The Crucible is a play by the American playwright Arthur Miller, it is a dramatized story of the Salem witch trials that took place in 1692. It uses the environmental, individual and societal conflict to represent complex ideas of religious fever fueling hysteria, but stemmed by integrity and individual greed. In The Crucible, neighbours suddenly turn on each other and accuse people they've known for years of practicing witchcraft and devil-worship. The town of Salem falls into mass hysteria, a condition in which community-wide fear overwhelms logic and individual thought leading to the conflict of the individual against the community. Fear feeds fear: in order to explain to itself why so many people are afraid, the community begins to believe …show more content…
It is this internal conflict, with the instrumental societal influence where Miller represents his complex idea of the battle against reputation, the way others perceive you, and integrity, the way you perceive yourself. Proctors internal conflict emanates when he is given the choice to lie and say he is a witch and save his life, or die being truthful. He grapples with the decision before initially asking for his life; from the onset he knows that this was wrong, but there is a part of him that gives up the battle to be a "good" Puritan, as he considers himself a fraud, and he looks like a martyr, even though he knows he is not. In the end Proctor resolves his confliction when he is pressed by Danforth to give up his reputation, Proctor responds, stating, "How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name." He ends up refusing to receive absolution from a society he no longer has a reputation in, but instead he keeps his personal pride and integrity. He placed his moral integrity above the value of his own life, and found his own "goodness", which Elizabeth refused to take from him. The Crucible conveyed this complex concept that those who favoured integrity by admitting mistakes and refusing to lie just to save their own lives helped defy hysteria that plagued the town. Those that were willing to die for what they believe in, were able to put a stop to the baseless fear that feed hysteria in a society that was based on greed. It is the internal conflict in proctors mind, that allowed Miller to convey this complex