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Hysteria In The Crucible By Arthur Miller

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Whatever hysteria exists is inflamed by mystery, suspicion and secrecy. Hard and exact facts will cool it. - Elia Kazan. The idea of hysteria has overwhelmed several populations over the course of time. In The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, Miller bases the play on the Salem Witch Trials. In particular the play focuses on the accusation of several people as associating with witchcraft rather than suffer severe and inevitable punishment for their actions. These inconsistencies and the extreme behavior that results due to the upbringing of excess fear is a parallel of the time period in which McCarthyism is based upon. In the 1950’s, McCarthyism produced an excess of paranoia that could relate to the plot of The Crucible because Americans often turned in their peers in hopes to …show more content…

Over time, hysteria has always been a result of irrational fear of the unknown. People have fallen into varying degrees of hysteria when faced with new and unknown experiences. Hysteria is often caused due to a sudden exposure to something new that could potentially be life changing. This can be seen in The Crucible when word of witchcraft diffused among the local population. The community of Salem was filled with questionable commotion that lead to the overwhelming hysteria. Specifically, Mary Warren, a young girl, went on to exclaim “What’ll we do? The village is out! I just come from the farm; the whole country’s talkin’ witchcraft! They’ll be callin’ us witches Abby!” (Page 18). Mary Warren’s public display of extreme fear of the near future went on to cause a large portion of the population to arrive at a complete outbreak of hysteria. Often times, rumors or threats put an irrational fear into society. In this case, the threat of possible witchcraft caused the mass population to cry out in a confused state of hysteria. Since the idea of witchcraft is a foreign and likewise unwelcome idea in a specifically Puritan based society, the social norm was

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