Mass Hysteria In The Crucible By Arthur Miller

Fear is something we all know too well. We’ve all had our fair share of scares, this is only human. You learn a way to deal or cope with the fear and get on with your life. Now, scale that up by a lot, the amount of fear in your life blown up so that everyone around you experiences the same amount over the same thing. This horrid thing becomes a common enemy uniting people because of fear; there is safety and strength in numbers. The new goal becomes not to cope or deal with said fear, but to vanquish it. Squash it like a bug, burn it like a spider, if it crawls kill it. This is mass hysteria; it alters our better judgment and causes us to make rash and unwise decisions. It only takes one person to point a finger at someone in the group for

In Arthur Miller's essay "Why I Wrote The Crucible” Miller brings up key points he was trying to make through his play The Crucible. In Miller's essay we learn that The Crucible was not just for entertainment, The Crucible was a lesson, a warning about human nature. Miller warns people of the dangers in being controlled by fears, consumed in lies, and unchanged in history. He demonstrates this through the pain and panic caused by the stupidity of how the witch trials were performed.

To begin, fear is considered healthy, "a healthy amount of fear" as people say, however when this fear becomes an exceeding amount, you begin to be controlled by said fear. This is considered an unhealthy amount of fear. When a fear starts to control your life and your decisions beyond fight or flight you have hysteria. This is exactly what Miller was trying to communicate through The Crucible. He states this in his essay when he states, “Fear doesn’t travel well; just as it can warp judgment, its absence can diminish memory’s truth” (Why I Wrote, 1). In his play, Miller represents this fear in the events that unfold, but also in Mary Warren as a character. Mary Warren is a timid person,

Miller argues, "the Salem trials were similar to those employed by the congressional committees that I could easily be accused of skewing history for a mere partisan purpose” (Why I Wrote, 3). This is what made this play so controversial in his time; this is why the play was originally rejected. Miller was speaking out against the "Communist trials" that were happening in his time. The people that were convicted for being communists faced the same struggle as the people convicted for being witches in the past, they were guilty until proven innocent, and this became a source of vengeance that flowed through people. Proctor calls this to our attention when he proclaims, "If she is innocent! Why do you never wonder if Parris be innocent, or Abigail? Is the accuser always holy now? Were they born this morning as clean as God’s fingers? I’ll tell you what’s walking Salem—vengeance is walking Salem. We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law! This warrant’s vengeance! I’ll not give my wife to vengeance!" (Crucible, 501 Act 2: 1132). Vengeance was just what both hunts had become. When people are guilty until proven innocent it is easy to throw someone under the bus and the only way to save themselves was to confess. People were tortured until