“Going to the darkest place you can to make yourself really upset and adding that with the physicality and running around, you can work yourself into hysteria .” American actress Alexandra Daddario said this while her life seemed unorthodox. Mass Hysteria is a phenomenon that transmits collective illusions of threats, whether real or imaginary, through a population in society as a result of rumors and fear. In Arthur Miller's drama, The Crucible, Mass Hysteria is tremendously recognized. The play takes place in the late 1600’s in the small village of Salem, Massachusetts where over 100 people are accused of performing witchcraft. While looking at The Salem Witch trials as a whole it is prominent that media isn't needed to have mass hysteria. …show more content…
Neighbors were accusing neighbors, friends were accusing people they have know for years. The accusations of others was a scapegoat for anything that was out of the ordinary. The village people would accuse others to get ahold of land that might be owned by someone else. The blaming of people for abnormal events was very common at this time considering their tight puritan beliefs. Secondly, Mass Hysteria in salem was also spread by the will to fit in. As soon as people started accusing, others went along with it to fit into society. It was normal to fit into the hysteria if that's what everyone else is doing. People now days and back then have an undying urge to fit into society, they will do whatever that it
Fear The Court, Love Your God! Salem Massachusetts 1692, the early americas, still under the control of Great Britain. Early settlers daily life consisted of farming, church, cooking and what not. It was a necessity for men and boys to farm to provide food for the family, and to sell at market.
Political, social, and personal forces are playing a role in the Hysteria in Salem. First off, political influences are causing hysteria. The judicial system in Salem is corrupt. Thomas Putnam for example, tries to take advantage of an opportunity he has to take someones land. If he gets off with the case and the defendant is hung he receives his wish.
The Crucible The Crucible, a play written by Author Miller portrays the hysteria that happened in Salem during the Salem Witch Trials in 1692. The play is fiction, however the plot of the play is based on the Salem With Trials which did occur in history. During the play, the citizens of Salem portray very exaggerated and uncontrollable emotion as the fear of witches, witchcraft, and the Devil fill the town. Judge Danforth also displays hysteria.
In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, he shows a mass hysteria that took place in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. Although, the play is fiction, Miller based the plot of his play on the historical event, the Salem Witch Trials. According to the the Salem witch trials of the late 17th century, The Crucible explores a mass hysteria that its residents must go through because of the witchcraft accusations made by young girls and many other people of the region. These accusations, we learn further in the novel, are not true and are purely for the purpose to put the blame of someone's mistakes or wrongdoings to someone else. The accusers is constitutionally finding scapegoats to back up their culpability.
In “The Crucible” (1953) Arthur Miller asserts that mass hysteria leads to high tensions and heated relationships between people that once were great friends. these tensions begin in the town of salem Massachusetts in 1692 where witch hysteria was beginning to run rampant. A rampancy that caused the unjust deaths of nineteen of the town's residents. Nineteen people who had nothing to do with the theorised witchcraft that was spawned by people’s fear of the unknown. A fear that manifested due to untrustworthy people.
The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions that lead to the death of 20 innocent lives with over 200 accused of Witchcraft. However, I believe that something similar would’ve happened if the Salem witch trials didn’t happen. Salem was a ticking time bomb ready to explode any moment. The restrictive Puritan society coupled with personal fear of the severe punishments that ensues witchcraft, and people’s natural inclination for survival and power made Salem an ideal setting for mass hysteria.
In Salem, Massachusetts 1692, there were no true witches, meaning no one really signed the devil’s book and went around hurting others; even the ones who confessed to being witches were guiltless (“World”). The witch trials of Salem in the spring of 1692 were a “classic example of scapegoating”(Brooks). Today’s theories as to why these trials happened include epilepsy, boredom, abuse, suffering from a disease from eating rye, or mental sickness (Brooks). As illustrated in The Crucible, social and political tensions contributed to the mass hysteria that resulted in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. There were many factors that sparked the witch trials.
The witchcraft of Salem, Massachusetts was an example of mass hysteria, it resulted in the hangings and deaths of many people from being charged with relations with the devil. The people who convicted the innocent were actually the ones who themselves had relations with the devil. The reasons the convictions happened were because of the young girls who got caught dancing around a fire in the moonlight and doing other practices, they didn’t want to get accused of the witchcraft so they ended up blaming other people who they were jealous of. Innocent people were accused and convicted on witchcraft making it the most unjustifiable testimonies in Salem.
What caused the people of Salem to go into a hysteria and accuse each other of witchcraft in 1692? It could have been a number of factors could have caused the Salem Witch Trials Hysteria of 1692. A hysteria is when a group of people experience something with a heightened emotional state, often leading to fogged decision-making skills or inability to see logic. These factors would not have caused such an extreme situation on their own, but when together they created the worse case scenario for the people of Salem. These factors were local feuds, jealousy, religion-based anxiety, a case of hysteria, and upset over a fast economy change.
The Crucible is a play written by Arthur Miller that he used to analogically compare his time period struggle of the McCarthy Communist hunt to the struggle of Salem citizens in 1692, the witch trials. In this play Miller correctly outlines what made this epidemic so infamous and how the characters involved only added to the hysteria and madness. In The Crucible Miller successfully conveys, through the use of Abigail, Danforth, and Parris, that power, when placed in the hands of unjust men and women, conjures hysteria in society and ultimately has the weight to ruin or end innocent lives. Throughout The Crucible Abigail consistently condemns those who oppose her in order to garner hysteria and indirectly execute citizens of Salem, using the
Fear and Hysteria can cause people to act in ways that they never thought possible. In the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller, the characters Cheever and Mary Warren both act in unusual ways because of fear and hysteria. This is evident in their interactions with others regarding witchcraft. John Proctor realizes how fear is affecting his life and the life of other people in the town. While Mary Warren is being accused of witchcraft he interjects with, “If [Mary Warren] is innocent!
The hysteria that occurs in Arthur Miller’s play about the 1692 Salem witch trials, The Crucible is used the explore the rawest form of human cognisance. Characters contained within the play exemplifies the many layers a human can have. Underneath the Puritan facade, the characters hold complex, layered personifications of emotion. Many involved within the Salem witch trials undergo stressful situations whether short term of long term. The plays name, The Crucible, seems to derive from the stressful, heated situations that occur.
There are also many modern day examples of mass hysteria. An example of a real world event is a recent missile threat in hawaii that turned into a false alarm. An article titled Missile threat alert for Hawaii a false alarm; officials blame employee who pushed 'wrong button' is a good example of hysteria
What if I told you the Salem Witch Trials wasn’t a mystery but a hoax. Let me break this down. The Salem witch trials took place in Salem Massachusetts 1692. During that time period there was a high number of people being accused of BRUJERIA (witchcraft). Now people didn’t have an explanation of this so now in the present day many theories have come up as to why the witch trials took place.
The Witchcraft Trials 1. Question: How did the Salem witchcraft trials reflect attitudes toward women and the status of women in colonial New England? Answer: The people of Salem looked down upon property owning widows or any women who did not fit the social norm. The upper echelon wanted the women of Salem to be of lower rank than the males and any women who was not subordinate to a man was considered suspect.