Examples Of Fear In The Crucible

Fear causes people to act irrationally and lash out at others, causing harm to not only the individual, but others. The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, portrays this well. A Crucible is a vessel in which metallic elements are melted to be cast into new objects or to create a new alloy, and can withstand very high temperatures. In the play The Crucible, fear is. Abigail, Tituba, Elizabeth, etc.

“Ultimately, no good can come from this type of decision-making. Fear prompts retreat. It is the antipode to progress. Just when we need new ideas most, everyone is seized up in fear, trying to prevent losing what we have left” (Berns). Fear can be defined as a biochemical, emotional, and physical response to something negative or thrill situation. Most individuals have a negative reaction to fear causing them to obtain the physical response of “fight or flight” in face of fear or avoiding anything that causes fear altogether. The characters in The Crucible all reacted to the witch trials differently and that most likely was because of how afraid they were of the accusations. If someone was more fearful of the possibility that some people were witches then they were more likely to want them in jail or hung opposed to if they were not that fearful. The research question that is being explored in this essay is “What role does fear play in individuals’ decision making in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible?” In other words, fear can affect how one reacts to certain situations and it can cause them to make different decisions than they normally would.

“We all have a fear of the unknown, what one does with that fear will make a difference in the world”- Lillian Russell. Since the beginning of time, fear has been something everyone has, especially when it comes to the fear of the unknown. The Salem witch trials, is a good example of that. The fear established by the claims of witchery that lead to the death of nineteen men and women, and two dogs. The play, “The crucible” by Arthur Miller, tells the story of what happened during the witch trials and the fear that lead to the to the imprisonment and death of many innocent people. Arthur Miller uses these rhetorical elements in his play to support the character’s arguments and better define the way they felt.

In The Crucible Abigail mistrusts the girls to keep their secret that witchcraft is not real, she makes them fear her and makes them go against their own beliefs so that Abigail will not get into trouble. “Now look you. All of you. We danced. And Tituba conjured Ruth Putnam’s dead sister.

Fear is a common human emotion, but how everyone responds to fear varies. The way we react to fear could depend on a very large spectrum of things. It could depend on the situation or on what one fears, on the person who is expressing fears’ personality, the events leading up what is inflicting the fear, or even past experiences. It could be any number of things. Many different people could be in the exact same situation and fearing the same thing, but each of them may have completely different reactions.

Fear: a simple word with an abundance of meanings. To one, fear can be losing a loved one and to another it can be being alone for their entire life. Ghandi once claimed that the enemy of every soul is not hate, but fear itself. This enemy, however, can be derived from hate, for everything you loathe is the reason for your distress. Taking the Salem Witch Trial as an example, fear portrayed an enormous role in the lives of many. During the time period of 1692 to 1693, fear controlled an entire village by manipulation and hatred. Arthur Miller’s The Crucible perfectly captures how fear is exploited by characters in the play because these characters used their hatred towards others to build up horror in the sacred town of Salem. Although this classic novel was written over fifty years ago, Miller touched on timeless societal fears that still apply to the existing world today. As seen through Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, fear can prompt people to denounce their beliefs in order to save their own lives, prevent their reputation from being tarnished, and it can make one take extreme measures in order to protect the ones they love.

One of the larger themes that affect the play The Crucible is fear and how it affects people in many ways. Some examples of fear is Mary Warren being very afraid of Abigail Williams, and Parris being afraid of losing his social status. First off fear happens many times in the play one part is in Mary Warren's actions (Mary Warren utterly Confounded and becoming overwhelmed)(Miller 225). In this part we see how Mary Warren’s fear takes hold of her and how she starts to freak out about it. The next part is where Parris is talking about people learning about his daughter betty.”Thomas, Thomas I pray you, leap not to witchcraft”(Miller 172). This is important because he is scared

Cries of Chaos: Fear and Hysteria in Salem No one expected the winey false cries and pretense from a group of young girls to drive the entire town of Salem into chaos. The town of Salem was a very religious community that valued God above all else. The people lived under a theocracy, in which anything that was deemed “ungodly” was punishable. This strict lifestyle was a huge reason why so many people were willing to do whatever it took in order to save themselves, even if it meant bringing others down. Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” develops the theme that fear breeds and feeds hysteria by using the townspeople of Salem to show how easily fear can manipulate reliability, order, logic, and morals.

Mary Warren is the only one in the group of girls that tries to make things right, but was overcome with fear. When Mary Warren and John Proctor go to the court so Mary Warren could tell the truth to Danforth, they meet an unlikely enemy. Abigail and the other girls start to accuse Mary Warren of witchcraft. As this chaos is happening, Mary Warren begins to confess to witchcraft after Danforth threatens, “ You will confess yourself or you will hang!” (1337) John Proctor, trying to save Mary Warren from the influence of Danforth and the girls, begins to reach for Mary Warren.

Sometimes people are very afraid of telling the truth, their fear makes them live in discouragement. Sometimes, their fear also affects others around them because they lack self confidence .When this happens, important relationships suffer. The play “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller has a dramatic storyline the characters struggle with the Puritan authority and the town people having to make a decision on who is telling the truth and who is hiring. The girls make false accusations because of their fear for the Puritan authorities because they torched Tituba and they can do that to them, also by doing this it may make their lives miserable.

Throughout history, mass hysterias have occurred as the result of psychological stress and the irrational fear of the unknown. In fact, the Salem Witch trial was the result of the irrational fear from the town that the devil was present in their everyday lives. In the play The Crucible, Arthur Miller presents the consequences of the fear of witchcraft spreading through the community of Salem. Laura Dimon furthers Gladwell’s argument in “What Witchcraft is Facebook” by arguing that hysterias occur because of preexisting tensions and psychological stress. Thus, as long as the fear of the unknown is present in a society, oppression and psychological abuse will endure, resulting in individuals to feeling vulnerable and succumbing to the pressures of their disordered and dysfunctional environment.

It is always important to know about events in history so that the events will not be repeated. The texts The Crucible, “Why I Wrote The Crucible,” and “Vigilante ‘Vampire-hunters’” tells about how fear has an effect on society from the Salem witch hunts to McCarthyism to modern-day. The play, The Crucible, shows how society reacts to fear when claims about witchcraft are circulated through the village, and the article “Why I Wrote The Crucible” shows how fear of communism makes society paranoid of each other. The article “Vigilante ‘Vampire-hunters’” is an example of a modern-day witch hunt, except the article deals with vampires rather than witchcraft or communists. As it is seen in all three text, society has dealt with fear in the same despairing manner over the years besides learning from mistakes in the past. The development of society’s response to fear over the years illustrates that people have not learned from mistakes made by responses in the past.

In the play The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller fear drives many if not all of the characters. It drives them to do things that they would never do if they had no motivation from another power and in this case it is fear that drives them. Fear could have come from many places but in this case it makes sense that it would come from the church. Everyone is scared of being accused of being a witch. This is a sin punishable with death unless you admit to it but no one wants to be the first person to admit.

Fear can lead to a lot of things, but unfortunately, in humans it usually leads to something bad. Throughout history, fear has lead to some of the most violent actions by man, and some of the biggest collapses of organized society. In early American history, the people of Salem experienced this for themselves. Arthur Miller shows this in his book. The society of Salem that Miller creates in The Crucible shows how fear can slowly cause rational thought to deteriorate, leading to mass hysteria and eventually the breakdown of civilized behavior.

As represented in Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, fear played an important role and is exploited by the characters in the play. The Crucible beings with a group of girls accusing people of witchcraft for their selfish benefit.Fear is an emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to inflict pain , or a threat. Fear is an emotion that is capable of overtaking and controlling one’s state of mind and well being. However , fear can be used as a motivation factor. Fear influenced these people to take extreme measures and act irrationally. Additionally, fear is a master of suffering capable of haunting those who patronize it Moreover, in The Crucible this erratic emotion causes people to fear being labeled