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Comparing Hysteria In The Crucible And Terrorism

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The Hysteria in The Crucible and Terrorism Hysteria can bring people to do the unthinkable; for example, taking someone's life. The hysteria in societies throughout history has resulted in endless problems and many deaths of innocent people. Though during extremely different times, the hysteria in the play The Crucible and the hysteria that has resulted from acts of terror by the group al Qaeda can be closely related to one another. The time periods in which the events happened resulted in some differences between the two, but the result is the same, mass hysteria. Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and the al Qaeda terrorist attacks have many similarities and differences. The play The Crucible written by Arthur Miller is about the Salem witch trials of 1692 witch resulted in the death of nineteen innocent people. The plot begins in a small Puritan community in Salem, Massachusetts when Abigail Williams and several other young girls were caught in the woods dancing around a fire by her uncle Reverend Parris. His appearance shocked some of the girls into silence. The strange behavior of the girls resulted in many of the townspeople to turn to witchcraft as the cause of their behavior. Abigail and the others did not want to be punished for their actions in the woods so they turned the blame onto others. They first accused …show more content…

In both events, The Crucible and al Qaeda terrorist attacks, the hysteria was an outburst of fear. The people involved were afraid for their lives, for their well being, and for their sanity. The irrationality that characterized these instances as hysteria were the attacks to kill people based on their beliefs in the attacks of al Qaeda and the accusations of witchcraft resulting in hangings in The Crucible. Undoubtedly, these two topics could be characterized by one thing; that one thing is

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