The Salem Witch Trials As an Example of Mass Hysteria in Arthur Miller'S The Crucible

The Crucible, written in 1953 by Arthur Miller, is a critique of the after-war atmosphere with reference to McCarthyism, a period of hysteria promoted by means of Sun. Joe McCarthy during the war was looking into hundreds of Americans who has been arrested and blacklisted for the purpose of alleged communists. Miller compares the hysteria of McCarthyism to the Salem witch trials. Miller was called for the purpose of the investigation in order to give evidence before the United Nations to the American home. Even in spite of the fact that he didn’t join the Communist Party, he denied testifying toward the others. The Court convicted him on charges of contempt reference to the court. This experience tested integrity. His trial was moral or crucible.

Abigail William, daughter of the Rev. Paris, is the gang leader, in this case of hysteria. First, she knows she and her friends will just get a beating for falling while dancing in the woods, but they also know that if people accused of being witches and being”forced” to dance, will not be there are punished, nothing at all. Abigail destroys marriages, causes people to be hung, and administers loses all respect from people towards herself. so the same question. “She sends her spirit on me in church, she makes me laugh at prayer”. To condemn Tituba.

Every time the girls in the play accused others with reference to being a witch in court, played a hysterical role. That one girl pretending to get a cold, or see the spirit, or that is under attack by means of reference to the spirit, and will scream in fear and pain. The other girls, that see her do it, their passion caught like a contagious disease, and imagine they felt or saw the same things, or at least will be a reaction to the fear in the room. Mary Warren herself, to talk to the judges, and explained how it all happened: “I–I heard the other girls screaming, and you, Your Honor, you seemed to believe them, and I–It were only sport, in the beginning, sir, but then the whole world cried spirits, spirits, and I–I promise you, Mr. Danforth, I only thought I saw them but I did not.”

At the end of the first chapter. Here, Tituba naming people who may be witches starts, and praised it. Therefore, Abigail then figures this is a way out with reference to getting in trouble, and starts naming names. By the end of the act, all with reference to the girls and the arrest of hysterical and crying of the names. Even better, the girls turn on Mary Warren in the third quarter and pretend it’s a little bird that comes to tear their eyes. Abby result in the charge, and all the other girls follow. Very soon a passion so intense Miller writes in the stage directions, “She and all the girls run to one wall, shielding their eyes. And at this point of time, as though cornered, they let out a gigantic scream, and Mary, as though infected, opens her mouth and screams with them”.

These trials were magic classic examples of mass hysteria, which led to the executions and cruel deaths of countless people reputation on charges or convictions of transactions with the devil. The people who have been convicted them upright like themselves to admit their mistakes own. These convictions were largely on the evidence of the young girls who have been caught dancing in the moonlight and laid their behavior to dissipate the effect of magic. He accused the innocent and convict of magic on most certificates absurd and unjustified in Salem based on the mere evidence “spectral”.

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