Cause And Effect Of The Crucible

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The Crucible dealt with the tendency for people to overreact to a situation they know little about and hysteria to spread throughout a community. The story tells about how the Salem Witch Trials began in 1692 when odd behavior among some of the village girls that could not otherwise be immediately explained was attributed to witchcraft, which evoked a widespread panic among the villagers learning of the strange happenings. An example of just how widespread this panic reached was when judges are sent from Boston, Massachusetts to conduct the trials, as well as the Deputy Governor of the province. With the news of what was happening in Salem spreading out so distant from the point of origin and becoming so prominent as to warrant the judges’ arrival, it was only a matter of time before the panic and resulting …show more content…

What had begun as a simple rumor soon proved to be the spark that ignited a wildfire across the region, with fuel being supplied by the villager’s lack of knowledge about the real causes of the so-called “witchcraft.” Through the Crucible, Arthur Miller commented on the human tendency to overreact to a disruption, such as that which occurred during the Red Scares witnessed in the Twentieth Century. Miller uses certain situations in the story or dialogue from characters as a reference to events that took place during these times of political fear when Communism was on the rise, but more overtly, the entire play itself can be seen as a sort of Red Scare reenactment. The

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