The Spread of Hysteria in Salem In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, multiple factors fueled the hysteria leading up to the Salem witch trials, such as Abigail’s deceiving plots, Reverend Hale not establishing the truth, and citizens’ mindless accusations. Abigail is the most guilty of causing outbreaks of panic starting with dancing in the woods with other girls, then moving to framing Mary Warren with a doll, and fake acting out seeing otherworldly entities. One example of Abigail’s manipulation is when she stabbed herself with a needle to frame Mary Warren: “Stuck two inches in the flesh of her belly, he draw a needle out” (176). Abigail also has a habit of accusing falsely and gets to girls to gang up during hearings, but everyone believes
During the late 1600’s, numerous accusations of witchcraft were spreading throughout the New England colonies, primarily focusing in Salem Village, Massachusetts. Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible”, paints a very descriptive image of the several different facets of guile and deception that were instituted in “The Crucible.” In contrast, Miller focuses on one utmost theme, hysteria. Clinical mass hysteria describes the spread of a psychologically-manifested illness.
Mass Hysteria Humans have a tendency to want to fit in and belong, causing numerous problems in society. Throughout history, there have been various cases of mass hysteria within groups of individuals. For example, randomly meowing nuns in France and an entire town believing that at night a monkey man watched them. Several specialists believe the behavior has come about due to mass hysteria. Mass hysteria is delusional thoughts, rumors, and fears that spread quickly through a group of people.
Brook Mills Mrs. Brown English 10 11/03/15 Many individuals of Salem have to deal with everyday hysteria with many people accused of being a witch and being executed. Other than Abigail, three characters who are to blame for the hysteria in The Crucible are Judge Danforth, John Proctor, and Mary Warren. A character that contributed to the hysteria in The Crucible was Judge Danforth. He contributed to the hysteria because he sent men and women to be executed for no reason.
The Crucible written by Arthur Miller. The Crucible is a story based off of a lot of main characters and scenes. The story itself is based off the salem witch trials hence the story is in the town of salem. The three categories of this story was mass hysteria where people believe things and all join in. Group think is how people together make decisions based on ideas in the group.
Joseph Romano English CP II H Block Ms. Homem 5/16/23 Salem Witchcraft Hysteria In Salem during the years 1692-1693 a mass hysteria movement called witchcraft began to become popular, witchcraft affected more than 200 individuals and got 20 executed through various methods. It now has been 331 years after those times and historical depictions have been made, for example, Arthur Miller's play The Crucible. In The Crucible the villagers had lost their way of life, the focus to them was the church as it controlled their whole life. Witchcraft had plagued the church and seemingly could not be stopped, who has the ability to end this hysteria?
Throughout The Crucible, a prolonging of mass hysteria arises, perpetuated by extreme emotion of complicated characters. The book, a historical drama, was based on the Salem Witch Trials of the 17th century. An allegory to the Red Scare and McCarthyism, all characters undergo manipulative, tragic situations involving false accusations, paranoia, threats, lies, and more around known conformity to disapproving witchcraft. The Crucible directly mirrors major sentiment of these specific historical time periods when a personal invasion of the townspeople increased the severity of reactions, heightening the madness of the overall public. Events grew in terms of intensity and one after another, created a chaotic atmosphere for the entirety of the town and with more than 200 people on trial, many
In the crucible of Act V, John Proctor realized the situation of the accusations being made having the community blaming innocent people where he could have ended hysteria but chose to become a by standard. He did not want
Mass hysteria can make people do terrible things. In arthur miller’s the crucible tells the story of mass hysteria in Salem Massachusetts in 1692 where people were being hunting and killing innocent people being accused of being something there not.www.history.com Miller uses this story to tell people that the Rewww.history.comd Scare during the 1950’s is the same mass hysteria as the salem witch trials. Miller was accused of being a communist just like people being accused of witchcraft during the salem witch trials.www.history.com The salem witch trials started in the spring in 1692. The Salem witch trials was started by a 9 year old name betty parris and a 11 year old named Abigail williams.www.history.com A doctor by the name of William
Throughout history, there have been multiple periods of mass hysteria or extreme actions and reactions due to extreme emotions. Mass hysteria is harmful because it forces others to admit to crimes they did not commit, and it allows people to take advantage of the situation at hand to rise to power. The Crucible by Arthur Miller is a great example of this and it is an allegory for McCarthyism, or the false accusations and investigations made against someone. The Crucible is based on the real events of the late 17th century that the Puritans of Salem, Massachusetts had to deal with. They were paranoid of the supernatural, and because of their strict religious beliefs and the vengeance that plagued the town, mass hysteria spread quickly.
First, in The Crucible it displays hysteria in many different ways, and was a major factor in the numerous accusations of witchcraft. Hysteria’s role in The Crucible was tearing the community apart, and causing neighbors to turn on each other and stab each other in the back. In the beginning not every character falls into mass hysteria , but it ended up spreading throughout the whole community. It first started when Betty was in a coma.
Imagine having to choose between the murder of others or your death. In Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” the depiction of the Salem witch trials offers a compelling parallel to the hysteria and paranoia fueled by the Communist Red Scare of the 1950s. During the Red Scare, fearful Americans would sell out their neighbors, mainly because they themselves did not want to be seen as conspirators. In the context of “The Crucible," the most capable character of putting an end to mass hysteria would be Danforth, as evidenced by the fact that he was the main judge of the town, but was incompetent, and didn’t want to tarnish his reputation. Both historical contexts reveal that mass hysteria can influence a substantial amount of people.
On September 11th, 2001, a terrorist group attacked the United States by crashing commercial jet planes into the twin towers in New York City, and The Pentagon in Virginia. The terrorist group was an islamic extremist group called al-Qaeda. Since 9/11, ¨Anti-Muslim hate crimes are approximately five times more frequent than they were before 2001, according to the FBI¨ (Fruman and Sakuma n.pag.). This profiling has similarities to the Salem Witch Trials in the thought that trauma caused a sense of hysteria. Individuals in The Crucible by Arthur Miller, feared that witches inhabited Salem's deeply religious community.
As to yet another explanation for the hysteria, Cawthorne points out one of the theories claiming that in Europe and America there spread a kind of fungus whose activity was similar to some hallucinogenic substances. People who ate it, passed into a state of hallucinations, unconsciously giving themselves up to behaviour that awoke suspiciousness among the other villagers (1). Maple states that in 1946 a doctor, Letitia Fairfield, analysed the data from the old witch trials and diagnosed the complaints from which people accused of witchery suffered. The identified diseases, such as cerebral haemorrhage, malaria, rheumatic fever, gangrene, a disease of rye, etc., and the demeanour they brought on, could not be comprehended by primitive medicine and thus was put down to witchcraft (190-191).
In the Crucible, fear, hysteria, and revenge are the most important elements where fear spreads around the whole village. Hysteria involving witchcraft would end up with many innocent people killed. With many false accusations of a long held grudge with another villager would kill others they would have problems with. Revenge would later involve the slaughter of another bad blood of another villager. “God help me, I lusted, and there is a promise in such sweat.
