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Examples Of Allegory In The Crucible

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The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 were considered a dark period of time for the Puritans of Salem, Massachusetts. Accusations flew, and many were hung for false accusations of witchcraft. During the 1950s, a similar situation arose across the United States with the “threat” of communism. Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible during that time as an allegory to draw parallels to the horrific events of the past. Times of trouble, like these two examples, have different effects on people. Miller shows the differences in change in the characters Reverend Hale, Mary Warren, and Abigail Williams to show the various effects of mass hysteria on different people. Reverend Hale is a minister from the nearby town of Beverly and gets called in to help assess the problem in Salem. At the beginning of the play, he seems to be a bit big headed and is very confident in his ability to see right and wrong and to recognize the presence of the Devil. However, later on, as more and more accusations are sent out and mass hysteria erupts, he slowly loses his confidence. The pure insanity of the situation really starts to take a toll on him and he starts to question everything that he thinks he knows. Eventually, he ends up quitting the court when he …show more content…

She starts off the play as a normal servant girl but when Abby sparks the trouble she is quick to jump on board with it. Later on, when John Proctor starts to create doubt in the minds of many court members, she switches sides to help him. But then, when Abby begins to accuse her directly and it no longer looks good for Proctor’s side, she does not hesitate to throw him under the bus and switch back with the other girls. Throughout the play, Mary is always a follower and never a leader, for she is always afraid to spark change out of fear of being on the “losing side.” She changes herself constantly to save her own neck instead of standing up for what’s

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How Does Arthur Miller Use Allegory In The Crucible

128 Words | 1 Pages

What is the intended purpose of the Mona Lisa, or Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night? Sure, these might appear as just a smiling woman and some stars. But is there an underlying meaning to what is seen at first glimpse? Allegory has the ability to convey complex ideas through seemingly straight-forward illustrations and text, thus being widely utilized by artists and authors as a device to communicate these hidden meanings. Arthur Miller, an American playwright, uses allegory in his screenplay The Crucible to demonstrate the similarities between the events of the Salem Witch Trials and the Red Scare, both in which individuals were wrongfully suspected and punished.

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The Downfall Of Mary Warren In The Crucible By Arthur Miller

529 Words | 3 Pages

She help but many to death, along with the others following Abigails unholy agenda. In act two, the reader can see a change in Mary's attitude. She starts to stand up to John Proctor, seeming to have a new found confidence. She is still naive about Abby and what she is doing, but with the help of John Proctor, she begins to understand whats happening and admits she was pretending to be choked by spirits in the court. She goes before the court to testify the evil Abby is commiting.

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How Does Reverend Hale Change In The Crucible

273 Words | 2 Pages

Reverend Hale is the character that changes the most in Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible because his feelings on witchcraft turns from full belief to unbelievable doubt, his thoughts on Proctor changes from thinking that he is evil to thinking that he is a good and honest man, and he switches from doing God’s work to doing the Devil’s. Reverend Hale makes a huge change on his claim of witchcraft. In the beginning of the play when Reverend is called to the town of Salem to see if the reason why Betty and Ruth are unconscious is due to witchcraft he brings with him many books. When Reverend Parris sees this he makes a comment that Hale responds to him explaining his expectations. This shows that Reverend Hale is focused on one thing, finding

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How To Stop Panic In The Crucible

602 Words | 3 Pages

Stopping Panic One of America’s greatest plays is “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller. The Crucible is based off of the true events of the Salem Witch Trials, which caused mass hysteria all throughout Salem; However, it was a satire that explained the hysteria during Arthur Miller’s time known as the “Red Scare”. During this satire, he uses characters that had real-life counterparts to explain how mass hysteria, which is exaggerated and uncontrollable emotions of fear, to show how people of his day were doing the same things and how they needed to stop it before it got worse. In the play, two characters who could have stopped the hysteria that plagued Salem were Abigail Williams and Reverend Hale. One character that could have stopped the hysteria was Abigail Williams.

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The Crucible: A Shattered Confidence

539 Words | 3 Pages

A Shattered Confidence Arthur Miller’s The Crucible tells the story of how the Salem witch trials created a huge uproar and showed the fear of evil in the Puritan town. Young girls who were fooling around with witchcraft were able to save their reputation by blaming other citizens for using their spirit to compel them to see hallucinations and become unconscious. Reverend John Hale was called to save one of the young girl’s from “the devil” and also to free Salem from witchcraft. Through Reverend John Hale’s change from a confident savior to a guilty bystander, Miller illustrates the dangers of ignorance. Reverend Hale is passionate about saving Salem from evil spirits, being that he is well-educated on the subject.

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Examples Of Allegory In The Crucible

453 Words | 2 Pages

Crucible Summative When reading The Crucible by Arthur Miller, the leading character John Proctor is persuading his wife not to lie. John says “Do that which is good, and no harm shall come to thee”. The Salem Witch Trials were unfair and unjust. There were hanging innocent people that did not confess. Arthur Miller talks about this in The Crucible, an allegory of The Salem Witch Trials.

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Essay Comparing The Crucible And Mccarthyism

906 Words | 4 Pages

When people are placed under an intense feeling of fear, they begin to commit actions they never thought they were capable over. In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, a young group of girls commit witchcraft which eventually leads to the arrest of over 100 women. This is similar to a time in the 1950s when Joseph McCarthy accuses government officials of communism and that ultimately leads to hundreds of citizens losing their jobs. The Crucible reveals the similarities between The Salem Witch Trials of the 1690s and McCarthyism of the 1950s because it demonstrates how a society can be tremendously impacted by the feeling the fear.

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Examples Of Allegory In The Crucible

265 Words | 2 Pages

‘The Crucible’ an allegory that Arther Miller created connecting The Salem Witch Trials and The Red Scare. When Arther Miller wrote the play ‘The Crucible’, he was coming from a position of victim. Aurther Miller uses The Salem witch trials as a symbolic story of what happened during his time period. An allegory is a story that can be intercepted on both literal and symbolic levels, which was exactly what Miller did. He took a real story and real life events making an allegory.

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How Does Hale Change In The Crucible

822 Words | 4 Pages

Reverend Hale’s Character Evolution “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance” (Alan Watts). Change, the only constant in this universe, the thing a community needs the most to thrive in modern day society, the thing people of Salem cannot accept. In Arthur Miller's the Crucible we see how when the court and the townsfolk get dead set on the idea of witchcraft being rampant in the Village, they are imminently unaccepting if Reverend Hale’s change of no longer believing the devil was in Salem. In the start of the play Hale is seen as a man of god, he is the “spiritual” doctor sent to evaluate Salem and banish Satan from the region.

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Examples Of Allegory In The Crucible

320 Words | 2 Pages

In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, a play using the Salem Witch Trials as an allegory for the Red Scare, villagers are engulfed by chaos and hysteria as a group of teenage girls, led by Abigail Williams, leads everyone to believe that witchcraft and the Devil are working within Salem. John Proctor, a Salem farmer, had an affair with Abigail, which summits to the witch trials and is caught in the middle of the conflict, eventually being accused of witchcraft among many others. After Mary Warren, his servant girl betrays him and pretends that he works for the Devil, Danforth, the judge asks Proctor if he will either confess to being a witch of if he will keep his “black allegiance” to the Devil. Proctor wildly responds, “I say—I say—God is dead!”

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The Salem Witch Trials In Arthur Miller's The Crucible

1257 Words | 6 Pages

The Salem witch trials proved to be one of the most cruel and fear driven events to ever occur in history. Many innocent people were accused of witchcraft, and while some got out of the situation alive not everyone was as lucky. Arthur Miller the author of The Crucible conveys this horrific event in his book and demonstrates what fear can lead people to do. But the reason as to why Arthur Miller felt the need to write The Crucible in the first place was because the unfortunate reality that history seemed to have repeated itself again. In the article “Are You Now or Were You Ever”, Arthur Miller claims that the McCarthy era and the Salem witch trials were similar and he does this through his choice of diction, figurative language, and rhetorical questions.

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257 Words | 2 Pages

Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, is a political allegory because it uses characters from the Salem witch trials, such as Reverend Hale, to criticize the uncontrolled use of authority of McCarthy during the era of McCarthyism. In terms of harsh treatment, theocracy, and biased arguments made by people in authority, the McCarthy hearings and the witch hunt share certain historical similarities. For example, in the play Parris and Hale argue, “ Parris: This is a clear attack upon the court! Hale, to Parris, trying to contain himself: Is every defense an attack upon the court?

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The Crucible Reverend Analysis

620 Words | 3 Pages

Entering any new community, especially when dealing with a crisis, is difficult for anyone to handle and adjust to which is true to no one more than Reverend John Hale. The reverend, from Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, left the town of Salem a whole new person after the trials, but not any less of a genuine and caring man than he was when he first set foot there. Hale was summoned to help the town with it’s witchcraft problem by accusing citizens he saw fit, yet ironically the reverend was the only cautious and logical character when it came to justifying their actions throughout the play. He held no bias against any others characters and so he was one of the few with good intentions for the town not solely themselves. Thus, making Reverend Hale the least responsible for any of Salem’s troubles and the largest reason why many lives were saved.

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Essay On The Crucible Allegory

492 Words | 2 Pages

The Crucible, published in 1953 by Arthur Miller is a very popular book written about the 1692 Salem Witch Trials. While most people use the book to study the Witch Trials, with closer examination it is easy to conclude that it is a direct allegory to the Red Scare and the McCarthy era of 1950s America. An allegory is an extended metaphor in which the characters or objects in the story represent an outside meaning. The Crucible is an allegory to the Red Scare and the McCarthy era drastically by its plot, characters, and the flow and outcome of the court trials. To begin with, The Crucible is an allegory because the plot of the book closely resembles the events that occurred during the Red Scare.

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Examples Of Mccarthyism In The Crucible

886 Words | 4 Pages

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