Examples Of Hysteria In The Crucible

In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, the fear of opposing God and the government caused the mass hysteria and accusations resulting in the hanging of nineteen innocent men and women in Salem, Massachusetts. Miller affectively showed multiple personalities of characters in the book to represent how the hangings could of happened.

Hysteria is when a group of people give in to rumors and lies, which cloud their rational thoughts. The more people believe in a fact, the faster hysteria grows, like an exponential growth. Hysteria and fear were used in The Crucible, in order to show how people would be convinced of a fact even if it ignores rational thought, similar to how during the Cold War, people were afraid of Communists within the country, even there weren’t really any. Characters heard of witchcraft and believed it and became suspicious of it; they saw even the most casual or meaningless thing, and would somehow connect it to witchcraft. When Cheever was holding Elizabeth’s doll and found a pin in it he said “it is a needle! Herrick, Herrick, it is a needle!...I had my doubts, Proctor, I had my doubts but here’s calamity” (Miller 70). He then goes on to describe how this means that Elizabeth's soul stabbed Abigail in the gut, right where the needle

was.

This shows that people in the town of Salem would immediately connect an event to witchcraft, and not even think of another reason, or whether or not the person it connected witchcraft to was actually framed. The more people that got blamed for witchcraft, the more people believed in it and accused others without question. In her article, Laura Staffaroni stated that “The

fear caused by the thought of supernatural evil in Salem causes the characters in the play to turn a blind eye to logic and instead believe in claims not backed by actual ‘hard as rock’ proof.” Fear mixed with hysteria during the Salem Witch in the book were a metaphor for the same feelings towards communism during the Cold War.
During the time setting of The Crucible, you were not a true christian if you didn’t believe in the devil, another comparison to the feelings during the Cold War; if you didn’t think someone accused of being communist was a communist, you also became a suspect. Characters in The Crucible wanted so badly to accuse one another for their love of their religion. Accusations by the girls and the townspeople were a catalyst for the hysteria. This is also another reason that the majority of Salem’s citizens were convinced of witchcraft within the city, and felt so passionately to accuse others of it. In the book, Elizabeth said “I cannot think the Devil may own a woman’s soul… I am a good woman, and yet to be secretly bound to Satan, then I must tell you, sir, I do not believe it” (Miller, 66). Hale then accuses her of not believing the Gospel, which he sees as evidence that she is a witch. This ultimately leads to her having to be hanged, but luckily her being with child prevented such atrocity. The social norms of believing in Satan and everything the Gospel says is a deep rooted factor causing the hysteria of the witch trials. People automatically believed in witchcraft because they wanted to be good Christians. In his paper “Four’Social Plays’”, Leonard Moss wrote that “The chief enemy to be exorcised was Satan; in formulating political policy, state authorities were able to enlist the Puritan’s belief in the supernatural origin of good and evil” The government soon became the leaders in trying to enforce the good and kick our the evil from the land. Not only were they political leaders, they were also religious leaders, and opposing them would be like opposing God. Similarly, Miller wrote “A political policy is equated with moral right, and opposition to it with diabolical malevolence… and the main role of the government changes from that of the arbiter to that of the scourge of God” (Miller, 32). The government became the leaders in political and religious affairs, making people afraid not just to question their religion, but also the law. This fear of being an unloyal Christian and citizen was a deep rooted factor built into the hysteria.
In The Crucible, the government placed such a strong role politically and religiously in the lives of their citizens, whom because of that were too fearful to disbelieve them. This caused mass fear and hysteria in the town of Salem, relinquishing the fear of accusing their fellow neighbors of witchcraft. Arthur Miller effectively uses his characters to establish a metaphor between the town of Salem, and America during the Cold War.