Crucible. The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller, is a play that retells the events of the Salem Witch Trials. By looking at those "infected" by hysteria in The Crucible and the facts drawn from other outbreaks in a journal by Leslie B. Boss, it can be seen how the concepts of hysteria apply to the characters of this play, including how the "infected" received hysteria, what caused it, factors…

    • 809 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Arthur Miller once again uses Mary Warren to show this when Danforth won’t believe that Mary Warren isn’t attacking Abigail with a bird in Act III of the play. Mary pleads to Danforth that she’s “not hurting her” and that Abigail “sees nothin’” but Danforth only continues to ask Mary if she “compacted with the devil” and tells Mary to “draw back your spirit out of them” (Miller 1261). This distrust in the community is caused by hysteric confusion and fear. Danforth and others are caught up in the alleged devil in the room that they begin to agree with the girls and start to blame the innocent. This tears apart the people of Salem because they begin to accuse those who were previously trustworthy. People are in a confused, fearful, state and are unable to make rational decisions on trust.…

    • 599 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout ‘The Crucible’ the theme of fear is used to show how much society's behaviour is dictated by fear. Within the play, it becomes clear that most of the girls are afraid of being alone and will do anything to fit in, even if it goes against their beliefs. Similarly, in society this same behaviour occurs due to the fact that most people won't speak out about an injustice they've witnessed if it means potential damage to their social status. Furthermore, some characters are afraid of their own desires, namely John Proctor and his lust for Abigail Williams. This fear of unpredictable emotions seen in the play is reflected throughout society. Finally, the greatest fear that the residents of Salem possess is the fear of each other. This fear is not only largely present within the play but also within society, as can be observed by the fact that the majority of people are scared of anyone who is different to them. Clearly, the fear displayed within the town of Salem is the same fear that runs through society nowadays.…

    • 426 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays