Psychology of Fear
Sue Miley once said, “When we combine choices with fear, we suddenly become overwhelmed and paralyzed” (Miley). Fear is a powerful emotion that can heavily impact one’s decision whether it be for the good or bad. In The Crucible, many important decisions are made and fear is heavily involved in many of those decisions. A research question to be examined is, to what degree can we attribute the events of the Salem Witch Trials as illustrated in The Crucible to fear?
Everybody has a different perspective on fear and everybody is affected differently. The Mental Health Foundation stated that, “Fear can last for a short time and then pass but it can also last much longer and stay with us. In some cases it can take over our lives, affecting appetite, sleep, and concentration for long periods of time. Fear stops us from travelling, going to work or school, or even leaving the house.” This quote shows that fear does not affect people as much as it does to others. Although, fear can affect people for a long time which can cause them to stay isolated from others. There are many types of fears and some examples of fears include: the fear of the number 13, the fear of spiders, the fear of heights, and many others. There are hundreds of fears and many people have these fears and everybody is affected differently.
There are many advantages and disadvantages of fear. Mary Garner says, “Being extremely fearful of something can have negative effects on your body. It can
Fear is a powerful human emotion. It can make you do things you wouldn’t normally do, like risk taking and bad choices. Fear can spike your adrenaline. For example if someone was to lift a car off a run over child, that would be caused by adrenaline, which is caused by fear. According to several studies done by physicians
In the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller, fear runs rampant across the characters minds and effects their actions at almost every turn of the plot. Without fear the story’s plot would have never of formed and died prematurely. The people in the story respond to fear of losing what belongs to them, of their own fatality, and fear of a higher power. All of this terror leads to maltreatment and death.
Fear can make life intolerable, there is a variety of fears one person can have. For instance, fear of being alone, fear of dying, fear of being an disappointment, fear of animals, even fear of life itself and the lists goes
Fear limits our freedom, keeps us from enjoying life to its fullest, and holds control over any human. This emotion is brought on by danger, a situation, or evil.While being controlled byfear, you may come to realize that you are being manipulated to the possibilities of threats and may also be mislead by lies. Arthur Miller’s classic novel, “The Crucible” takes place in Salem, Massachusetts, where often fear would be used to control anyone to blame another of witchcraft.This novel was written in retaliation of the Mccarthyism political practice that used fear mongering as their tactic.
Fear is something everyone gets. It's actually normal to be scared. If you think about it, fear keeps us from doing some things that may harm us. A little fear may also be exciting. How? Well, say you get on a scary ride at the amusement park and you're a little frightened. You know you will be safe but, it's just frightening. Fear can drive action by doing certain things that are scary or fun. It can affect your actions because of being afraid. It can also make you change, depending upon who you're around.
Fear is definitely not always a harmful emotion. Fear influences people to take extreme measures and act irrationally emotion. While fear is one of the main emotions people face, fear is not a always harmful emotion. In the Crucible, Arthur Miller shows us how fear and suspicion can destroy a community. As the play develops, Miller shows us how fear and suspicion increase and destroy the community. Throughout the play it becomes apparent that the community gets more and more divided as time goes on. In the beginning there were arguments about ownership of land between some of the villagers. As the story progresses people fear for their own safety and begin accusing their neighbours of witchcraft in order to escape being hanged. Salem became overrun by the hysteria of witchcraft. Mere suspicion itself was accepted as evidence. As a Satan-fearing community, they could not think of denying the evidence, because to deny the existence of evil was to deny the existence of goodness; which was God. In the 17th century a group of Puritans migrated from England to America - the land of dreams - to escape persecution for their religious beliefs. As Arthur Miller tells us in the introduction to Act 1 'no one can really know what their lives were like.' We would never be able to imagine a life with 'no novelists' and 'their creed forbade anything resembling a theatre or vain entertainment.' 'They didn't celebrate Christmas, and a holiday from work meant only that they must concentrate
The profound power of fear has the menacing ability to dictate one’s thoughts and actions incredibly. The feeling suffocates one to the point that they are willing to do anything to take that panic away. Unfortunately, the actions that individuals commit under this wave of distress have the ability to negatively affect others drastically. This is the situation that occurs in The Crucible by Arthur Miller. Characters in the novel are forced to make difficult decisions to either do what is morally correct and honest or to protect themselves and their own best interest. The ultimate possibility of losing it all or dying compels certain characters to unknowingly encourage the Salem Witch Trials. These trials could have been easily avoided if people did not let the perilous power of fear overcome their conscious. In The Crucible, Arthur Miller demonstrates the dangerous power of fear through the characters Abigail Williams, Reverend Parris, and Mary Warren.
Fear is an emotional response that is instinctive when faced with something, or someone that is perceived to be dangerous, or a possible threat to one’s well-being. This is something that everyone experiences on their own level. Everyone’s own interpretation of what they’re afraid of is different based on what they’ve seen or heard. Something that a certain individual’s fear might just be something that another individual might roll his or her eyes over.
In The Crucible, a play by Arthur Miller, the author attempts to depict the events that occurred leading up to and during the tragedy of the Salem Witch Trials. Abigail Williams began the hysteria after her uncle discovers her dancing in the woods alongside many other young girls and Tituba. The truth behind the girls motives for prancing about in the woods that night will remain unknown, but it seemed as if it for sure involved some sort of dark magic. As a result of the girls’ actions that night, the people of Salem began to develop a strong fear that only grew as time progressed. The purpose of this novel is to view how others actively abuse people’s fears to get them to do as they wish. The fear which the townspeople contained and how they handled it, as well as how the girls exploited people’s fear for their own personal advantage to seek revenge amongst those who had ever wronged them can be seen as a corrupt misjudgement for the reasons that the court generals should have actually hunted for solid evidence instead of trusting a bunch of teenage girls. The girls were basically murdering people and the court judges did not bother looking into their lies. Exploitation of fear can be seen all over the place today. For example, the government uses women, people in the LGBT+ and immigrants’ fears to profit from them. All those groups are minorities so they do not have the best representation.
Conceivably, everyone experiences some degree of fear at some point in their life. For instance, whether it is flying for the first time or taking their drivers test, the list can go on and on as to what people fear. On the other hand, however, when clinicians are noticing fear or anxiety occurring the majority of the time regardless of the situation and preventing someone from participating in family activities, job related tasks or interferes with other activities
Many people do not realize it, but the importance of fear over a lifetime is crucial. Even though fear is regularly viewed as a negative emotion, it is a key to survival. “Accept and respect children's fears. Fears are real to children, so don't laugh or say their fears are not real. Children will grow out of most fears. First, they need to learn skills to deal with fears" (Helping Children Overcome Fears, Goetze, Giselle). People need these fears as a child in order to become stronger and wiser in making judgements. In time, overcoming fear builds self confidence and maturity. For example, a person once afraid of reaching out to others for help can learn that other people's support can be beneficial. As you can see, fear over a lifetime is
It is odd how each person has certain things they fear more than others. Mine is heights, but in this instance I think I feared my safety more than anything. Fear is something that can control a person’s life when not dealt with correctly. Fear can be a bad thing, but would you be surprised if I told you fear can also be a good thing?
However, phobia can even cause people to risk their health. For example, the fear of dentists can leave people suffering from it willing to risk the health of their teeth in order to avoid having to go through an exam or procedure ( MacKay). When one knows about an upcoming confrontation, it can be the reason why one can not sleep or finds it hard to focus on important tasks. Due the change in daily routine, this unrealistic fear can interfere with the ability to socialize, work, or go about everyday life, brought on by and object, event or situation. But even animals have anxieties and phobias just as every human being (www.phobia-help.de). A phobia is an irrational fear, one knows that the object or situation, one is scared off, can not hurt one, but one is still afraid. A reason for this is that the human mind can not distinguish what is real and imaginary. When one has uncontrollable anxiety attacks, he loses rational judgement, leading to complicated problems. However, anyone can develop a phobia, men and women, teens and young adults, and elderly lady or a one-year-old boy (MacKay).
Phobias of every kind almost limit the productive life of an individual life upto a great extent. Even just imagining in their mind the object of fear arose an anxiety in them. However when they are actually exposed to the object of fear, the excessive fear and terror is automatic and overwhelming.
Fear’s an emotion that every person in the world responds to, but each person responds to it differently. These responses always very in two forms, fight or flight. For those people living in Salem during the 1692 Salem Witch Trials they responded to the fear in flight, giving in to the hysteria it was able to cause. Leaving twenty killed, and more than 100 in jail, the witch trials leaves an example of what can happen when a whole gives in to that fear. Although there was a selected few that could have done something to end that mass hysteria, two of the most likely people that had that ability to end the hysteria was Judge Danforth and Abigail Williams. Both held powerful positions in Salem, with Danforth being the judge for each of the trials and Abigail being the one to call “witch” of the ladies of Salem.