Examples Of Hysteria In The Crucible

“Let you look for the goodness in me, and judge me not.” John Proctor and his wife Elizabeth Proctor both endure a crucible or severe moral test. Elizabeth is put to the test various times during the play including when she was asked if her husband is a adulterer. John Proctor makes the descion to admit he had relations with Abigail williams.

In Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, hysteria is being spread throughout the puritan community of Salem. Abigail is the main reason for all of this, with her lies and her persuading her friends to follow along with the lies and blaming others. The historical setting, characters, and events have shown us hysteria throughout the play and how the people of Salem handle the feeling of being in constant fear. As we read the play it is easy to see that hysteria causes people to jump to conclusions.

I have rung the doom of my good name—you will believe me, Mr. Danforth! My wife is innocent, except she knew a whore when she saw one!” ( Miller 102-103 ). The reader can see by the italicized narration and words that publicly admitting that he sinned and betrayed his wife, was very painful for Proctor. In order to try and prove Elizabeth’s innocence, he has to first sacrifice his good name and his reputation in the village.

The Crucible, Arthur Miller takes the reader into the society and community of Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. Introducing him or her to a densely populated cast of characters who represent all different sorts of personalities. Miller exposed just how easily and how quickly paranoia can spread throughout a society, and to what lengths people will go to protect the values and the institutions that they consider to be sacred. A tragic hero dies a good man when brought to trial over nothing more than child’s play and dishonesty. Miller dramatized his characters nicely, pitting extreme types against one another to show just how infectious and ridiculous paranoia can become

When Proctor shows up to the court he is pleading on the behalf of his wife claiming that she is innocent and the children are pretending to being bewitched. Eventually he becomes desperate using his own affair as means to use against Abigail claiming she is a liar. Proctor is showing characteristics of a tragic hero in this scene because he is willing to do anything to save his wife even to risk his own reputation from the town. Judge Danforth therefore questions Elizabeth if John is an adulterer and she refuses this claim. Ironically this shows John’s goodness, willingly to acknowledge his own sins in order to save his wife.

In a 1999 lecture, Arthur Miller described the height of McCarthyism as “being trapped inside a perverse work of art, one of those Escher constructs in which it is impossible to know whether a stairway is going up or down” (Clapp 366).” Miller spoke of his play, The Crucible, in that lecture, and the confusion he felt at the hysteria of the time. The history and the play parallel each other so much that it makes them inseparable in analysis. The Crucible, in respect to the McCarthy era, becomes a fun house mirror that distorts yet reveals a truer nature of the source. This kind of reflection appears in the corresponding attitudes, beliefs, and conditions that allow for and breed the hysteria living in late 17th Century Salem, and 1950's America.

Hysteria in Salem The Crucible is a play written by American author, Arthur Miller, in 1953. It is a somewhat fictional play about the Salem Witch Trials. Miller wrote it as an allegory to the Red Scare, the promotion of fear of a potential rise of communism. Miller himself was blacklisted for refusing to testify in front of the HUAC, a committee that was created to investigate any person who might be a communist.

In conclusion, the severe tests, or “crucibles”, in this play are what change or form an individuals character. This change can vary from good to bad or bad to good. John Proctor went from a lustful person not wanting to be involved to a loving person who has now confessed and is sort of involved. Mary Warren came from being a shy servant who claims to with God to a liar who broke under her own

During the late 1600’s, numerous accusations of witchcraft were spreading throughout the New England colonies, primarily focusing in Salem Village, Massachusetts. Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible”, paints a very descriptive image of the several different facets of guile and deception that were instituted in “The Crucible.” In contrast, Miller focuses on one utmost theme, hysteria. Clinical mass hysteria describes the spread of a psychologically-manifested illness.

The Crucible and The McCarthy Hearings, as an Allegory The Crucible was a widely-known play that was written in 1953 by the playwright Arthur Miller. It takes place in Salem, Massachusetts of 1692, when the very famous “Salem Witch Trials” were occurring. This play can very well be considered an allegory, as it has both a literal level and a metaphorical level as it compared to the “modern witch hunt” that occurred during the Red Scare, when people were afraid of communism entering the United States. On one hand, the play is simply a partially-fictionalized tale of a city overcome with suspicion and fear, but on the other hand, it has a deeper meaning that relates back to the current events of the author’s time

Joseph Romano English CP II H Block Ms. Homem 5/16/23 Salem Witchcraft Hysteria In Salem during the years 1692-1693 a mass hysteria movement called witchcraft began to become popular, witchcraft affected more than 200 individuals and got 20 executed through various methods. It now has been 331 years after those times and historical depictions have been made, for example, Arthur Miller's play The Crucible. In The Crucible the villagers had lost their way of life, the focus to them was the church as it controlled their whole life. Witchcraft had plagued the church and seemingly could not be stopped, who has the ability to end this hysteria?

Hysteria occurs in our everyday lives no matter how small or large, true or untrue, the event may be. The inspiration for The Crucible came from another example of mass hysteria, and from that aspects the play can be compared to more recent events in American history. Much like the events that occurred during The Crucible, the aftermath of the Boston bombing also led to outstanding false accusations, and irreparable damage. To begin, mass hysteria is described as a psychological phenomenon in which individuals in a group setting collectively “freak out” in result of a stressful event (Nicholas).

Mass Hysteria Humans have a tendency to want to fit in and belong, causing numerous problems in society. Throughout history, there have been various cases of mass hysteria within groups of individuals. For example, randomly meowing nuns in France and an entire town believing that at night a monkey man watched them. Several specialists believe the behavior has come about due to mass hysteria. Mass hysteria is delusional thoughts, rumors, and fears that spread quickly through a group of people.

Fear that spread among a group of people in Salem during the Salem Witch Trials, that event in history is a prime example of Mass Hysteria. In Salem the reason why so many women were killed was because of Mass Hysteria. It caused many people, in Salem during this event to think fast, rash and jump to conclusions. “The Crucible”, a short play dedicated to these events in Salem shows us how hysteria was such a leading cause of why the Witch Trials had even occurred. Reverend Hale, Abigail Williams and Judge Danforth.

In the beginning Proctor had a chance to stop the accusations of witchcraft, but decides against it in order to preserve his image. He does not want to testify against Abigail because doing this would cause his secret affair with her to become a public topic, therefore tarnishing his reputation. However, Proctor sacrifices his reputation by admitting to his affair in Act III by saying, “God help me, I lusted, and there is a promise in such sweat.” Although Proctor broke the rules of theocratic Salem, he proved his integrity by being honest which in some ways only adds respect to his reputation. At the end of the play, Proctor is given a choice to either lie, and damage the reputations of others in order to protect his own, or to tell the truth, and be killed.