All of these could either save someone’s life, or cause serious injury or death. This begs the question, is fear always a harmful emotion? Fear is not a harmful emotion, in fact, it is one of the emotions that keeps humans safe. Without fear, people would constantly be in grave danger and risk death because they would not take any precautions when encountering dangerous situations. Fear is not harmful because it causes someone to think quickly and rationally, to find a solution, and to find any
“The enemy is fear. We think it is hate; but, it is fear” (Gandhi). While this may be true, what may be a more powerful driver in our lives are the lengths we take to avoid things we fear. The society of Salem that Arthur Miller creates in The Crucible shows how fear can slowly lead to panic and eventually break down civilized behavior. The Salem witch trials occurred in Massachusetts between 1692 and 1693. More than 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft otherwise known as “the Devil's
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
Paranoia and the fear of the unknown often serve as motives of characters in literature. These characters do whatever they deem necessary, no matter how unjust their actions may be when they feel threatened. In times of distress, some of these actions can become questionable. The author of The Crucible, Arthur Miller, emphasizes people’s boundless reactions to anxiety and questions the morality of their rationale. In The Crucible, Miller makes desperation and fear the motivations for Abigail Williams’s
In the late 1940s, fear of communism was strong throughout America due to the Cold War with Russia, and paranoia caused citizens to accuse friends and acquaintances with or without evidence. Arthur Miller was among those accused, and, similar to the antagonist of his play, he refused to give the names of other Americans who took part in any activities that the court considered suspicious, thus protecting their reputations. Events and accusations similar to the ones made the Red Scare in America occurred
Fear in The Crucible Fear is a powerful emotion. It defines humanity. The sole reason humans continue to progress and invent is due to the fear of the unknown. Humans have feared the unknown since the beginning of time. Therefore, it is logical that knowledge creates security. In scientifically ignorant societies such as puritan Salem in 1692, fear runs rampant when dozens of innocent people are accused of witchcraft and some hanged. In Arthur Miller’s famous play The Crucible, mass hysteria leads
Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is a play contrasting the time in which it was written, the Red Scare of the 1950s, to the Puritan society of early America. At this pivotal time in American history, with the end of World War II and beginnings of the Cold War, Republican Joseph McCarthy arose in the Senate to question the morality of his colleagues and accused countless government officials of Communist views. Flanked by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), McCarthy cuts a swath through
the U.S Government or not. This is exactly like Arthur Miller's “The Crucible”. In the crucible, Reverend Hale finds a bunch of girls dancing around in the forest and thinks that it is witchcraft. This leaks out and eventually everyone is accusing eachother of witchcraft, and if they don't admit to it, they get hung or burned or drowned. In this essay I am going to tell you how fear, and hysteria are big contributors to the events in “The Crucible”. Fear, It’s inside all of us, it changes how you think
homes, tried for a crime they did not commit, and some even convicted upon false accusations as a result of fear and hysteria running rampant throughout society. The citizens of Salem, Massachusetts experienced this phenomenon in 1692 when the witch trials arose. Arthur Miller portrays this occurrence in his play The Crucible in which he accurately displays the effects that hysteria and fear have on Salem and subsequently how it affects the citizens who are accused without substantial evidence. Miller
period where everyone called everyone a communist. Arthur Miller decided to criticize the Red Scare by writing a play on a very similar event in history and instead of communism it was witchcraft and the consequences were way more severe. In The Crucible by Arthur Miller uses fear, Revenge, and hysteria in order to further the plot of the play. One of Arthur Miller's primary tools to make the plot go further is fear. Throughout the play examples of fear are everywhere and a lot of the events that take