Brooke Portice 10th Grade English Miss Mortinsen 30 May 2023 Unit 4 Performance Task Though separated by centuries, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and Carol Plum-Ucci's The Body of Christopher Creed share a common theme: the destructive power of fear, ignorance, and suspicion. Both show how these emotions can lead to cruelty and destruction in society, as the community turns on each other and innocent people's lives are ruined. Fear is a reaction to danger accompanied by feelings of dread or a sense of being threatened. Suspicion is a feeling or thought that something is possible, likely, or true. Ignorance is lacking knowledge, information, or awareness about a particular thing. Fear, ignorance, and suspicion are all things that can lead to destruction of society. In the play The Crucible, fear plays a huge part in …show more content…
In The Crucible, suspicion is the main reason the trials continue. Proctor not being able to recite the commandments and does not attend church regularly is suspicious so he is accused of doing the devil's work leading to eventually his hanging. In act one, Giles Corey tells Reverend Hale that his wife hides and reads strange books he considers suspicious. This leads to Reverend Hale investigating this further. In The Body of Christopher Creed, suspicion corrupts the whole town of Steepleton. Torey Adams says, “Richardson had sent Creed to the hospital, and the only other person in the world to do that was me. Nobody was wondering if I had killed Creed” (Plum-Ucci 37). This shows how suspicion wasn't on Torey because he was normal. Normal in the town of Steepleton got you in a place to point suspicion. Richardson wasn't normal because of that suspicion was put on him. This happened a lot in Steepleton and Salem and ultimately destroyed the society. Overall, this shows how suspicion can lead to the destruction of