Witch Hunts Have Never Ceased Oppression, Bloodshed, Sin. People search and destroy things that are considered oddities. What really is an unusual circumstance? Loving someone who is the same gender? People who are born in the wrong body? As a society people have chosen religion over common sense, since time has started turning its devious hands. Whether the the ‘devil lives’ among them, or slaughtering homosexuals for finding love in unconventional ways. When people are misunderstood, others react harshly; we can see this colorfully portrayed in both the Crucible by Arthur Miller, and the LGBT+ community. Similar to that of the Crucible, if a group of people do not like or approve of a person or action they lash out in violence. On June
American playwright, Arthur Miller, in his play The Crucible (1952), suggests that witch hunts still exist in American society. Miller supports this claim by drawing parallels between the Salem Witch Trials and the Senator Joseph McCarthy Trials. His purpose is to warn his readers of the dangers of mass hysteria. He uses emotional appeals (pathos) and logic (logos) to convince the reader that mass “hunts” are still a danger to Americans today. The main way, however, that Miller achieves his ultimate goal of demonstrating the dangers of individuality vs. ideology is through the vivid characterization of Mary Warren. Mary Warren is an example of an outwardly conforming character because in the play she tells Abigail that she wants to tell
Short Response Answer the following questions based on your knowledge of the drama. Write a response on a separate sheet of paper.
The purpose of my paper is to compare and contrast Arthur Miller’s The Crucible with the actual witch trials that took place in Salem in the 17th Century. Although many of the characters and events in the play were non-fictional, many details were changed by the playwright to add intrigue to the story. While there isn’t one specific cause or event that led to the Salem witch trials, it was a combination of events and factors that contributed to the birth and growth of the trials. Some of these events included: a small pox outbreak that was happening at the time, the revocation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony charter by Charles II, and the constant fear of Native attacks. These helped in creating anxiety among the early Puritans that
The Crucible’s presentation of intolerance can be used to identify it within our own society. As mentioned previously, intolerance occurs when you have individuals with strict outlooks of the world and are unwavering in their opinion of it. Religion is often a means through which people can exhibit intolerance using their religion as the basis to condemn other things. Generally, it is the extremist in these groups, and as we read in
“Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it,” said George Santayana. If this is true, then why have we continued to repeat something like the Salem Witch Trials on more than one occasion, including the recent uproar of sexual assault accusations? Although The Crucible and modern day accusations of sexual assault differ in the ways that these assault accusations are in modern times and they are also on something that is not related to religious beliefs, they ultimately have more in common, like how evidence was and is shaky for some cases, all accusations were started by a domino effect, and reputations were ultimately ruined even if the accused were proven innocent eventually.
The United States of America is filled with many historic events, enriching its history. Many events that occur are compared to past events in our history. In particular, the McCarthy Era in the 1950’s was compared to the Salem Witch Trials which occurred in 1692. This correlation was first made by Arthur Miller who wrote the play “The Crucible”. He connected the time period of McCarthy to where there was a hunt for communists, to the Salem Witch Trials where there was a hunt for witches. Following that, many comparisons and contrasts have been made between the two. The Salem Witch Trials and McCarthy Era are both similar, yet different.
What is the significance of the scene between Elizabeth and John Proctor? What does it reveal about their relationship and about their characters?
The Crucible is a play constructed on conflict, lies and deception, written by Arthur Miller in 1952. The key theme of this theatrical four-act drama is ‘Wheels within wheels’. Set in Salem, in the heart of puritan Massachusetts, in 1692, the plot follows a community of villagers plagued by accusations of witchcraft. Amidst the executions of their friends, the remaining villagers turn to religion, rumours and secrets to alleviate the tragedy, and gravity of the circumstances unfolding on their doorsteps. Throughout the play, we become progressively responsive to the fact that sex/sexual repression are the motives behind a significant volume of
Human are born and raised to do what is righteous and good but when given the opportunity why is it that humans will use wrongful ways more often than not? "All conflict in literature is, in its simplest form, a struggle between good and evil." This means that all conflict in any work is basically just a fight between the forces of good and evil. The Crucible by Arthur Miller and Macbeth by William Shakespeare’s show that this statement is true. In both works of The Crucible and Macbeth, the authors play with the use of outside forces to show how people will quickly abandon their beliefs. Both authors us the idea of “evil” to illustrate how quickly society succumbs to it and is willing to use it to their advantage.
In 1962 the penalty of witchcraft was to be hung or smashed. There was a big outburst of witchcraft and spells that were going around among the people of Massachusetts in 1962. Some of the women of Salem began the witchcraft many people started to catch on and fallow them. A lot of these people were hung do to what the bible said about the wrongs of witchcraft. When these women of Salem Massachusetts started to do witchcraft and pass it on to other people they were put on trial for their actions, which at the time was, illegal. It had caught on all over England and was spreading fast. Arthur Miller made a play called the Crucible that was about the Salem witchcraft trials. Arthur miller took the historical
Throughout history all world leaders pushed the blame onto others by using scapegoats as a way to justify their own wrongdoings. A scapegoat is something or someone people use to avoid the repercussions of their wrong doings. McCarthyism was the time in which many people were accused of being communists while The Salem Witch Trials were when many people were accused of being witches. One group led by McCarthy and another group led by a young group of girls, both had a great impact during the time period and caused a lot of chaos. Even though the time in which The Crucible and McCarthyism took place are very different, they were similar in the way that citizens were treated, the fears they had, and the accusations that took place. This all
The Crucible, an excellent drama for the large diversity of themes and its judgements to the drama. These notions and themes appear from the methodology of insincerity to reposition out of harm’s way and tossing an accusation towards another individual to the idea of valuing your family name. The witch-hunt plays an important portion of influencing the characters along with how they act to the events. The Crucible contains a variety of means to interpret the Author’s intentions of the Crucible, but the sentiments of the Red-Scare developed prominently throughout the entire drama. As mentioned, the witch-hunts procured an important role in replicating the same events that occurred in Arthur Miller’s days.
From the slave trade to the Salem witch trials, persecution has been part of the foundation of America since before it was established. The slave trade tore people out of their homes and forced them to work for someone else’s benefit. The witch trials showed the accused as guilty no matter how they defended themselves. The enslavement of indigenous people in the Indies forced innocents to give up what was theirs so others could make a profit. While many people came to America to escape persecution, these events led to America becoming a country based on the exploitation of others. Equiano and The Crucible’s use of hatred and fear towards minority groups as well as Columbus’s use of indigenous people for personal gain emphasize that Americans
In the books The Crucible, The Scarlet Letter, and Of Mice and Men society has a big impact on all of the characters in the book. In The Crucible society would tell people that they could not be a witch, in which religion greatly impacted The Crucible. In The Scarlet Letter, society frowns upon adultery and you can be severely punished for committing such crimes. In Of Mice and Men the men in this book have to be tough. Society didn’t understand guys like Lennie, they just thought Lennie was crazy.
The Salem Witch Trails were a dark period, where adults took the words of kids with no evidence over the accused. This time is one of the examples of America’s Red Scare; when many innocent lives were being taken one after another over the rumors of witchcraft. These structure of events put into a book named The Crucibles, written by an American playwright, an author in 1953 named Arthur Miller. He describes the trials that took place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the 1692-1693 period.