Causes Of Fear In The Crucible

Terror is normally caused by a threat of danger and can cause people to do things they may later regret. To start, Arthur Miller wrote the allegory tragedy, “The Crucible”, with the storyline of the Salem Witch Trials with the underlying story of the Red Scare. Each one brought horror into citizens’ lives, which influenced their actions. In the play, the town of Salem broke out in a hysteria of witchcraft. This caused people to accuse one another in spite of internal or external problems. The actions of Abigail Williams, Mary Warren, and Reverend Parris were all influenced by fear.

Abigail feared that she was going to lose John Proctor to his wife, therefore she tired what she could to get her out of the picture. In the beginning, Abigail

In the beginning of the book, he feared that his reputation will be ruined if the town found out that Betty was under a curse of witchcraft: “I have fought here three long years to bend these stiff necked people to me, and now, just now when some good respect is rising for me in the parish, you compromise my very character” (Miller 464). This shows that Parris realized that if the town found out that if his household contains any forms of witchcraft, then the people will run him out of the town. Because of that, he denied that Betty was cursed and called for Reverend Hale to find out what was happening. In addition, near the end of the book, he feared that someone would kill him if he doesn’t put an end to the witch trials: “Tonight, when I open my door to leave my house- a dagger clattered to the ground. You cannot hang this sort. There is danger for me” (Miller 531). This shows that if more people were hanged for not confessing to witchcraft, then someone might kill Parris. He tries to persuade Danforth to postpone everything in fear of him dying. In conclusion, the thought of ruining his reputation and his life brought fear into Reverend Parris’s life and did what he could to stop