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Hysteria And Fear In The Crucible By Arthur Miller

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Hysteria and fear can have a tremendous influence on how people behave toward each other. Chaos is often created in a society in which mass hysteria has spread. Irrational fear most often results in members of a society turning against each other. Throughout the 1950s, fear and hysteria spread like wildfire throughout the United States. After the Second World War came to an end, tensions began to rise between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. After temporarily being allies in World War II, the US, and USSR strongly disagreed on many topics. These two world powers differed because the US had a democratic government, while the USSR had a communist government. The USSR wanted to spread its communist government to other …show more content…

The play details the trials, paranoia, and death resulting from the Witch Trials. Miller details more about the stories of people in Salem, whose lives were destroyed by hysteria and panic of neighborhoods turning on each other. Fear was a powerful emotion in The Crucible. In the play, dozens of innocent lives were wrongfully hung. This represents how people reacted during McCarthyism and the consequences of people's actions. When fear becomes widespread amongst families and communities, it is no longer fear but mass hysteria, which in turn affects groups because of their irrational beliefs. As stated, “the Red Scare was prompted in part by fears of communism and the possibility that communists emboldened by the revolution in Russia were plotting to overthrow the U.S. government” (Brown). This is the same type of hysteria that caused the mayhem in Salem. Miller chooses to put many quotes in the play describing hysteria about the witch trials. During the court cases, people would shout things like, “I have seen too many frightful proofs in court—the Devil is alive in Salem, and we dare not quail to follow wherever the accusing finger points!” (Miller 617). This reveals that the hysteria affects Puritan society by pervading Salem's legal system. Additionally, showing the anxiety of individuals within a conservative society through Reverend Hale’s theological language shows the fear of the accusations being made amongst other people in the society. In the 1950s, the legal system was also affected, “It was a period of intense xenophobia, and the police started arresting people they thought were involved. During the arrests, there were strikes throughout the United States that led to some people fearing that there was a nationwide conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government” (Corfield). Miller contrasts this idea of

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Franklin D. Roosevelt once stated “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” this is extremely apparent in the play The Crucible written by Arthur Miller that depicts the events that took place during the salem witch trials. These events in American history had countless similarities that led to the persecution of many innocent individuals. Arthur Miller effectively demonstrates this concept in his play The Crucible by drawing parallels between the witch trials of the 1690’s and the “The Great Fear” of the 1950’s. The Salem Witch Trials and the “The Great Fear” were both the product of fear, hysteria, and false accusations.

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The Salem Witch Trials and the 1950’s Red Scare are easily relatable considering that the two events killed several innocent lives, when that individual did nothing wrong. The community around has always been a place where secrets and grudges are held against someone. During the Salem Witch Trials, according to Arthur Miller’s play “The Crucible” and the Red Scare, it focused on how much power a character could have, and that one character also can lead to convincing the community to be with them or against their personal thoughts. Furthermore, the power that is lead to one's head could destroy the thoughts of other about yourself as an individual.

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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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“The Crucible” is a 1953 play by the author Arthur Miller. The play is a dramatized and partially fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Province of Massachusetts Bay during 1692 and 1693. Miller wrote the play as an allegory of McCarthyism, when the U.S. government blacklisted accused communists. Arthur Miller was questioned by the “House of Representatives' Committee on Un-American Activities” in 1956 and convicted of "contempt of Congress" for refusing to identify others present at meetings he had attended.

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Throughout history there have been instances where individuals inflicat chaos to gain their desires. The dramatic play, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller was written in the 1950s but takes place in the last 1600s during the Salem witch trials. These trials are notorious for the public hysteria it caused and drew out. Due to individuals greed and deception many innocent were accussed and sentenced to death for witch craft. This only subsisted the hysteria and caused several unjust deaths.

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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.

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In "The Crucible”, by Arthur Miller, the author effectively employs Reverend Parris’s interrogation of Abigail to develop the theme of hysteria and fear in the play, intensively questioning Abigail on witchcraft and her related activities. Miller uses excessive efforts in his writing in order to shut down his fear of the devil, creating a tense atmosphere throughout the scene. Enriching the passage with its presence, the irony finds its place within the depths of “The Crucible'' as Miller skillfully employs this technique to create a compelling contrast between what the reader knows and what the characters in the story are unaware of. The audience possesses a privileged understanding of the girls’ illicit activities in the woods, clandestine

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In The Crucible, a play written by Arthur Mills in 1953, the setting takes place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Crucible demonstrates the effects of the Salem Witch trials and how it led to mass murder. This production provides insight on the lives of the accused, what the causes were, and how society dealt with it. Mills’s production pointed out the brutality that politics and government or “the law” introduced in towns including Salem. Throughout the play we discover what contributors led to the mass hysteria and just how strongly it could deceive people.

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“Mass hysteria is a condition which affects a group of people, it is characterized by excitement, anxiety, irrational behavior, beliefs, or inexplicable symptoms of illness within said group.” The Crucible was written and published on January 22, 1953, as means of pointing out the utter insanity of the Communist Red Scare. In the events which partook in the Red Scare, an organization by the name of the House Un-American Activities Committee was formed in 1938 and led by Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, targeted and accused American citizens of being communists, most notably those who were successful. In The Crucible, I argue Mary Warren could have ended the mass hysteria in Salem by sticking to the truth, not taking Abigail’s threats seriously,

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Paranoia and Hysteria in The Crucible Society is a fragile thing. As history has proved time and time again, when emotions run high amongst people, societal order is often the first thing to dissolve. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, the society of Salem, Massachusetts collapses due to the paranoia and hysteria generated by the witch hunts. The Crucible is set against the backdrop of the 1692 Salem Witch Trials.

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This is shown when Rebecca Beatrice Brooks stated, “As a devout and strongly religious community living in near isolation in the mysterious New World, the community of Salem had a heightened sense of fear of the Devil and then experienced a ‘trigger’ when Tituba, one of the accused witches, confessed that she and others were in fact witches working for the Devil” (Brooks). This example shows how the Puritan society transitioned to the blaming of witch-craft in order to avoid the real situations. An example of hysteria in the play is, “I--I heard the other girls screaming, and you, Your Honor, you seemed to believe them, and I-- It were only sport in the beginning sir, but then the whole world cried spirits, spirits, and I--I promise you, Mr. Danforth, I only thought I saw them but I did not” (Miller).

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When fear takes over and becomes widespread, it leads to mass hysteria. Miller wrote this play to tell people not to get caught up in the mass hysteria of the trials because it can turn into an unimaginable horror. Fear causes people to do things out of character. People should be aware of how easily they can be swept up into these mass hysterias and what bad things happen when we do. Sometimes, people tend to make poor judgments when they are afraid of something.

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In the play “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller, fear, jealousy and greed play a significant role in the Salem witchcraft hysteria. What possessed so many Salem townspeople to accuse their friends and neighbors of performing unexplainable actions upon innocent lives? Many based their claim on the feelings they had for their neighbors. Those feelings may have been hatred, or even love for them. Individuals then began to fear what so many were pushing to be the truth, they feared for their lives and safety of their family's.

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I have seen too many frightful proofs in court - the Devil is alive in Salem, and we dare not quail to follow wherever the accusing finger points!” (Hale, Act 2) Hale proves the mindset of the characters affected by hysteria and fear. In his arguments it's more hysteria than

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Fear that spread among a group of people in Salem during the Salem Witch Trials, that event in history is a prime example of Mass Hysteria. In Salem the reason why so many women were killed was because of Mass Hysteria. It caused many people, in Salem during this event to think fast, rash and jump to conclusions. “The Crucible”, a short play dedicated to these events in Salem shows us how hysteria was such a leading cause of why the Witch Trials had even occurred. Reverend Hale, Abigail Williams and Judge Danforth.

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