The Crucible - fear and suspicion Essay

Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, is set in Salem village where an atmosphere of enmity and mistrust has been created through the conflicts and disagreements many villagers experience throughout the play. Many of these are caused by or, similar to the conflict between Parris and Proctor, are inflated by the many accusations of witchcraft occurring in the village.

In the play "The Crucible" written by Arthur Miller, the author displays how easily people can make judgments based on their personal beliefs rather than rational and logical reasoning. Miller elucidates throughout the play that truth has no meaning when men believe only what they want to believe. A situation is created where there are factors capable of forcing characters into making assessments based on what they think is right while disregarding the truth. Three characters in Miller's play who abandon the truth because they choose to believe only what they want to believe are Reverend Parris, Reverend John Hale and Judge Danforth.

The highly religious people of Salem question their values and morals after the paranoia of witchery fills the town. For instance, Mary Warren, after Abigail and the girls pretend that her spirit attacks them, defends

In 1692 the life of the citizens of Salem was challenging, they had to go through life uncertain if they would live to see another day. The biggest problem the community experienced was when honest and innocent people were accused of witchcraft. If approached for witchery, the only way to live was to lie and accuse another innocent victim. However, lying only continued the cycle of accusations. If one was accused of witchcraft and did not confess, then they would be hanged for lying and deceiving the court of Salem. The events occurring in this town forced the citizens to lose themselves and turn on one another, causing a divide in the community. In The Crucible written by Arthur Miller, the Salem community at the beginning of the play was loosely held together, but as the story progressed, the strings of unity began to break until the connections fell apart.

Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, is a play that replicates the actual events of the Salem Witch Trials. The event is considered mass hysteria because there was a vast group of people who were behaving completely irrationally. The Crucible takes place in Salem, Massachusetts throughout 1962 and 1963. Salem was a theocratic town, meaning their laws were derived from religion. Children dancing in the woods with Tituba, the slave of the town Reverend, led to accusations of witchcraft because dancing was thought of as the devil's work. There were, of course, a few members of Salem who did not believe in witchcraft, but their opinions were ignored. The reason this became a hysteria is, all one had to in order to get someone arrested for witchcraft was state their name. These accusations then became a way to get revenge on someone who had done wrong to them. The large number of victims of the Salem Witch Trials, and the speed and senselessness of the spreading of accusations, makes this event a tragic part of our history.

The Crucible initiates it’s play by implanting hysteria of witchcraft to both the readers and the people of Salem. Already, with their minds filled with delusions of curses and witches, the Puritans goes hysteric. Accusations are thrown all about and loyalty and bonds are broken. This is the same during the Red Scare. Communism was on an outbreak and was huge, to the point where no one can trust each other in fear of associating themselves with a Communist. There is no logic and reasoning behind whatever they do, but it’s fear that drives the people to begin accusing one another. The fear builds up after each and every confession, conviction, and accusation. Within Act 1, the circle of characters were already afraid of witches, as seeing what

It is necessary to have trust, loyalty, forgiveness, and honesty when living in a healthy community. But when people within the community begin to show betrayal, revenge, deceit, and suspicion, then the balance of the community is disrupted. In the Puritan community, they focused on doing God’s work by taking care of their neighbors and made sure to not be distracted by matters unrelated to God. Their extremely religious and simplistic lives isolated them from any disruption in the community. However, motivations of others led to the accusations of those in the community, which resulted in chaos. This occurred in the event known as the Salem Witch Trials, where twenty were executed and hundreds of others were accused. Arthur Miller, in his play, The Crucible, demonstrates how the thirst for revenge fuels the devastation of a community through the characters of Thomas Putnam, Ann Putnam, and Abigail Williams.

In the year 1692, the quiet town of Salem, Massachusetts went into utter turmoil as accusations of witchcraft ran rampant throughout the town resulting in multiple deaths. Arthur Miller's, The Crucible, depicts the events that took place in Salem that year. A group of young girls dancing in the forest sparked the fears of many. The girls feared punishment, the ministers and priests feared the devil, and the people feared witches, so they all lied. Lying is a major theme in this play. Characters in The Crucible use lies out of fear with the hopes of gaining power over others.

By the time it was over, 19 people (and two dogs) had been convicted and hanged for witchcraft, one elderly man was pressed to death by stones, and 150 prisoners were awaiting trial. Five more people died in prison. “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” In the Crucible many characters have to decide whether they should confess to dealing with the devil and giving away their good name or be hanged for something they didn’t do. To avoid punishment, several young girls caught conjuring spirits in the woods blame a slave woman for corrupting them. These girls also accuse other women in Salem of practicing witchcraft. With no one knowing who is and isn't a witch, despite no

In the story ‘The Crucible’ the main theme of the story is fear and deception. Throughout this story we see a hefty amount of different personalities and characters being portrayed as villains both from the author's point of view and different characters throughout the play. These characters are shot with fear and will do anything to defend themselves even if it means pushing another character in the way of the figurative train of death. The Story has no real defined path that it is going because it is all driven by something we are all scared of, fear. So you need to look at how the fear is pushed onto the characters and how it affect the lives of them and their neighbors into a rat’s nest of problems and as what we like to ironically call modern day “Witch Hunting.” In the Crucible we see that many examples of the blame game based solely on the idea of fear and how it harms others. In Act two of the story we see that even before anything is even figured out or resolved people are already confessing to witchcraft and how they don’t want

People in Salem think Witchcraft is real. There proof for example is that they thought was people especially young girls dancing in the woods or in general. Pg. 9 “Uncle we did dance let you tell them I confessed it and I’ll be whipped if I must be. But they’re speaking of witchcraft”. People of Salem don’t have fun or think it is normal for kids to have fun. So when they saw the girls in the woods dancing they thought it was weird. Pg. 10 “this will ruin me if they find out”. Salem is the place where a lot of gullible people are. This my explanation of what happen during the time period of Salem Witch trials.

In the play The Crucible, playwright Arthur Miller tells a narrative about the Salem witch trials through the lives of several central characters. After a group of girls is found dancing in the woods by Reverend Parris, the rumor of witchcraft spreads like wildfire through a strictly Puritan society. Abigail, the girl to confirm the rumor, finds herself in a place of power, and begins accusing other townspeople of witchcraft, ultimately leading to the deaths of many innocent people. Driven by a desire to seek revenge and protect her reputation in town, Abigail manipulates the intolerant nature of society, and sets a cycle of mass hysteria with a fatal ending. In the rigid boundaries of Puritan society, reputation and respect quickly become

In 1692, countless innocent people were hanged, tortured, or stripped of their reputation because they were falsely accused of being a witch. They would have to falsely confess to save their lives, or else have their reputation be defaced. Arthur Miller shows the chaos of people constantly living in fear that their neighbor would become greedy, and falsely accuse them of being something that they were not. Miller does this through the book “The Crucible”. Motives of revenge, greed, and peer pressure contribute to the hysteria and hangings in the Salem Witch Trials.

During the time The Crucible was set, the community of Salem was awry. It did not have the solid characteristics of what a healthy town should look like. Instead there was no trust between people, everyone was watching out for only themselves, and most of the townspeople were turning their backs on the disastrous deeds of the court. The people of Salem feel like they have no one to turn to, so fear crept into their minds and hearts. They developed hysteria which caused the town to slowly disintegrate. This panic allows other people in their community to take advantage of them and manipulate them for their own purposes. In his play, The Crucible, Arthur Miller shows how vengeance and greed destroy the community through the characters of Abigail Williams, Mr. and Mrs. Putnam, and Reverend Parris.

Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is about the people of 17th century.Salem, Massachusetts situated in a dangerous and dynamic period. The Puritans of Salem joined the bandwagon of the witch hysteria that was first caused by girls falsely accusing others. The inhabitants of Salem feared for their lives as the people who were accused were subjected to death. However, the accused have a chance to save themselves by admitting to a crime they did not commit. Many took the opportunity for self-preservation because it is a human instinct of survival. However, there others who chose to uphold their ideals, name, and reputation. Self-preservation is the motivates the characters to behave and act when they are situated in a compromising situation about the involvement of witchcraft, but there are also times when it is abandoned.