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Textual Analysis Of The Crucible

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Textual Analysis The Crucible The text which I have chosen to analyse is from the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller, just looking at Act One of this play. In Act One the scene opens in Reverend Parris’s house, in the year of 1692; the scene focuses on Betty being ‘ill’ in bed and ‘laying limp’, showing the powerful forces, they believe to be witchcraft has overcome her. This extract highlights the importance of the themes that are throughout the play and the ideas of townspeople’s lives in Salem, in which the characters portray. This play is set in a theocratic society, where the church and the state are one, and where the religion is strict and shapes their beliefs. Within this Act the narrator describes Salem town as having a strict Puritan way of life with an outlook on the rest of the world as one of “parochial snobbery”. One of the most important themes to look at in The Crucible is hysteria. The hysteria is tearing the Salem community apart, it creates people’s fear of their neighbours and they believe that friends and even family are committing unbelievable crimes of witchcraft and communicating with the devil. To highlight the theme of hysteria we can see how Tituba is [terrified] and [falls to her knees]; in which she is full of hysteria when questioned by Hale by breaking down and confesses to being a witch, though earlier denying practicing witchcraft. Hysteria rises as everyone begins to blame each other, and with Abigail shouting accusations at Tituba that
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