How Is Fear Shown In The Crucible

Eventually when the girls are called to trial, they formulate a plan that claims witches are to blame and that they have seen multiple citizens conversing with the devil. This stint plan they created causes ridiculous accusations against a majority of women in the town as a way to rid of the people they've despised. Abigail looks to forward her blame onto John Proctor's wife, Elizabeth. John Proctor is a prideful and honorable man who is viewed as a wise outcast of the society. He is a man who doesn't hold the same beliefs as the other townsfolk, and goes against going to church; this sets an attraction for Abigail to lust for.

Members of Salem fear Proctor for his potency, popularity and his good name throughout the town. His wealth helps him in becoming powerful. Elizabeth becomes scared of Proctors controlling attitude and

After Elizabeth Proctor is arrested for witchcraft and magically wounding Abigail with a needle, Mary Warren guiltily attempts to tell the truth about the group of girls lying about the witchcraft; but Abigail’s manipulation and the hysteria of the village quickly consume her. John Proctor forcibly demands that Mary Warren tell the truth in order to free his wife, but Abigail and her dishonest squad of girls accuse Mary Warren and John Proctor of lying. The girls even claim to see Mary Warren’s evil spirit in the form of an invisible yellow bird! The story of witchcraft in Salem continues to propagate until the end of The Crucible’s plot because Mary Warren, succumbing to the hysteria, breaks and sides with the mischievous girls. She does not believe in the witchcraft accusations of the other girls, but she pretends as if she does in order to save herself from the girls’ accusations and the intense scrutiny of the witch hunting court. Lying to oneself and deluding one’s own mind is exactly what hysteria and the resulting fear do to susceptible and weak

Another time in this play where fear is shown is when Elizabeth Proctor is put on trial for being accused of witchcraft. She was being charged because Abigail and John Proctor were participating in lust, and she wanted to keep him for herself, but John only wanted Elizabeth. So Abigail says “she is a cold sniveling woman and you bend to her!”(page 177) Therefore, she went to the clerk of the court (Ezekial Cheever) and told him she had been stabbed. Mary Warren made a poppet with the needle still in the stomach (which is where Abigail got stabbed) while she was still in court to give to

Arthur Miller’s renowned play, "The Crucible," explores the theme of fear and its profound impact on individuals and society. Through the Salem witch trials, Miller vividly illustrates how fear can lead to hysteria, irrationality, and the destruction of innocent lives. The lesson conveyed in the play is that when fear consumes a community, then it becomes a place where injustice and moral decay thrive. In Salem, fear manifests itself in various forms, primarily stemming from the Puritan society's strict beliefs and the looming threat of punishment. One example is Abigail Williams' manipulation of fear to conceal her own transgressions.

Betty Parris is a strong example of fear being a motive behind the actions of a character. In the morning the following day after being caught dancing in the woods with her friends Betty Parris was suddenly unable to get out of bed and unresponsive. After getting caught, Betty fakes these ailments so her Father will think she is bewitched. Her father falls for Betty’s trick, “Rebecca, Rebecca, go to her, we’re lost. She suddenly can not bear to hear the Lord’s name”(Reverend Parris 1181). Reverend Parris does believe that Betty has been bewitched. To save herself from trouble, Betty fakes her ailments so her father will feel bad for her. Betty’s fear of being in trouble by her father motivates her to lie about being bewitched in order to save herself.

Fear Throughout The Crucible In the book, The Crucible by Arthur Miller shows how a small event like girls getting caught dancing in the woods can turn into a huge mass hysteria. Throughout history, we have seen how hysteria has a major impact on the outcome of events. The Crucible focuses on the small town of Salem, Massichutus, and how it is affected by the witch trials and lies of the civilians. Multiple people choose to deceive others into believing they are witches for their own personal gain.

“There is no passion so contagious as that of fear,” is a saying by the renowned French Renaissance scholar Michel de Montaigne. This theme is clearly displayed in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Fear is an ever present notion in day to day existence. It motivates and influences the actions that lead people to decide in which course to move their lives forward. This driving force can be seen within the motivations of the average individual, to political leaders, and characters within literary works.

The most common use of fear in The Crucible is to manipulate the weaker minded people into serving someone else’s best interests. Abigail, who is clearly a master of this craft, uses this tactic to intimidate Betty and the other girls into joining her web of lies when she threatens, “I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you. And you know I can do it. I can make you wish you had never seen the sun go down!” (Miller 135). Evidence of fear as a motivational tool does not come any clearer than this. Abigail uses her power over the other girls to force them into compliance with her wrongdoings. This direct threat lines up perfectly with Robert Wilson’s guideline to using fear as a motivator which states, “To use fear successfully as a motivator, a solution must be offered with it” (Wilson). By giving the girls a choice between compliance and punishment, Abigail makes their decision all the more simple. With

Fear can motivate people to do despicable things; actions people would never commit in their right minds. The Crucible by Arthur Miller is about Salem, a small town in Massachusetts, and its outrageous witch trials conducted in the spring of 1692. The accusations started out of pure fear, and then others in the village began to accuse for their own benefit. Eventually, the situation escalated out of hand, resulting in the deaths of some very innocent people. Out of the many motifs presented in this play, one that was particularly prevalent was accusations made with specific intentions. This motif is displayed when Thomas Putnam, Abigail Williams, and Ann Putnam accuse others because of their personal motives.

In order to get what she wanted, she had pulled a group of friends to get involved in it, which they willingly obeyed Abigail in fear she would accuse them next. Many of her friends began to slowly fall apart because the guilt was taking over their minds. One of them had said, “She’ll kill me for sayin that! Abby’ll charge lechery on you, Mr. Proctor!”(Miller) Mary Warren feared that if she were to tell the truth, that the other girls would accuse her for witchcraft, and have her hung. It is hard to say who the hero is in this play, but the ones who know the truth and try and explain seem to be at war with Abigail and the other girls. One might say, “it is unfortunate that the play itself aligns a group of heroes against a group of villains."(Budick) Abigail and her group of girls are the villians in this play, having men and women wrongfully hung to save

There are many things that can trigger fear in someone’s mind. Evil is a type of fear that causes adrenaline to rush through a reader’s heart, muscles to tense and can be distributed in so many different ways. In “The Crucible” fear is enclosed in many lies and in false accusations, but in the story “Young Goodman Brown” fear travels through the forest late at night. In The Crucible Abigail Williams is a brilliant mastermind behind the horrifying images in the minds of the ignorant people in Salem. She was attacking the innocent, and John Proctor was the weakest of all. He had committed adultery with Abigail and was prone to being tormented by her, because she keeps a secret he could never bare to confess. People fear for their lives and just follow along to prevent from being hanged. In “Young Goodman Brown” we see how Goodman leaves his wife, in order to meet someone

Both Salem, Massachusetts in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, and post 9/11 America are societies that dread witches or terrorists and tries to identify and eliminate them. When people find something that they are afraid of, they will do everything in their power to get rid of that fear. It will not matter to them what they have to do in order to eliminate their unease. Any fear that is great enough can take over people and make them do horrible, unjust things.

She wants Elizabeth out of the picture so she and John can be together. Evidently Abigail stabs herself, as well as a doll, to create a scene to frame Elizabeth Proctor. “”Once Elizabeth is taken into custody she has lost the battle. The court does not believe the words of the convicted, but only the girls who are convinced they see the devil and their spirits. With the lies continuing there is no other way to save the life of the innocent unless they lie and confess to witchcraft. Danforth yells to Mary explaining, “You will confess yourself or you will hang!” (Miller

John Proctor states, “I never spoke on witches one way or the other. Will you come, Giles?”(Miller, 82). Abigail is not only John Proctor’s mistress, but she is also one of the girls who are accusing innocent people in the town of being seen with the devil. Abigail is the character who has the most influence on the town’s hysteria. John regrets his affair with Abigail, but she thinks what they had was love.  Because Abigail wants to be with John Proctor, she and few other girls from the village, and Tituba (a slave) dance around because they believe it will somehow kill Proctor's wife. Abigail is asked about her affair with John, but she says none of it is true. She is does not want to get caught.  While coming up with more lies along with Betty (Reverend Parris’s daughter), she tells the other girls, “If anyone breathe a word or the edge of a word about the other things, I will come to you in the black of some terrible night (The Crucible.)”