Hysteria is an exaggerated or uncontrollable emotion, especially among large groups of people, that has the ability to override human logic. Hysteria does not only posses the ability to tear apart relationships and societies, but it also possesses the power to break down a theocratic society, such as Salem. Puritan beliefs and ideas of theocracy surrounded Salem during the time of the trials, making their society much more susceptible to mass hysteria. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, hysteria within Salem during the Witch Trials, was fueled by fear, greed, and religious beliefs that all led to the town and it’s theocratic society to break down.
Religion played an extremely important role through the live’s of the people within Salem and was
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They had never been through a situation that questioned their faith in God, which left them in constant fear of what laid ahead. Since they had never been in such a dilemma, their logical reasoning was greatly impaired, which led people to be fearful of others. Neighbors turned on neighbors, friends turned on friends, and adulterers were turned on by their one night stands. John Proctor suffers from constant fear all the way from Act I to Act IV, more specifically when it comes to Abigail and the possibility of “casting away his good name” (110). John and his wife, Elizabeth Proctor, live in fear of Abigail ruining their marriage, “she thinks to dance with me on my wife's grave... it is a whore's vengeance, and you must see it now” (110). Everyone knew that if you were accused of witchcraft and were brought forth Judge Danforth, you were already dead. Fear leads to people making irrational decisions to protect themselves from what it is that they fear, directly fueling the fire of mass …show more content…
Thomas Putnam is caught using his daughter to gain land from the innocent people that he encourages his daughter to accuse. Giles Corey, a very honest man of Salem catches him in the act and testifies against him in court, “This man is killing his neighbours for his land...I have it from an honest man who heard Putnam say it! The day his daughter cried out on Jacobs, he said she'd given him a fair gift of land” (96). Thomas Putnam is aware that those accused and hanged due to accusations of witchcraft have their land sold off, leaving his personal greed to involve his daughter in his unjust scheming. Abigail’s love and obsession over John Proctor leads her to accuse Elizabeth Proctor of witchcraft, in hopes to finally have John all to herself. Abigail is convinced that John loves her, "you loved me, John Proctor, and whatever sin it is, you love me yet!" (24), but envies Elizabeth for being married to John. Abigail’s greed over John Proctor causes her to victimize herself, accusing Elizabeth of trying to ruin her name in the town “she is blackening my name in the village! She is telling lies about me! She is a cold, sniveling woman, and you bend to her!” (23). After Elizabeth hears from Mary Warren that she is accused in the court, she automatically knows that it was Abigail who accused her and fears that “she [Abigail] wants me dead...you know it!” (60).
In Salem’s isolated colonial community, religion was the most important factor of life. Everyone in Salem would travel to the church
When the play sets in action, John has had a past affair with his servant, Abigail Williams. His wife, Elizabeth Proctor, is very forgiving of his sin, but John has his mind set that he will not confess to anyone else, in fear of ruining his good name and reputation. The affair between John and Abigail causes the start of chaotic witchery and accusation. After the affair, Abigail becomes horribly jealous of Elizabeth Proctor. Proctor realizes there is only one way to stop all the witch hysteria in Salem, and that would be to admit to adultery which is considered a sin. . Also in the beginning R...
Many of the characters in Arthur Miller's The Crucible have specific human flaws that cause the tragedy of the Salem Witch Trials. The Salem villagers exhibit failings, including greed, vengeance, and fear, which eventually lead to the downfall of their town. Many villagers, especially Abigail Williams, take advantage of the opportunity to seek vengeance on others through the trials. Greed for power and land often holds precedence when the hysteria takes over. Fear of being arrested or put to death is the key motivation in turning others in as witches. From these three human flaws, the town of Salem falls into chaos with many innocent people paying the price.
For example, Ann Putnam wants healthy children and envies Rebecca Nurse for all the healthy children she bore. She accuses Nurse of killing most of her offspring using witchcraft. In fact, the official warrant for Rebecca Nurse’s arrest is issued “[f]or the marvelous and supernatural murder of Goody Putnam 's babies”(67). Ann Putnam does not care if one of Salem’s most devout families is torn apart so long as its members suffer for their happiness. In addition, Thomas Putnam’s desire for more land causes him to make his daughter accuse an innocent man of witchcraft since “[t]he day [she] cried out on Jacobs, [Putnam] said she’d given him a fair gift of land”(89). His greed for land surpasses his care for the other residents of the town. Both Ann and Thomas Putnam are willing to destroy other families for their own benefit, and they succeed because the townspeople’s fear of witchcraft clouds their common sense that the accusers may have ulterior
Hysteria is a mental disorder marked by excitability, anxiety, or imaginary disorders. It can play an important role in people’s lives. Hysteria supplants logic and enables people to believe that their neighbors, whom they have always considered highly respectable, do things they would never expect them of doing. In “The Crucible”, hysteria causes people to believe their friends are committing deplorable acts. The townsfolk accept and become active in the hysterical climate not only out of genuine religious piety but also because it gives them a chance to express repressed sentiments and to seek reparations from grudges. Hysteria suspends the rules of daily life and allows the acting out of every dark desire and hateful urge under the charade of righteousness. In “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller, the hysteria due to the paranoia of witchcraft causes Abigail to lie in order to save herself, Danforth to ruin the community, and Proctor to be convicted of witchery.
Salem in the 1600s was a textbook example of an extremist society with sexist norms and no separation of church and state. Because it had no laws, only people considered authorities on law, it was always a society based on norms laid down by the first settlers and severity on the verge of madness. The power was imbalanced, focused subjectively in the people who had means to control others. Some people attempted to right the wrongs of the powerful, as people are wont to do eventually. Because of them, change indeed came to Salem, slowly and after excessive ruin and death. Before the rebels’ impact took hold, Salem’s Puritan society was a religious dystopian disaster, a fact illustrated excellently by Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible. This religious dystopian disaster carried many flaws and conflicts that can be seen in other societies, both historical and modern.
In Arthur Miller's famous play The Crucible, innocent people are falsely accused of witchcraft and are killed as a result. Even the thought of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts in the late 1600s would put the whole village into mass hysteria. Mass hysteria refers to collective delusions of threats to society that spread rapidly through rumors and fear. This is the main reason why so many people were arrested and killed for witchcraft. One way people could save themselves was by falsely confessing to having performed witchcraft.
It was easier for them to blame the devil for the problems of society than fix the problems of their own strict way of life. So the girls involved with Abigail, like Mercy Lewis and Mary Warren, named many people in the town as witches. These people were put in jail and would be hanged if they did not confess to the crime of devil worship or witchcraft. Another part of the developing plot is that John Proctor knows Abigail and her friends are lying, but he is afraid to say anything because eight months before he had an affair with Abigail and did not want to be seen by the town as a lecher, which means wife cheater. So, Mr. Proctor has to fight with himself to come out and tell the truth, or his wife might die because of Abigail saying she was a witch.
Hysteria is an uncontrolled fear complemented with excessive emotion that leads to poor decisions and actions done with complete lack of forethought. The hysteria that existed in the town of Salem was largely caused by the people’s extreme devotion to religion, as well as their refusal to delve into other possibilities to explain the predicament of the time. These circumstances still exist today, and it is quite possible, as well as frightening, that a similar event could recur today. One would like to think that one would never lose control of their opinions and thought, but hysteria is a powerful force and can bring even the most intellectual of people to lose sense of what is occurring. More modern examples of hysteria such as the McCarthy trials and the ostracizing of people infected with AIDS show that learning to properly evaluate a situation for it’s reasonability and integrity prove to still be a valuable lesson for today.
Thomas Putnam takes advantage of the hysteria driven persecutions to gain more land for himself, but at the expense of others. Thomas Putnam is “ a man with many grievances” (Miller 14) and, because of this, he has a very bitter personality and cares little about others. This bitter and vindictive personality of his causes him to value himself far above others. This explains why Putnam feels little remorse for using the witch trials as a tool to for personal gain even though the in order to do so he must hurt his neighbor. In the beginning of the play while arguing with John Proctor over land, Putnam threatens, “You load ...
John Proctor faces many decisions in response to his moral dilemma to try to save his life. One of the difficult decisions John makes is to reveal that he had an affair with Abigail Williams and thereby has committed adultery. If the local court convicts him of this crime, he faces being jailed. Also by admitting this crime, John reveals a weakness in his character. This flaw in his personality will make it harder for him to stand up in the community as an honorable and believable person. In trying to convince others that witchcraft does not exist John’s dishonesty with his wife will make him less convincing to the community.
The word "crucible" is contextually defined as a metal container in which metals or other substances are subjected to high temperatures. In the play one notices that each character is metaphorically a metal subjected to the heat of the surrounding situation and the characters that could morally stand out in the face of this conflict, symbolically refuse to melt. (Kumar -Dey). Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible is susceptible to a Freudian interpretation. The play contends the psychological consequences of mass hysteria and paranoia. Based on the fallacy of witchcraft and necromancy, the Author acknowledges the instinctual drives of the characters and the town as a whole. The character of Abigail Williams, is the main culpable for the spread of delusions and phobia of the witches and conjuring.
John Proctor was one of the focal points of this witchcraft controversy. He indirectly started it all with his affair with Abigail. John Proctor and his wife Elizabeth do eventually patch up that part of their relationship, and Elizabeth soon gets to convincing John to tell the town Abigail is lying. He’s slow to bring himself to testify against her because it would inevitably lead to the court knowing of his own adultery. But if he had actually done it, the entire witchcraft situation would
Salem's hysteria made the community lose faith in the spiritual beliefs that they were trying to strictly enforce. The church lost many of its parishioners because the interest of the town was now on Abigail because people wanted to know who was going to be named next. When the church was trying to excommunicate John Proctor, there were not enough people at church to do it. The people were getting misled so far as to leave a dagger stuck in the door of their minister's house: “tonight, when I open my door to leave my house a dagger clattered to the ground...There is danger for me” (128), were Parris' exact words. With the conveyer of God fearing for his life there was no longer anyone but Abigail to lead the community.
In Salem, it is a very hysterical society, and one of the more obvious cases is Abigail, she uses this situation in order to accuse Elizabeth Proctor of witchcraft and send her to jail. This is all in order to get John Proctor all to herself. There are many others that survive on hysteria to get by as well: Reverend Parris strengthens his position in the village and church by making people like Proctor, who question his authority, look stupid or look like they are on a lower level then him. One of the towns wealthiest townsperson, Thomas Putnam, get revenge against Francis Nurse by getting Rebecca, Nurse’s wife, convicted of killing Mrs. Putnam’s babies. Hysteria can only thrive because people in the town are benefiting from it.