Revenge The Crucible by Arthur Miller is a historic piece of writing that expresses the true effect that revenge can cause.Yet despite the time difference we see the same acts of revenge taken place in the crucible happening in the present day. There is no aging out of vengeances. Although vengeance can be seen as a way to gain power, it is actually a dangerous force due to its ability to take over one’s life, drives a person go to deadly extremes, and in some cases can tear apart a community.
Although in some cases vengeance is thought to be calculated action, it is a truly dangerous force because the need for revenge can over take one’s life. Revenge acts like addiction, the need to be have the last word becomes an uncontrollable compulsion.
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Gaining validity would make accusing people of higher stand like Elizabeth easier since the girls would have the people’s trust. When she does accuse Elizabeth, John attempts to save his wife John admits to having an affair with Abigail and her true reasons behind her accusations he states to the court “She thinks to dance with me on my wife 's grave! And well she might, for I thought of her softly. God help me, I lusted, and there is a promise in such sweat. But it is a whore 's vengeance, and you must see it.” (Miller 110). A whore’s vengeance is exactly what it is but people were to blind to see it. Acts of vengeance still apply in today’s world as people bring hatred upon each other because of their religions as a way to revenge actions that are associated with said religions. This happened to Sireen Hashem, a New Jersey teacher, who was fired after show a video about Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai in her history class. Hashem who is a Muslim American of Palestinian heritage received hate online from parents and even students. In an article published by The Daily Beast it talks about false accusations made against Hashem, one stating “Hashem’s brother was a terrorist, the student allegedly claimed in the Facebook post” (Weill). Terrorism is commonly associated with people of Muslim faith, yet when a teacher show a clip of a Muslim Nobel Peace Prize winner for educational …show more content…
During the trials people were getting revenge on people that they feel have wronged them, so townspeople became scared of angering others in fear of being accused. There was immense power given to the girls which Elizabeth describes when stating, “Abigail brings the other girls into the court, and where she walks the crowd will part like the sea for Israel” (Miller 1269). The girls became in ways like an old fashioned mob, they were respected yet feared. People around them knew of their power, people also knew not to cross them in fear of the outcome which in turn created a place of fear and angst. A similar case in a Virginia school district people took revenge on a teacher for including Islamic statement in her teaching. After student brought the work home word began to travel which resulted in numerous emails, calls and comments on the school’s website. Although no threats were specifically directed towards teachers, students, or the school itself school district officials issued a statement stating “We regret having to take this action, but we are doing so based on the recommendations of law enforcement and the Augusta County School Board out of an abundance of caution,” (Balingit Brown). After being advised by law enforcement the district decided to close the school. Parents felt that the teaching was encouraging
When one is done wrong in a particularly hurtful or offending way, getting revenge is sometimes thought of as the most satisfying way of regaining ones sense of self worth. This plan, however, holds an immense possibility of backfiring in ways never dreamed of. In fact, the outcome of the situation at hand is sometimes made worse than it might have been if this course of action is taken. Arthur Miller demonstrates this in his tragic play The Crucible, by showing the reader that although giving in to feelings of vengeance is easy to do, choosing the path of forgiveness often leads to better results in the long run.
Each character has a certain failing that they represent in The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, more than anyone else. For Thomas Putnam his failing is how he would do anything to get vengeance on Francis Nurse. John Proctor failing is dishonesty to protect which undoubtedly cause his own down fall. Reverend Parris whose materialistic ways for money will end up with him having nothing. Putnam’s vengeance, Proctor’s dishonesty to protect, and Parris’ materialism all show a failing that will have consequences for someone in Salem.
Every event in history can be attributed to a collective of emotions. In 1692, in Salem, Massachusetts, a group of girls claimed to have seen other villagers working for the devil and began accusing people of practicing witchcraft. This soon created a sense of mass hysteria throughout the town that resulted in the death of twenty people and the imprisonment of over two hundred. We now refer to these events as the Salem witch trials. In the 1950’s, Senator Joseph McCarthy conducted similar trials accusing people in prominent positions of being Communists. McCarthy implemented unfair investigative techniques, similar to those used in the Salem witch trials. Arthur Miller’s play, “The Crucible”, creates a story around the known details of the Salem witch trials and focuses on the relationship
In The Crucible, there are many examples that ambition can corrupt even the most steady and kind, through the use of characters such as Elizabeth Proctor, Reverend Hale and John Proctor as well as others. Rev. Hale, as an example, came to Salem with an ambition to rid the town of witchcraft, but at the same time disregarded the fact of the matter, innocent people are being put to death for the sake of reputation. As Hale says in Arthur Millers' The Crucible, book/movie/play,
When a character strips themselves of his or her humanity for the sake of ideology, all that is left is the ability to accuse. In the plays Macbeth and The Crucible, there are characters so obsessed with accusing others that it eventually pushes those individuals to believe that there are people out to “corrupt” their perfect life or society. In The Crucible, Mary Warren, the slave of John Proctor, discusses the conviction of Sarah Good by the council to John and Elizabeth, stating that the she never “knew no commandments” (Miller, 58). In Macbeth, the tortured hero agonizes over the witches’ words, whispering to himself that:
Life as a human is dictated by an inborn hunger or purpose, and people, in general, will act on this hunger for their own personal gain in their individual ways. This hunger, be it for wealth, land, love, power, revenge, or pride, can, and will be the undoing or failing of all mankind as Miller so clearly points out in his play 'The Crucible';. This essay will explore the motives of characters within the play and even the motives of Arthur Miller himself and therefore show how conflict stems from certain recognisable human failings including those mentioned above, fear, and hysteria.
The Salem community began to full understand the terror that comes with the idea that the afflicted girls could claim any person, no matter how pious, no matter how respectable, to be a witch. Afflicted girls could base their claims solely on intangible spectral evidence, something only seen by the afflicted (which is not the case for every accused; for example, someone by the name of Samuel Gray hallucinated of Bridget Bishop “before he knew her or knew her name”), which would not be considered as any sort of concrete evidence in today’s criminal system as it can be easily abused and deceitfully fashioned (Hansen 68.) Autumn of that same year, spectral evidence was disregarded during evidence hearings for this very reason. Jurors were no longer allowed to consider this kind of evidence when determining the verdict of an
How can one’s desire for safety lead them down a path of evil? Several characters find themselves in this exact position in The Crucible by Arthur Miller. This novel explores the intense witch trials and how big of a role fear plays in Salem. Since almost everyone is religious, people who commit sins are scared to death about people finding out and try to keep it a secret for as long as possible. No one is spared from the judgements of the one-sided court, causing innocent townspeople to be convicted and those who cunningly blame others to manipulate the proceedings to align with their personal selfish wishes. The evil actions by the seemingly good, moral, religious people of Salem, are all brought on by a sense of fear. Both Proctor and Mary
Throughout Arthur Miller's The Crucible the issues of the 'handing over' of conscience, the divesting of guilt, and the administration of justice are presented to create a masterful drama. The Crucible deals with issues crucial to all people of all time and is therefore a timeless and momentous play.
By the time Anne Bradstreet was born in the early 1600s, concrete gender roles, enforced by government regulation, church doctrine, and simple tradition, had been firmly in place for centuries. These gender roles dictated that women were little more than extensions of their husbands meant to be passive and servile, to perform basic household duties, and to praise their husbands and God. In the Puritan society, this was further compounded by the focus on humans' innate sinfulness leading back to the original sin of Eve, a convenient female scapegoat. Because of Eve's sin, Puritan men seemed have an underlying mistrust for all women believing that, like Eve, they were greedy for power or at least more susceptible to temptation. Thus, any woman who tried to break free of their defined role as daughter, wife, or mother was seen as a threat to the Puritan religion and the strength of the community. Guided by such harshly misogynistic beliefs, it becomes easier to understand the reasoning behind witch trials; any form of rebellion against church guidelines was sin and could easily spread to corrupt all...
When faced with a problem, humans usually try to find the easiest, fastest, and most convenient way out of the issue. In order to overcome problems, motivation is needed. However, motivation comes from different places within a person based on the individual’s desires. When looking back to 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts the problem during this time period was witchcraft, and "to be accused was to be assumed guilty, to accuse was to avoid punishment" (Jimerson 37). Fear of punishment causes people to accuse the innocent, and the innocent has no redemption for they were automatically guilty. No one was safe at this time as the cycle continued on and on. In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, Mary Warren is motivated by fear that transitions from Abigail
The law in Salem was guilty until proven innocent, which was very unjust because in the constitution it clearly states that a person is innocent until proven guilty; and the court condemned people without providing the proper evidence to prove their innocence or guilt. "And why not, if they must hang for denyin' it? There are them that will swear to anything before they'll hang; have you never thought of that?"(258-296). Reverend Hale and John Proctor are discussing and agreeing that the justice of the court is not "just" and that an accusation is like already saying your guilty. The only way to avoid punishment would be to lie and confess. This isn't just at all because lying is a crime, but in this case it's forced upon because there's no way you could prove your innocence if your already found guilty and there's no evidence that your innocent. "But the proof, the proof!"(118). Elizabeth Procter and Mary Warren are talking about how Goody Osborn was condemned only because she couldn't recite the Ten Commandments. While Elizabeth noticed the court didn't have any proof that Goody Procter was guilty.
It is the idea of revenge that sends a cool shiver down the spines of justly men when they begin to question as to why someone would stoop to such a level. But yet it is still more than an idea for revenge has been carried out in various forms along all the eras of history side-by-side of that of novels and tragedies. Even so, revenge is still a dark scheme; an evil plague of the mind per se. It is such a plague that will turn even the greatest persons of the brightest, optimistically capable of minds into lowly, as well as lonely, individuals. Thus, revenge will, and can, only end in despair and agony of the mind. Therefore, provided that all that has been said is true, revenge would appear quite unseemly to the observant onlooker. However, taking an in-depth insight into revenge you can uncover quite a compelling feature, which is best summed up into one word. Pride. Pride is the one clear motivational proprietor needed to push a protagonist into the downward spiral of personal vendetta. Without pride, revenge is no more than a mindless massacre of flesh and bone ending in the obliteration of any hope for reconciliation.
The play “The Crucible” is an allegory for the McCarthyism hysteria that occurred in the late 1940’s to the late 1950’s. Arthur Miller’s play “the crucible” and the McCarthyism era demonstrates how fear can begin conflict. The term McCarthyism has come to mean “the practice of making accusations of disloyalty”, which is the basis of the Salem witch trials presented in Arthur Miller’s play. The fear that the trials generate leads to the internal and external conflicts that some of the characters are faced with, in the play. The town’s people fear the consequences of admitting their displeasure of the trials and the character of John Proctor faces the same external conflict, but also his own internal conflict. The trials begin due to Abigail and her friends fearing the consequences of their defiance of Salem’s puritan society.
The Crucible is a play with many underlying messages and themes. One of which is the idea of power. Power is a very important term in this play in that whoever holds the power, holds the fates of others. The hysteria within Salem has directly effected society. Everything has turned upside down and has gotten distorted. Arthur Miller is telling us that all the power in Salem is given to those who are corrupt and their abuse of it is directly shown through: the actions of Abigail throughout the play, the corruption and desires of Parris, as well as the witch trials held by Judge Danforth.