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Examples Of Mass Hysteria In The Crucible

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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. Abuse of power is when people who have power use it to their unfair advantage. So in this essay there will be examples and ideas about this story and ways that these three things were used. The first category is abusive power. This category was shown not a lot in the story but had a lot of significant value to the play itself. One example that was probably the most important of them all and used throughout the story was how Abigail Williams used her goodness and family name that people thought about her and used it to her advantage. For …show more content…

Mass hysteria this is where it's kind of like monkey see monkey do once somebody does it the rest follow. Throughout the story there were just a few important ones. The first was when Abby wanted to be just like tituba and wanted to be heard so she blerted out a name the betty did after that Mercy did and soon all the girls. For example Abigail said “ I want to open myself to” so she claimed and Betty named off a bunch “I saw Goody Jacobs with the devil!! I saw Goody Howe with the devil” and all the girls started to join in. (line 1378-1404 page 485 The Crucible). The other example when all the girls in the courthouse started to convince all the people that this was happening by everybody agreeing and believing that this is true you can realize this by looking at the people and them taking people into jail and them thinking that this is true. You can find these on (pages 487-503 The Crucible) This shows the take all of the people in that the girls say and question

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