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Hysteria And Fear In The Crucible By Arthur Miller

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Hysteria and fear can have a tremendous influence on how people behave toward each other. Chaos is often created in a society in which mass hysteria has spread. Irrational fear most often results in members of a society turning against each other. Throughout the 1950s, fear and hysteria spread like wildfire throughout the United States. After the Second World War came to an end, tensions began to rise between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. After temporarily being allies in World War II, the US, and USSR strongly disagreed on many topics. These two world powers differed because the US had a democratic government, while the USSR had a communist government. The USSR wanted to spread its communist government to other …show more content…

The play details the trials, paranoia, and death resulting from the Witch Trials. Miller details more about the stories of people in Salem, whose lives were destroyed by hysteria and panic of neighborhoods turning on each other. Fear was a powerful emotion in The Crucible. In the play, dozens of innocent lives were wrongfully hung. This represents how people reacted during McCarthyism and the consequences of people's actions. When fear becomes widespread amongst families and communities, it is no longer fear but mass hysteria, which in turn affects groups because of their irrational beliefs. As stated, “the Red Scare was prompted in part by fears of communism and the possibility that communists emboldened by the revolution in Russia were plotting to overthrow the U.S. government” (Brown). This is the same type of hysteria that caused the mayhem in Salem. Miller chooses to put many quotes in the play describing hysteria about the witch trials. During the court cases, people would shout things like, “I have seen too many frightful proofs in court—the Devil is alive in Salem, and we dare not quail to follow wherever the accusing finger points!” (Miller 617). This reveals that the hysteria affects Puritan society by pervading Salem's legal system. Additionally, showing the anxiety of individuals within a conservative society through Reverend Hale’s theological language shows the fear of the accusations being made amongst other people in the society. In the 1950s, the legal system was also affected, “It was a period of intense xenophobia, and the police started arresting people they thought were involved. During the arrests, there were strikes throughout the United States that led to some people fearing that there was a nationwide conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government” (Corfield). Miller contrasts this idea of

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