Hypocrisy is the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform; pretense.
The Crucible was written in 1952 by Arthur Miller, the play delivers many messages and carries many themes throughout. Nearly every character in the play is put to the test to display an act of courage, weakness, or truth. Some characters lack these traits and never learn to have courage or display honesty. However, most characters are very courageous and demonstrate these acts throughout the whole play. Overall the theme of the The Crucible boils down to being about honesty, weakness, and courage.
Power is when the fate of events and/or individuals are in the control of one person or group. Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible reflects the many different sides of power, the power over self, the power over others, and the power over all. Miller’s play takes place in one of America’s most frightening times, the Salem Witch Trials, where a Puritan community went on a mad witch hunt through their town. Many innocent people were accused, and once accused, they could either deny and hang or confess to witchcraft and accuse others.
The Crucible by Arthur Miller has many lessons to learn from. One of The major lesson I thought that is important is honesty. The accusations throughout the story were built on lies from those trying to protect their own name, and putting the town into confusion. Nobody in Salem, Massachusetts felt like they could trust anymore, after all of the false allegations made. If Three characters in the story would have been honest from the beginning, the town would not have been in such confusion. If Abigail, John, and Elizabeth would have been honest to begin with then many innocent people would not have lost their lives and left the town in despair.
Everybody has lied in their life, whether is was big or small. Sometimes those lies can start as a small snowball, an innocent little lie. Then as people start asking questions, that cute little snowball can start rolling down the hill, then all of a sudden it starts going faster and faster. Eventually the snowball starts going so fast there is no catching up with it anymore, and when that now huge snowball comes to a stop everything will be divulged. Often in literature, characters face many challenges. In The Crucible by Arthur Miller characters lie, and those lies will either make or break them in the end.
“Knowledge is power, power to do evil or to do good.”- Veronica Roth In the play “The
Through the Salem witch trials, twenty-four innocent people lost their lives due to betrayal. They were hung because they were accused and found to be guilty of witchcraft. In reality, everyone that was accused and had died were innocent, but used as targets by others to save their own lives. In Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, out of fear, Abigail Williams, Mary Warren, Mercy Lewis, and Reverend Hale betrayed their morals to save themselves. As a result of betrayal, lives were taken, relationships were ruined, and trusts were broken.
Next, The Crucible by Arthur Miller, showcases the effects and outcomes of this type of remorseless evil at work. The book is about a girl, who in making wild accusations, allows people to get punished and die for her own mistakes. She has an affair with a married man, who is older than her, and as events progress she covers this affair up with lies, and manages to get her friend in on it, accusing people of witchcraft, a very serious crime at the time, instead of owning up to what she had done. “Shut it! Now shut it! . . . Now look you. All of you. We danced. And Tituba conjured Ruth Putnam's dead sisters. And that is all. And mark this. Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you
The crime and the cover-up, we see it all over T.V. shows and movies nowadays. Likewise, in The Crucible by Arthur Miller, people, out of fear, shame, or pride will perpetuate and defend their mistakes. In The Crucible, many of the young girls in their puritan society begin to accuse other members of the town of witchcraft. The town nearly loses its sanity as more and more people begin to lie and cover their tracks. This theme is illustrated through the surreptitiousness of the judges, Elizabeth Proctor, and Abigail Williams.
The spring of 1692, the Salem witch trials began after a group of young girls claimed to be possessed by the Devil and accused several local women of witchcraft. The tragic death of many people was caused by just a few young girls just as it was in the play. In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, the main character responsible for the tragedy in Salem was Abigail Williams. Abigail was the reason for the start of many of the things that happened, such as: being caught in the woods, leading to the idea of witchcraft; pretending to get stabbed by Elizabeth’s spirit, leading to respected people being accused; and threatening people with her authority, leading to the death of many people.
After being wronged, it is human nature to want to get even. No matter how many times someone tells someone else to do unto others as you would have them do unto you, it never sticks. Human nature is, was, and always will be to make sure that whoever made the pain receives the same. This was shown in Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible. The Crucible conveys a theme that when revenge determines justice, chaos ensues; this theme is supported through the accusations that Abigail Williams made against John and Elizabeth Proctor, and Mary Warren, as well as through the Putnams’ willingness to implicate their neighbors.
Arthur miller shows that betrayal destroys relationships and communities in most occasions in his play The Crucible. It seems that most people in this small town of Salem committed to betraying others. Others may say that the play was not based on or even about betrayal because there was a lot about faith and other topics. Whether they knew it or not, they all betrayed someone. Mary betrayed John when she called him the devils man. Abigail betrayed Mary when she started to yell at Mary telling her not to jump. Elizabeth didn't know it but she betrayed John by saying he wasn't a lecher.
The Salem witch trials were a time period when any individual could be accused of witchcraft for numerous reasons. In The Crucible, Arthur Miller focuses on the deviation of the trials and how the town’s most religious and honest members of the community are tried with witchcraft. John Proctor, the town’s most honest man, is accused of being a witch and must decide if he should confess or not. Proctor’s confession will stop the town from rebelling and uphold the reputations of Deputy Governor Danforth and Reverend Parris. Hale also wishes for Proctor’s confession so he does not have to feel responsible if Proctor were to be hanged for his witchcraft accusations. The confession of Proctor would convince others in the town to confess to their incriminations and not have to
The 1996 movie “The Crucible” offers some insight to what the Salem witch trials were all about in 1692. The movie begins with teenage girls dancing in the woods and performing what looks like some ceremony led by a slave named Tituba. It is revealed that the girls were participating in witchcraft in order to cast a love spell on the young men in town. The girls end up being caught in this act and are accused of witchcraft. This event sets off mass hysteria in Salem, Massachusetts. The girls being to lie. Saying other people in town bewitched them and that Satan willed them to do those things in the woods. These lies lead to more accusations that the townsfolk say out of selfishness and greed. Some want land and money, some want a forbidden
Terry Goodkind once said, “Once you place the crown of a liar on your head, you can take it off, but it leaves a stain for all time” This old adage rings true for many characters in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Many of them lied, cheated, omitted, and manipulated their way through the court and their own neighbors for the good of their own personal agenda; and the effects of those dishonest actions affected them for the rest of their lives. My whole life I have heard it said that little white lies do not matter. But they do, they matter a lot. They build on top of each other, snowballing into much bigger lies with much larger consequences. However, although the actions of all the characters varied, they followed similar patterns. In other words, the character’s motivations behind their actions generally fell under four separate categories: vengeance on others, self-preservation, protection of loved ones, or hunger for power.