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How Is Fear Presented In The Crucible

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“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt.
This inspirational quote by Franklin D. Roosevelt can be related to the power of fear, which can be seen within the play, The Crucible by Arthur Miller. The intensity of the feeling of fear is very much based on personal opinions towards certain things. From a group of five people, two could be scared of spiders and bugs, one could be afraid of the dark and one could fear both of these things equally. Fear overrules people and can change their behaviour and can also change the behaviour of others. The emotion of fear portrayed in the play is evident through the use of stage directions, language. It can also be shown using camera angle, actions, lighting and choice of music as well as dialogue screen directions and expressions. …show more content…

There are numerous ways that the fear has been portrayed in both the film and play, which can be seen where Arthur Miller has used the power of words to help show this within the play.
Miller has used various language techniques within the dialogue, such as descriptive words and ______. Words like quavering, his eyes going wide, and terror which are all descriptive words to help to further enhance the feeling of fear within the play. are all descriptive words that help portray the mood and feelings of a character in a situation, and without having such descriptive words, the play could easily be interpreted the wrong way and the emotions that the characters are feeling will have no meaning to

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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.

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Fear uses deception to increase prejudice towards the opposing idea. This type of propaganda was used in the play when Abigail, the protagonist of the story threatened the other women when they were opposing to her ideas and accusations. She threatened them by telling them about her history, and what she was capable of. Also, this was used often by the Court themselves. They used fear in order to convince people to confess to witchcraft.

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