Fear And Fear In Arthur Miller's The Crucible

Fear is a common human emotion, but the way some people react is different than others. Although, it is harder on some humans unlike other people. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said,” Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.” I think that means that fear harms more people than anything else does in the whole world. Also that people can scare themselves way easier than normal and it’s not healthy.

At times, fear motivates people to behave unscrupulously. Personal fears instigate some characters in Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible to cry witch. Reverend Parris fears losing his job, Abigail fears prosecution and losing John Proctor, and Tituba fears physical retribution. Fear induces people to defend their personal whims and use their power to harm others.

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

People are taken from their 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 also represents how unjust the court system was in Salem in his playwright, the accused were guilty until proven innocent similarly to a modern day witch hunt during the Cold War. This modern day witch hunt of the

Fear is an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain or a threat. Our own emotions, especially fear, make us do the things we never saw ourselves doing. In the play “The Crucible” many of the characters actions are driven by fear. President Franklin D. Roosevelt once said “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. This emotion doesn’t have to control our actions.

Martin Niemöller once said,“First they came for the communists, but I was not a communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.” The culture of accusations is a part of hysteria. As paranoia ensued in “The Crucible”, Joseph McCarthy made false allegations that influenced many peoples lives. An affair integrated in Arthur Miller’s play created controversy among the community. Trials were held for those accused and lying was the only way to survive. The harsh truth that was revealed in “The Crucible” and the parallels between the Red Scare and the Salem Witch Trials show patterns in which fear was used as an advantage, unsubstantiated claims occurred, and unethical punishments were given.

Sometimes people in fear can turn on others, even if they were close before. Abigail, Reverend Parris’ niece, is already quite manipulative in general. However, once the drama in Salem fires up, she becomes even more devious in order to keep herself safe. After Abigail and the other girls get caught trying to perform witchcraft with the help of Tituba in the woods, Abigail threatens the girls to not tell anyone what they were really doing. She tells them, “ ‘Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you… I can make you wish you had never seen the sun go down’ ” (Miller 1244). Here, Abigail shows how effortlessly she can turn on her closest friends and even her own cousin, Betty, whenever things go wrong. At first, she wanted the girls to join her in the woods to help perform the spell that is supposed to kill Elizabeth Proctor, John

“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.

If there is one thing that is impossible to escape in modern society, it is fear. Whether it be advertisers using frightful hypotheticals to sell a product, or politicians instilling panic into the citizens in order earn themselves a few extra votes, fear is found everywhere and anytime. With this in mind, it is no surprise that the use of fear seeps into the literature of the times, especially when the content of the work has a basis in real events from the past. Fear is an effective motivator as evidenced by the characters in Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible.

One innocent man being crushed to death, 141 people being arrested, and 19 being hanged were some of the many gruesome events that took place during the infamous Salem Witch Trials of 1692. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, some few unnatural events cause mass hysteria to sweep through a small town, placing dozens of innocent people in jail. When rumors sweep through Salem of an unconscious girl who will not wake up, people automatically point to witchcraft. Accusation after accusation, fear of being accused themselves causes people to suspect the worst about the people they associate with. In result, many people turn against themselves and others around them in fear of losing the normal life they have accustomed to. The three characters in the play that acted out of fear and caused an unnecessary hysteria against innocent people are Mary Warren, Judge Danforth, and Abigail Williams.

Fear, An Unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that something or someone is dangerous. Hysteria, exaggerated or uncontrollable emotion. Revenge, The action of inflicting pain or harm to another after they have caused damage to you. All of these emotion play a huge part of the Crucible, these emotions cause characters to lie, and make decisions that can change the life of them of people around them, sometimes good most times bad. Emotions can play a big part in life or death situations like we saw in the Crucible.

In the late 1980’s, Ray Buckley along with his mother, sister, and teachers of the McMartin preschool faced 321 charges of child abuse additionally there were allegations of the group performing satanic rituals and traveling in secret underground tunnels. Many children from the preschool were accusing several people of performing bizarre acts much like the witch hunts that occurred in Salem, Massachusetts, such hysteria brought fear amongst many. The Crucible a play composed by American author, Arthur Miller wrote this play about the town Salem that fell into mass hysteria after a group of girls Abigail Williams, Betty Parris, Ruth Putnam, Tituba and Mary Warren accused townspeople of witchcraft. Many may argue that the root and cause of the witch hunts were caused by the girls in the forest looking for revenge or trying to benefit from the accusations however the cause was fear amongst the characters this is demonstrated by Elizabeth Proctor, Mary Warren, and Abigail Williams.

Inside us all there is a deep dark fear this is what grabs us by the thresh hold of life. It controls the most important aspects of our lives. This is found within the deepest and darkest chasms of our souls. The very creature that wreaks havoc in our minds we cage and never confront we lock this beast away to afraid to overcome it. If the beast is not confronted it begins to contort and change who we are as a person and how we interact with others. Even the very decisions we make as a person to affect those around us and are loved ones to also suffer the consequences of our actions. Such as the crucible and how each person was warped into their own monster by greed.

“The Crucible is essentially about courage, weakness and truth.” From proctors weakness to temptation, to Giles’ courageous act of not allocating in order to protect a man. To the many people holding truth at a very low level for their own personal gain. The crucible is built off of those characteristics either being prevalent within the characters or being absent.

Throughout history, many horrific incidents based on an act of violence or disagreement have resulted in panic and mass hysteria. These historical events include but are not limited to, The Holocaust, mass shootings, and 9/11. Many of these tragic events have led to people being immensely afraid. These events often create fear for those who participate in everyday activities. A healthy community consists of a support system, peace, trust, and adhering to societal laws. Arthur Miller’s, The Crucible, illustrates parallels between the Salem 17th century witch trials and the Communist Red Scare in the 1950’s to exemplify how destructive irrational fear and mass hysteria can become. When a community is overcome with fear it creates an insalubrious system of mistrust, corruption, hypocrisy, and the defiance of laws. Conflict relating to witchcraft in The Crucible, led to tension and struggle for the people of Salem. In his allegory, Arthur Miller illustrates the devastating impact of irrational fear on a community through the actions of the characters of Abigail Williams, Judge Danforth and Judge Hathorne.