In the Crucible, grudges and personal problems play a key role in creating the witch trial hysteria. The very first event in the play was spurred on by a grudge. Abigail, wanting to be with John, slips out into the woods with her friends and drinks a charm to kill his wife. After being nearly caught, she accuses Tituba of doing witchcraft to save herself. Tituba then accuses two other women to save herself as well. At that moment Abby realizes “Hey, it’s really easy to get people in trouble over this.”, and with her friends she frames several other women. This starts the witch trials, which Abby and other townsfolk exploit to damage people they’ve got any hard feelings with. Particularly, Abby uses the witch trials to accuse John's Wife, Elizabeth,
In The Crucible, Abigail accuses more than half the town of witchcraft to cover up her affair with a married man, John Proctor. She lies and accuses people to prevent being charged with attempted murder against Elizabeth Proctor, John Proctor’s wife, because of jealousy. Abigail who is very similar to Joseph McCarthy, she starts to accuse people who share a glance towards her direction or even people that she dislikes or offended her in some way. The people of the town grow intimidated or fearful of her because she throws false accusations and evidence towards anyone who may have upset her. In the playwright, The Crucible, it is shown that there are accusations thrown at people, but has no supported evidence for why some people of the town
Leiffer 1 Jake Leiffer Mrs. Faulkner English 11 Honors October 3, 2014 Hysteria In Salem In Salem things are getting crazy. Hysteria is going around like a disease, but not from witchcraft. In The Crucible several accusations have taken place taking the lives of many due to hysteria. Hysteria is being spread through three different things.
In the play, The Crucible by Arthur Miller, several residents are unjustly accused of witchcraft. The accusers tended to have their own motivation behind accusing these people. For example, accusing people out of jealousy was a popular motive for the accusers. This can be seen through Ann Putnam’s accusation of Rebecca Nurse, who was accused of killing Ann Putnam’s seven infant children. Ann Putnam was jealous of Rebecca because while Ann had lost all of her children except one, Rebecca says she had “eleven children, and [is] twenty-six times a grandma” (Miller 15).
Throughout history there have been instances where individuals inflicat chaos to gain their desires. The dramatic play, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller was written in the 1950s but takes place in the last 1600s during the Salem witch trials. These trials are notorious for the public hysteria it caused and drew out. Due to individuals greed and deception many innocent were accussed and sentenced to death for witch craft. This only subsisted the hysteria and caused several unjust deaths.
The stage is set, the French and Indian War has recently ended and tensions between the colonists and the British are only just beginning. However, despite all these influential happenings the people of Salem are focused on something totally different. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible these colonists in Salem are focused on something never seen or thought of before, witchcraft. This word and thought throw this small town into a frenzy and even some of the surrounding towns are caught up in this. The suspected witchcraft tests the colonists spiritually, emotionally, and politically.
Small pieces of information pass thru people’s minds everyday. But, imagine if, a huge group of people flagrantly reacted to one of the tiny pieces of information almost identically. Mass hysteria is exactly that, a group of people reacting over something small in a huge way. Mass hysteria is mostly caused by media interaction and human nature. This is shown in The Crucible by Arthur Miller.
Hysteria is defined as an uncontrollable outburst of emotion or fear, often characterized by irrationality, laughter, weeping, usually among a group of people. The Crucible, a play by Arthur Miller is a prime example of hysteria, portrayed in the town of Salem through a series of witchcraft trials. The witchcraft trial caused disorder within the town of Salem and resulted in many unreasonable deaths. Throughout the course of the trial, many characters play a role in expanding chaos in Salem such as Abigail Williams and Reverend Parris. Specific characters that considerably aggravated this dilemma could have theoretically also ended the hysteria in Salem such as Reverend Hale, Abigail Williams, and Betty Parris.
Demonstrated throughout Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, is the effect mass hysteria had on Salem. The trials held in Salem Massachusetts, in 1692 led to the execution of many innocent beings because of the accusation of taking part in witchcraft. The perturbation of some of the characters in play led to the atrocity that the trials became. In The Crucible, fear became the root reason for the destruction of the misinformed society by being the element that contributes to the mass hysteria. This is depicted through some of the characters including Abigail Williams, Mary Warren and the girls that blindly followed Abigail.
“Long-held hatred of neighbors could now be openly expressed and vengeance taken, despite the Bible’s charitable injunctions” (Miller, pg 1129). This quote perfectly explains the Salem Witch Trials and what went through Abigail and the girls heads when they accused innocent people of bewitching them. The Crucible by Arthur Miller is about the small village of Salem and the mass hysteria that was caused by young girls. Innocent people were hung and thrown in jail because they accused these people of bewitching them. The judges, Abigail, Tituba, and the girls are to blame for the Salem Witch Trials because the girls lied and the judges only relied on what these girls said for their evidence but Hale, a minister, was obligated to believe the girls
“The edge of the wilderness was close by. The American continent stretched endlessly West, and it was full of mystery for them. It stood dark and threatening, over their shoulders night and day, for out in Indian tribes marauded from time to time, and Reverend Parris had parishioners who had lost relatives to these heathen” (Miller,5). In the beginning of the book, Reverend Paris one night found his niece and all her friends dancing (which is forbidden in this time period) in the woods, which is known to be the Devil’s playground.
In defense Abigail and the other girls go onto point fingers at the rest of the town and accuse people of witch craft, those people are then tried in trial, and then hanged. Reverend John Hale thought everything was going fine until the conviction of two specific individuals caused havoc in Salem. Rebecca and Francis nursehttps://cdncache-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png are two highly respected elder town officials who were convicted by Abigail Williams to witchcraft. This sends an uproar through town, John Proctor, Reverend Parris, etc. go on a revolt to stop all this witchcraft nonsense, but in their midst, they were too also convicted of
Abigail Williams, the girl that started this trial, used the fear of others to get revenge against John Proctor’s wife, Elizabeth. Abigail used to serve Proctor. They had an affair. Elizabeth found out and fired Abigail. Abigail wanted to get rid of Elizabeth.
Do you believe your beliefs are strong enough to die for or would you lie to save your life? This is the type of question people had to reflect upon when accused of witchery during the time of The Crucible. In 1692 several girls claimed they were afflicted by witchcraft in a Puritan community when found dancing in the woods. After accepting they’ve been bewitched they began accusing others of witchcraft and usually naming the people who they or their family did not like. If these people did not accept of being witches they would result to the death penalty of being hung.
During the time of the witch trials, many people were accused of being a witch or doing witchcraft and many of these accusations were fueled by past grudges. In The Crucible, Abigail has a grudge against Elizabeth, who is married to John Proctor, because she is jealous that Elizabeth is with him and Abigail loves John. Abigail is deeply in love with John that she resents Elizabeth for being his wife. Abigail despises Elizabeth that Betty confirmed saying, “You did, you did!
The Salem witch trials proved to be one of the most cruel and fear driven events to ever occur in history. Many innocent people were accused of witchcraft, and while some got out of the situation alive not everyone was as lucky. Arthur Miller the author of The Crucible conveys this horrific event in his book and demonstrates what fear can lead people to do. But the reason as to why Arthur Miller felt the need to write The Crucible in the first place was because the unfortunate reality that history seemed to have repeated itself again. In the article “Are You Now or Were You Ever”, Arthur Miller claims that the McCarthy era and the Salem witch trials were similar and he does this through his choice of diction, figurative language, and rhetorical questions.