I am exploring the question of are we are motivated by fear, human nature, and just how far we will go for our reputations. All three of theses are major themes in the Cucubile by Arthur Miller. And each theme plays a major part in how the Crucible was rounded while also showing a very strong perspective on how the author wanted the reader to perceive the crucible. The reason I think that we continue to read, study, and perform the Crucible to this day is because it was a major part in history where many innocent people were killed due to fear and false accusations. The Crucible was written about a time period that Arthur Miller acknowledges as a time where fear and reputation totally took over.
When someone is fearful of something, they usually will not show it. Most people don’t know how to express their fear. In “The Crucible”, fear is shown through the way characters go about their business and everyday lives. John Proctor showed fear when he told on himself for having an affair with Abigail Williams. He gave himself away because he feared what the court would do to his wife.
How Fear Motivates the Characters in The Crucible Fear plays an important role in the play The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller.. It motivates the accusers and the accused. The first accuser in the play was Abigail. She accused Tituba of being a witch.
Throughout history the fear of corruption and change has compelled people to go to drastic measures to prevent it. The Crucible, a play by arthur Miller, is set in an environment of religious citizens who fear that the devil and witchcraft will corrupt their society. Much like The Crucible, McCarthyism caused the citizens in America to fear corruption of the government by communism. Arthur Miller used his play the crucible as a direct response to McCarthyism and through this play Miller writes about the Salem witch trials during the McCarthy period to comment on how history repeats itself. The social and political factors in The Crucible resemble those in America during the red scare and McCarthyism.
In the Crucible many characters are jaded, rude, or just plain evil. Arthur Miller uses fear to make this clear. Whether they run from, hide from, or fight against what is happening in Salem, it all boils down to each character's response to fear. The reason this play feels so real is in one part due to the fact the characters are real, and two how real fear is depicted in the play. Although Fear is just an emotion.
Fear drives people to lose their judgement. Usually the fear is induced by an outside source such as a threat. In many cases throughout history most of the choices made were blindly made because of fear and with no validity and affects the public negatively. The Crucible exemplifies leaders and important figures that make a decision based off of fear.
Fear is a common theme in Act 2 of The Crucible, where everyone fears each other because of wild accusations and punishment. Two people in particular deal with their fears in very different ways. John and Elizabeth Proctor are a couple that experienced issues after John slept with one of their servants, Abigail Williams. Abigail Williams and another group of girls who "fell ill" were accusing people in their town of performing witchcraft on them. When Elizabeth finds out that Abigail is one of the most prominent victims, she fears for her life and her relationship because she knows that Abigail wishes her dead.
Fear pushes people to do bad things, to better themselves, and to keep them safe. But sometimes this makes it worse for people around. Throughout history, there were many driving forces on what people had feared. This was through mass hysteria. In the story, “The Crucible,” by Arthur Miller, he was able to show this fear and hysteria being his driving force.
The immense fear and paranoia of witchcraft in Salem which led to the brutal hangings of 18 innocent people with 1 pressed to death. We can see how Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, an allegorical tale of the events of McCarthyism in the 1950s helped forward his message. Consequently, during the play, The Crucible, we witness many vivid examples of fear and persuasion used in Salem. Miller provides examples that relate to the scare of communism through real-life events of the witch trials. Nevertheless, he compares the role of fear and persuasion in Salem to the Red Scare with McCarthyism.
Fear is used a lot in The Crucible, like for example when goody Proctor has to say why she fired Abigail and she said that “Abigail was no use to me” and that she thought that her husband was going to leave her Fear is different for different people, what do the individual characters in the play fear, and how does that drive their action? Well I think that every character in the movie experience fear at least ones in book,
Fear is definitely not always a harmful emotion. Fear influences people to take extreme measures as well as act irrationally to emotion. While fear is one of the main emotions people face, this emotion pushes people to do what they desire. It drives people to madness, and throughout history, caused people to commit extreme acts. In Arthur Miller’s play, fear drives characters to extreme actions in order to save the reputation or their lives.
Throughout the town of Salem, Massachusetts fear has spread. It has affected everyone in the town and has brought nothing but chaos. The people of Salem are becoming more scared and determined to hunt down every witch they can find. In The Crucible, fear is appeared as a negative trait since it makes the people act differently during this period of time. Abigail showed fear when she said that Tituba was a witch and was performing witchcraft.
The Crucible: How Fear Changes People During his first Inaugural Address, Franklin D. Roosevelt once announced, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. Fear manipulates a persons rationality resulting in them behaving in ways they normally would not, especially in the story The Crucible written by Arthur Miller. The characters in The Crucible allow fear to manipulate their beliefs and actions. They all know what is right, but fear alters their mindset causing them to act differently.
This proves that fear should never be used to motivate an audience to confront a threat because fear is an emotion that causes people to look at everything as a threat or as dangerous, makes them feel anxiety, and it often causes people to make irrational or bad decisions, and the results are disastrous. In The Crucible, Miller's character Abigail accuses many of the townspeople of being witches. In those times, the people of Salem were terrified of witches and believed they were devil
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” - Franklin D Roosevelt. Fear plays a major role for the tragic ending of The Crucible by Arthur Miller, because fear is upon the citizens of Salem, Massachusetts, it leads to unanticipated accusations, power, and hatred. This feeling, has occurred in everyone’s life at some point, which is more overpowering than some might think. Once hysteria arose about the girls dancing in the woods, due to all the fear it leads to unanticipated accusations, being a slave, Tituba was accused by Abigail to avoid any punishment.
