The Crucible, a play written to criticize the Red Scare, involves a theme which focuses on how the characters change as an effect of the intensity and hysteria of the town’s witch trials. Elizabeth Proctor and Reverend Hale, two major characters in the play, experience internal changes as the play progresses due to the individual pressures of the witch trials. Elizabeth Proctor faces the test of having been accused as a witch, having her husband be accused and condemned as a witch, and trying to move past her husband’s affair with a local girl. Reverend Hale was challenged by the corruption of the ministry in Salem and encountered much adversity while doing his job, seeking out witchcraft. Both of these characters come to realize the witch trials only result in death and lies, which causes these characters to evolve.…
Mary Warren in “The Crucible” is largely driven by fear throughout the story, more specifically her fear of not being accepted. Throughout the book, we can see that she wants to be accepted by whoever has the most power over her life at the time. First Abigail, then later she desires acceptance and forgiveness from Elizabeth Proctor, and then finally Abigail again.…
Fear is the death of us humans. When we have fear it causes us uncertainty, and also clouds our judgment. It motivates us to do acts that we would not normally put ourselves through. The Crucible written in 1952 by Arthur Miller took place in a town called Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. In the play characters show fear, but one main character is Mary Warren. She is a seventeen year old girl that works for John and Elizabeth Proctor. During the play it is easy to see how fear not only changes her loyalties but also develops her into a submissive character.…
The Crucible is a study in how mass hysteria can quickly get out of control and become very harmful if not deadly. Mary Warren is a catalytic character in The Crucible as she is both a mirror and a foil for many characters, and her ever changing bravery, or lack thereof, is what ushers the story along. Mary is a very malleable character. At first, she is very obedient towards her employer, John Proctor, then very submissive towards the brutal character of Abigail. She enjoys the respect she receives from being an official of the court, and defying Proctor. After Goody Proctor is accused, she agrees to reveal Abigail to the court but once she is swept up in the hysteria Mary yet again shifts her allegiance back to Abigail leading to John Proctor’s…
Salem was one of the most popular places where witches were executed, because people where afraid of devil which shows the Miller's story The Crucible. This horrible fear shaped the society of Salem and as it happened a lot of women were killed. As Dorothy Thompson said: "The most destructive element in the human mind is fear. Fear creates aggressiveness". The book which I read is the story about how the society was manipulated by the fear of the unknown or different. Therefore, in my opinion people in Salem were afraid of a devil and this fear shaped their society to judge and perceive normal women as witches and in consequences killed them.…
One thing the people in the crucible were afraid of was witches. If anyone was accused of being a witch, they had to tell on other people or they would be killed. To prove if someone was a witch they would hold them under water and if they survived they were a witch. They soon realized that they were killing tons of innocent people that were not witches. The people were also afraid that Abigail would accuse them of being a witch.…
Have you ever thought it could happen again? In the Crucible there were many instances that left the townspeople wondering what was going to happen next. After countless times of innocent people becoming executed of witchcraft, it scared the townspeople so bad they were afraid to speak of anything to do with witchcraft. The mass hysteria and fear seen in The Crucible is similar to the hysteria and fear seen after 9/11 because people were scared of the future.…
In unit 5, we studied how the feeling of fear can either be a good thing or a bad thing towards our emotions. Fear is something that can make someone feel good or bad. The first way can be something very good, as in helping yourself find a way to overcome it and get over something that you never thought you could get over. Within unit 5, the first quality that made me understand that the feeling of fear as being a harmful emotion is making you feel scared. “She made me do it.…
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…
It also played a big part in creating conflicts between John Proctor and his wife, inner conflicts, as well as desperation adds to the stories complexity. In Arthur Miller's The Crucible, John Proctor's stand in a society where opinion drove fate and beliefs. In the beginning John Proctor hid his horrible act of cheating inside. He feared the consequences. In the end it came down to Proctor's reputation and this proved that he was stronger than the entire community of Salem. Proctor's mixed up feeling caused him to come to a conclusion and he wound up confessing his sins. Theocracy came together to take control over Salem. Danforth stated, "You must understand, sir, a person is either with the church or against it, there be no road between. We live no longer in the dusky afternoon and evil mixed itself with good and befuddled…
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…
When present, fear can often be exploited for one’s personal gain. The Crucible, a play written by Arthur Miller, exemplifies the power of fear due to the imaginary idea of witchcraft in the small village of Salem. During the time this play was written, the United States was overcome by the fear of communism, which had led to the government accusing many innocent people for ridiculous reasons. Miller uses The Crucible to show how many of the accusations in the Salem Witch Trials, a similar event, often had underlying, selfish, and personal reasons behind them. In the play Abigail Williams, and Thomas Putnam’s take advantage of the pervasive fear in the village, allowing them to fulfill their selfish and exploitative motives which are what truly fuel the Salem Witch Trials.…
Mass hysteria can exist when a number of people behave in an uncontrollable, unmanageable way because of fear and/or anger. Arthur Miller easily shows this in the play The Crucible which takes place in the late 1600’s in Salem, Massachusetts when more than one-hundred people were getting accused of being witches. United State Senator Joseph McCarthy had done something similar to this when he had accused many people of being “Reds” or communists during the Red Scare going throughout the United States.Human nature prompts mass hysteria \because people with good reputations start it and it’s more likely for people to believe them and also mass hysteria occurs when people want to get back at someone for something they want. Media might bring people…
It is only human nature to succumb to and delve into the knowledge of the unknown or of…
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…