Arthur Miller’s work, The Crucible, was written during the “Red Scare” time period, and many themes and ideas regarding both events are presented through a drama based on the Salem witch trials. In this drama, a lack of justice is shown when some jealous, vengeful characters in Salem are willing to use manipulation and deceit, and sacrifice the reputations and integrity of all involved, in order to empower themselves.
The Crucible written by Arthur Miller. The Crucible is a story based off of a lot of main characters and scenes. The story itself is based off the salem witch trials hence the story is in the town of salem. The three categories of this story was mass hysteria where people believe things and all join in. Group think is how people together make decisions based on ideas in the group.
Throughout The Crucible, a prolonging of mass hysteria arises, perpetuated by extreme emotion of complicated characters. The book, a historical drama, was based on the Salem Witch Trials of the 17th century. An allegory to the Red Scare and McCarthyism, all characters undergo manipulative, tragic situations involving false accusations, paranoia, threats, lies, and more around known conformity to disapproving witchcraft. The Crucible directly mirrors major sentiment of these specific historical time periods when a personal invasion of the townspeople increased the severity of reactions, heightening the madness of the overall public. Events grew in terms of intensity and one after another, created a chaotic atmosphere for the entirety of the town and with more than 200 people on trial, many
Mass hysteria can make people do terrible things. In arthur miller’s the crucible tells the story of mass hysteria in Salem Massachusetts in 1692 where people were being hunting and killing innocent people being accused of being something there not.www.history.com Miller uses this story to tell people that the Rewww.history.comd Scare during the 1950’s is the same mass hysteria as the salem witch trials. Miller was accused of being a communist just like people being accused of witchcraft during the salem witch trials.www.history.com The salem witch trials started in the spring in 1692. The Salem witch trials was started by a 9 year old name betty parris and a 11 year old named Abigail williams.www.history.com A doctor by the name of William
Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible during a time of mass hysteria in the 1950's. During the 50's, a great fear of communism was very real within the United States. He connects this time with another period of mass hysteria, the Salem witch trials, by using ideas such as: fear is always based around a grain of truth, groups begin to form in search of the accused, and the best option for survival is to confess and accuse someone else. During the witch trials, it was a near fact in society that witches walked among us.
First, in The Crucible it displays hysteria in many different ways, and was a major factor in the numerous accusations of witchcraft. Hysteria’s role in The Crucible was tearing the community apart, and causing neighbors to turn on each other and stab each other in the back. In the beginning not every character falls into mass hysteria , but it ended up spreading throughout the whole community. It first started when Betty was in a coma.
I think that the crucible begins some supernatural manifestation, but that is pure mass hysteria. At first They were summoning spirits, but later on, it was just an act. In the first scene, it says that Parris finds Betty, Tituba, Abigail, and other girls dancing in the forest. They all try to summon the devil and try to play it off. Abigail wanted Tituba to ask the devil because she wants Elizabeth, john proctors wife dead, but she doesn’t tell Parris.
In The Crucible -a play based on the catastrophic Salem Witch Trials in 1962- Arthur Miller, a famous playwright, uses a sarcastic tone to vilify hysteria to mock McCarthyism. When Miller went to Massachusetts, he believed that “there was something of the… whole village… whose imagination was captured by a vision of something that wasn’t there.” (Miller 1) People during the Red Scare started to see things that was not there because of hysteria and started accusing others that they were communists. The same things happened during the witch trials: “Why do you come here bird? Oh, Mary, this is a black art to change your shape.”
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.
The definition of “crucible” - in context to the theme of the play - reads, “a situation of severe trial, or in which different elements interact, leading to the creation of something new.” In The Crucible, many people are tested in scenarios they would never have imagined would happen to them. Many different groups and families are drawn together, whether it’s to fight for one another, or against. As well as coming together, or being torn apart in a time of hysteria, every character’s morals are put to a severe test when truths and lies seep to the surface of their daily lives. There are many different variations of ways the great Crucible is able to live up to it’s proud and famous title.
Mass hysteria can be caused by false accusations made without good intent. The drama The Crucible by Arthur Miller is about the Salem Witch Trials in 1692 and the hysteria that spread as false accusations were made for personal benefit. Another event in American history that compares to the Salem Witch Trials is the Scottsboro Boys Trial, false accusations caused unfair treatment of the boys involved due to discrimination and fear, this builds a connection between the Scottsboro Boys Trial and The Salem witch hunts. The events both included false allegations, hysteria, and people contributing to fear.
Fear leads to mass hysteria because people freak out way too much than normal. In The Crucible, everyone started getting way too scared because of a lie that was told. Fear is the leading cause of mass hysteria due to the overreactions of terrified people. In “The Crucible,” the extremely religious lifestyle of the people in Salem led to panic about witchcraft in the village. I believe Abigail could have ended the hysteria.
As to yet another explanation for the hysteria, Cawthorne points out one of the theories claiming that in Europe and America there spread a kind of fungus whose activity was similar to some hallucinogenic substances. People who ate it, passed into a state of hallucinations, unconsciously giving themselves up to behaviour that awoke suspiciousness among the other villagers (1). Maple states that in 1946 a doctor, Letitia Fairfield, analysed the data from the old witch trials and diagnosed the complaints from which people accused of witchery suffered. The identified diseases, such as cerebral haemorrhage, malaria, rheumatic fever, gangrene, a disease of rye, etc., and the demeanour they brought on, could not be comprehended by primitive medicine and thus was put down to witchcraft (190-191).
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.
The Crucible is a play written by Arthur Miller, set during the Salem witch trials that occurred from 1692-1693. In the play, the community is consumed by hysteria, chaos, and accusations due to the rumors of witchcraft being spread. Throughout the play, the reader explores how the people and the society are destroyed with the protagonist, John Proctor, linked to the chaos trying to juggle his guilt, love, and integrity. As the hysteria spreads and innocent people’s lives are at risk, Miller uses evidence in multiple ways to successfully establish the play's themes. One of his themes proves how the spread of false rumors and selfishness causes society to slowly diminish due to the hysteria lurking.
