Fear In The Crucible By Arthur Miller

The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 were a series of prosecutions of people who were accused of acts of witchcraft or of being a witch in Salem, Massachusetts through the time period of February 1692 through May 1693. This was a dark time in history as more than 200 prosecutions took place and at least 20 people were killed during this time of fear and hysteria. The accusations began as three girls Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne were accused of witchcraft from other young girls in the community. During this time period, fear of the Devil was common as people in Salem were very devoted to their religion and religious practices. As one of the accused girls, Tituba, confessed to working for the Devil and admitting to being a witch, this caused panic and hysteria as a massive witch hunt took place to find more of these witches. This confession was the main reason behind months and months of fear and mass panic as it triggered more accusations.

The first reason the Salem witch trials occurred was mainly because people were scared of the devil. The people of Salem were all Puritans and were extremely scared of Satan. Since they were so scared, once one person was accused, everybody became spectacle and believed that there was witchcraft in the village. The smallest little suspicions caused people to think that you were a witch. Even by the way you acted in one little way, the town would freak out

The purpose of this book was to examine the history and social life of Salem Village to try to figure out what was the cause of the events that occurred there. I believe that the authors achieved their objective at least they did to me. Boyer and Nissenbaum's explanation for the outbreak of witchcraft accusations in Salem hinges on an understanding of the economic,

Teenagers are often treated like children. Adults don’t respect their opinions because they are too young to understand or are too immature. The time period between childhood and adulthood are teenage years. So why do we treat teenagers like children when the teenage years are supposed to prep them for adulthood? However, there are situations were teenagers hold more power than we think. Although these are two completely different genres, The Crucible and the movie, Mean Girls, show how much destruction a group of teenage girls can do. So how could a group of teenage girls, younger than 18, possibly cause so much chaos?

In Rosalyn Schanzer book Witches! The Absolutely True Tale Of Disaster In Salem a story is told about a time when Salem, Massachusetts was flooded with witchcraft accusations. In 1692 Betty Parris and Abigail Williams started having mysterious fits. After a doctor examined the girls he diagnosed them with being bewitched! The people started a hunt for all witches in the new land. The first cause are the accusations, the second cause, the fits and the third cause is anger.

“In three hundred years, we have not adequately penetrated nine months of Massachusetts history.If we knew more about Salem, we might attend to it less, a conundrum that touches on something of what propelled the witch panic in the first place” (5).

Three centuries ago, the Puritan religion was the base of the Salem village and many townspeople strongly believed in the existence of witches and witchcraft. According to the common Puritan belief, witches were in alliance with the devil and were granted power to harm. People were blamed for illness, failed crops, to bad weather, and many other things that were evident centuries ago. Due to the belief in witchcraft villagers were, perhaps, inclined to the most improbable explanations. The Puritans held strict views, ways of living, perspectives fears, and fantasies. Many Puritan ministers used the the fear of witchcraft to scare the believers into following the church. Historians believe these strict Puritan ways of life may have brought upon the witchcraft hysteria in Salem. At the time, witches and witchcraft were a serious and viewed as a real threat; almost as real as

That Little Betty Parris was sick, and that the Dr. Griggs (who was too proud to say that he could not diagnose Little Betty illness) claimed she was bewitched (Richardson 7), were enough reasons for court authorities to suspect witchcraft was the cause of the illness. In addition, several young girls in the village had participated in 弎lack magic?experiments ?harmless adolescent games ?in the company of Tituba, Reverend Parris slave. The restless young girls allegedly met in Parris shed, and created and listened to Tituba incredible tales of sorcery and black arts, which were doubtless an outlet for their repressed feelings. Soon, faulty cause-and-effect relationships sparked delirium.

As the accused I feel hurt, betray and sorrowful. I have known these people all my life. We have grown up together and now they are believing a group of young girls saying that I am a witch. I don’t understand! I am a good Christian woman. I can not confess to witchcraft though. For it is “better to lose your life than your soul” (Salem). I will stand true and not lie no matter what the outcome is but truly I’m broken on the inside.

Soon, other girls in the village began to show the same symptoms as Betty and Abigail. Eventually, Betty, Abigail and two other “afflicted” girls named Tituba, Reverend Parris’ slave, Sarah Osborne, a woman who rarely came to church, and Sarah Good, a town beggar, as the women who bewitched them and caused their strange sickness. It all went downhill from there.

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.

“Belief in the supernatural–and specifically in the devil’s practice of giving certain humans (witches) the power to harm others in return for their loyalty–had emerged in Europe as early as the 14th century, and was widespread in colonial New England. In addition, the harsh realities of life in the rural Puritan community of Salem Village (present-day Danvers, Massachusetts) at the time included the after-effects of a British war with France in the American colonies in 1689, a recent smallpox epidemic, fears of attacks from neighboring Native American tribes and a longstanding rivalry with the more affluent community of Salem Town (present-day Salem).” (http://www.history.com/topics/salem-witch-trials)

mentioned. A major theme analyzed in The Crucible is jealousy and greed. Many people in the

The same thing happened in Salem. People started pointing fingers at each other and started accusing each other. Lies were all over the place. People in Salem had jealousy for each other and accusations were the only way out for them.

In Arthur Miller’s writing he clearly says his profound political and moral convictions. In 1953 Arthur Miller drew upon the Salem witchcraft trials in 1692 to attack the anti-communist “witch hunts” of the 1950’s. Because the Puritans deeply feared the power of Satan, the villagers of Salem became involved in the hysterical climate not only out of religious reasons but also because it gives them a chance to act on their own personal grudges. When Reverend Parris’s daughter and Abagail Williams started having fits over convulsion, screaming, and hallucination, the theocracy sets up a court to identify the witches in the village. The witch trials are the ultimate expression of intolerance because hanging witches is a way for the