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The crucible arthur miller character analysis
The crucible arthur miller character analysis
The crucible and salem witch hunt
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“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. ”(Roosevelt). The Crucible by Arthur Miller is a historical fiction about how hysteria and groupthink can have drastic consequences. It follows the Salem witch trials and the events that led to 19 people being convicted of witchcraft and subsequently killed. The most important subject in The Crucible is how fear can affect decisions.
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.
Irony saturates Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" as characters who profess to combat the Devil's influence ultimately perpetrate it themselves. The rigid pursuit of suspected witches, intended to cleanse Salem, instead plunges the town into deeper chaos and paranoia, culminating in utter havoc. Act 1 exposes significant ironies revolving around Abigail Williams. Despite John’s rejection, Abigail fabricates lies and seizes control over the society she despises. Her deceitful facade mirrors the duplicity she denounces.
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.
Leiffer 1 Jake Leiffer Mrs. Faulkner English 11 Honors October 3, 2014 Hysteria In Salem In Salem things are getting crazy. Hysteria is going around like a disease, but not from witchcraft. In The Crucible several accusations have taken place taking the lives of many due to hysteria. Hysteria is being spread through three different things.
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.
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.
What is fear? Fear is an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief of someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain or threat. In my own words fear is a feeling people get when someone is going to kill them. But not all fear is bad because some people feel fear differently How is fear used in “The Crucible” ?
Imagine living in a town where everyone was running amok, hysterical and paranoid, because of accused witches. This is the reality for the townspeople in Salem featured in The Crucible by Arthur Miller. For this reason, hysteria and paranoia had the biggest impact on Salem in The Crucible. This is shown through the multitude of accusations and the impact Abigail had on townspeople. Many would argue that jealously and greed had the biggest impact.
When people think of the play, “The Crucible”, they usually picture the witch trials and women being hanged, but Arthur Miller depicts the witch trials in a completely new light. He shows through a story that the witch trials were much more than just people calling others witches. There was deceit, pain, greed, and more. Through the play, we follow the character, Abigail, observe her actions and their consequences. We witness the lives of people she impacts, what happens to them, and how many times she lies to get her way.
Only in rare cases is something so impactful on a story caused by solely one person. Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, luckily, is not one of those cases. There would be much less of a story if it was that simple. The blame of the hysteria that is revolving around Salem is upon many shoulders. The three people that are most intertwined with this are Abigail Williams, John Proctor, and Mary Warren.
Fear and Hysteria can cause people to act in ways that they never thought possible. In the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller, the characters Cheever and Mary Warren both act in unusual ways because of fear and hysteria. This is evident in their interactions with others regarding witchcraft. John Proctor realizes how fear is affecting his life and the life of other people in the town. While Mary Warren is being accused of witchcraft he interjects with, “If [Mary Warren] is innocent!
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.
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 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.
