Insanity In The Crucible

The never-ending sway of human nature
Bloody cheers fill the street, glazing the air with a fervor rarely seen: the witch hunt has begun. In Arthur Miller’s gripping tale titled The Crucible, he retells the story of the Salem witch trials - all while twisting truths to make the events fit into what was occurring in the present. But what he had written as a showcase of the madness ensuing at the time of writing, the themes present within still hold a flame within events happening today. In short, the Crucible details the events of the trials held for the 'witches' – beginning with the girls who got caught dancing in the woods. None wanted to get in trouble and thus they blamed it instead on the supernatural. However, such an idea soon led to

At the beginning of the novel, one of the girls who got caught dancing in the woods faked being in a constant slumber, during which many people came to visit her and see what was truly going on. Thomas Putnam says to the girl’s father, “Wait for no one to charge you - declare it yourself. You have dis-covered witchcraft,” (16). In short, he was telling her father to tell the townsfolk that his daughter was bewitched now, instead of waiting for the accusations to fly out the mouth of another first. That also marked the beginning of hysteria, as this is when in the book an idea begins to form in the townsfolk's minds that maybe there were witches in the town rather than just a girl faking to get out of trouble. The mere idea of simply jumping to conclusions as the townspeople did is reflected in the modern-day. The most prominent example of this is news articles. A shocking amount of people will read the headlines of the day and simply believe it is all entirely true and unexaggerated without even pausing to think further about the potential content of it. This practice quickly leads to hysteria when there should be none simply because it is easier to skim and jump to the worst conclusions rather than think critically about the matter being consumed. Overall the parallels between The Crucible and modern-day society, especially in unwarranted paranoia, prove shocking in the