The On The Hands Of An Angry Mob

History generally regards the period of Salem witchcraft trials as a radical instatement of religious zeal which favored superstition over reason and targeted a large number of women over a much smaller number of men. Admittedly, the 1692 witchcraft crisis is a very complex historical episode, yet seeing as the majority of the people involved were women, it can be perceived as a gender issue, and illustrative for the definition of the role of women in New England. The present work's aim is to outline the colonial mindset concerning women and present relevant theories by means of analyzing three cases of witchcraft accusation together with delving into the accusers' perspective.

The largest outbreak of witchcraft in America took place in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. A group of girls, including the Parris’s Indian slave Tituba, gathered in the Salem village and were attempting to see the future by decoding “messages”. Shortly after this gathering the girls started showing signs of the possessed (pg. 73). To this day people all over America are still amazed with the events that took place in this time. But why is that? The fear of the village fell heavily onto the judicial system, which later made people focus on the proper separation of government and religious beliefs. Mass hysteria broke out amongst the village and many people were being accused, therefore leading to many innocent deaths. Although there could be many theories as to the reason the witch trials in Salem began, there are two points of view that are very commonly shared amongst people. Some believe that the Salem witch trials were women unconsciously searching for power, whereas others believe it was an encephalitis epidemic.

“The Devil in the Shape of a Woman” was an excellent book that focuses on the unjusts that have been done to women in the name of witchcraft in Salem, and many other areas as well. It goes over statistical data surrounding gender, property inherence, and the perceptions of women in colonial New England. Unlike the other studies of colonial witchcraft, this book examines it as a whole, other then the usual Salem outbreaks in the late 17th century.

Using the play The Crucible, Arthur Miller effectively uses ethos, logos, and pathos in his argument to prove societal pressures have an astonishing amount of power over people’s emotions and actions to such an outrageous extent as to eradicate all reason

Bigsby, Christopher. "The Crucible." Drama Criticism, edited by Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau, vol. 31, Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/H1420082430/LitRC?u=wylrc_wyomingst&sid=LitRC&xid=2bd5b992. Accessed 31 Jan. 2018. Originally published in Arthur Miller: A Critical Study, Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 147-171.

In this paper, I will be talking about The Crucible, a story written by Arthur Miller in 1952 about the Salem Witch Trials in 1692, and the Red Scare, a time in the 1950’s when Americans were scared that Communists were a threat to them. I will also talk about how Arthur Miller uses “The Crucible” to help the reader understand that similarities such as fear and nationalism occur in historical witch hunts such as the Red Scare still exist, and society persecutes those who do not fit into society because it fears those who are different.

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s America was overwhelmed with concerns about the growing threat of communism in Eastern Europe and in China. One senator in particular, Joseph McCarthy took this one step further and made more than two-hundred accusations against these supposed communists, one of these people being Arthur Miller. Miller dared to stand against McCarthy and used The Crucible as a way to show McCarthy’s flaws without approaching him directly. The Salem Witch Trials and the Scares in the Mid Nineteen hundreds both remind us that no man is perfect, and we do make mistakes.

Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible and David Rothkopf’s TED Talk How Fear Drives America Politics are two significant texts that emphasise a fundamental political message that remains timeless throughout both the Puritan society within the world of the play and the contemporary society of Miller and Rothkopf. Ultimately the use of fear in order to gain political advantage and control the masses is a profound power present in the political dimension that is explored within both these texts and offers personal insight into the McCarthy era of the Cold War that Miller was subjected to and the post-9/11 hysteria that gripped America when Rothkopf was emerging as a prominent journalist. Miller’s depiction of Abigail and the girls in particular and

Two coarse yet uniquely fragile societies, three hundred years apart, devoured by individual ideologies that permeated belief systems, that blinded, deafened, and muted citizens, and that ultimately led to gruesome hysteria. “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, written by Jonathan Edwards in the mid-1700’s, is a sermon directed to a Puritan congregation urging with orthodox fervor for transgressors to repent. Arthur Miller wrote the allegorical play The Crucible in 1953, lively portraying the hysteria occurring during the Salem Witch Trials in an effort to describe his perceptions of the post-war climate of McCarthyism and the sheer terror of Communism. In the pulpit oratory “Sinner in the Hands of an Angry God”, Edwards eloquently uses imagery, metaphors, and symbolism in order to instill fear in his congregation and persuasively explain to them that, aside from faith and the pleasure of God, one would be rapidly and eternally damned to Hell; Miller, on the other hand, exploits allegory, characterization, and imagery throughout the play The Crucible in order to fervently articulate his disdainful attitude regarding McCarthyism and the Red Scare.

Arthur Miller conveys an intrusive community where characters strive for a clean name in The Crucible, which is still evident in modern day through the action of politicians and celebrities maintaining their images using different communication techniques. The Salem witchcraft crisis reflects the personal reputation of the characters, similar to how Americans make decisions based on their appearance on social media. The Crucible is useful to modern Americans because they can learn from the past through mistakes and common themes that are presented in the play.

During early 1692, in Essex, Massachusetts, a group of girls began to practice “conjuration with sieves and keys, and peas, and nails, and horseshoes”. By February, the adults tried to put into words what was happening to their children: “odd postures,” “foolish, ridiculous speeches”. Local physician William Griggs warned Reverend Samuel Parris, father of two of these girls, that he suspected the “Evil Hand” or more specifically, “malefic witchcraft”. As a result of this bizarre occurrence, rumors and assumptions spread rapidly across the area of Salem Village. The legal system was unkempt and clearly unprepared for something so baffling. As a result, the trials were conducted aimlessly and disorderly, without consideration of the persecuted. Throughout countless records, evidence was slim and weak. This was just the beginning of what is known as the Salem Witch Trials. Due to an unorganized legal system, The Salem Witch Trials exposed Puritan society as unprepared, unlawful, and unethical.

Arthur Miller writes about the tragic results of human failings in his play, The Crucible. He presents characters from the past and infuses them with renewed vitality and color. Miller demonstrates the horrifying results of succumbing to personal motives and flaws as he writes the painful story of the Salem witch trials. Not only do the trials stem from human failings but also from neglect of moral and religious considerations of that time. Characters begin to overlook Puritan values of thrift and hope for salvation. Focusing on the flawed characters, they begin to exhibit land lust, envy of the miserable and self-preservation.

Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, is a great portrayal of humans and their struggles. This

Similar to Tocqueville before him, John Stuart Mill was critical about the American democracy and its resulting social pressures on the individual. The consequences of the tyranny of conformity sat at the forefront of his mind. Frank Prochaska in his review of Mill described the term as ‘a society in which scarcely any person had the courage to dissent.’ Arthur Miller draws on this idea in The Crucible by exploring the individual’s place in society as something firmly rooted and inescapable, as well as the individual’s place as capable of changing society through having the courage to deny society what it asks.

The play, “The Crucible” is written by Arthur Miller in 1953. During this time of American history, a war had just ended and there was a deeply rooted fear of communists infiltrating American soil; Americans had begun to turn on each other out of fear that people around them were against American ideals. Arthur Miller expressed his concern for the time by writing “The Crucible,” which is written about a witch hunt that occurred in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. Arthur Miller used the themes of an earlier American event to remind people of his time that their actions were indeed following a historical pattern of fear. The play, “The Crucible” takes place in America in a time of deeply rooted religion, fear of the unknown, and early civilization. The juxtaposition of this play, it’s characters, and the time in which the play was written, teaches a very difficult, yet important, lesson about fear and it’s position in a society of people.