Imagine a world where people are held captive by their fears, preventing them from living life as they wish. Unfortunately, this isn't far from the universe as well as the books that parallel it. Fear is a major force that can shape people’s lives. It can manifest in many forms depending on the person, and it can hold people back. Due to this, a force this strong can be considered a formidable enemy. Fear is people’s worst enemy because it influences their actions through the dread of the unknown, making enemies, and societal opinions. Fear of the unknown guides people’s lives, making it their worst enemy. In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll writes a letter that explains his thought process while creating his draft, with the letter describing how “[He] hesitated long before [he] put this theory to the test of practice. He …show more content…
Winston is so fearful that he made an enemy of Julia and that she will report him that his actions are controlled and he lives in a state of unease. Granted that she could be a thought police, Winston felt like Julia could report him, so he didn’t want to make an enemy of her. Through this is it visible how the fear of making enemies is abundant within Winston, and his actions are guided by it. Through this, it is evident that people’s worst enemy is fear, especially fear of making enemies because it guides people's actions as depicted through Mr. Hyde, Jack, Ralph, and Winston. Many people’s worst fear that guides their lives is society’s opinions. In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll’s explanation of the events that took place, mentions how his actions as Mr. Hyde differed from those when he was normal, saying that “Henry Jekyll stood at times aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde. . . It was Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was guilty. . . he would make haste, where it was possible, to undo the evil done by Hyde” (Stevenson
Jekyll came to the realization that he could use Mr. Hyde to fulfill his desire to continue his experiments on the boundaries of human compassion without sullying his hard-attained reputation. Dr. Jekyll, being the society man that he was, was unable to release his true passion when it comes to his anger. Mr. Hyde’s lose grip on reality made it easy for him to erupt in long repressed anger; as is described in the book: “all of a sudden he broke out in a great flame of anger, stamping his foot, brandishing his cane, and carrying on (as the maid described it) like a madman” (14). Dr. Jekyll would never let his anger get that far away from him, his close kept grip on his emotions made it even more enjoyable to be Mr. Hyde because he could let go of all the pent up rage he’d held inside for so long. However, his previous experience as Dr. Jekyll made it significantly easier for him to function in society and pass off as a respectable man, even if Mr. Hyde could make a person run at first glance. This respectability was not overlooked when an elderly man came into contact with Mr. Hyde in the dead of night: “When they had come within speech (which was just under the maid’s eyes) the older man bowed and accosted the other with a very pretty manner of politeness” (14). Dr. Jekyll’s past experiences of societal politeness and Mr. Hyde’s ability to let go of his emotions and let his human instincts take over, makes it very easy for Mr. Hyde to get away with things that Jekyll
Authors often try to interweave themes or meanings into their works in order to create a deeper and more intriguing work of literature. For instance, The Crucible, a film written by Arthur Miller, and “The Minister’s Black Veil”, a parable by Nathaniel Hawthorne, are two pieces of literature that share the recurring theme of how fear affects a person’s decision making. By examining two of the characters from The Crucible, Abigail Williams and John Proctor, one is able to see how fear can lead people into hysteria, causing them to do things they normally would never do. Another example of fear changing peoples’ views and actions is displayed in “The Minister’s Black Veil”. This theme is well displayed in the town’s responses to Mr. Hooper’s
At times, fear motivates people to behave unscrupulously. Personal fears instigate some characters in Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible to cry witch. Reverend Parris fears losing his job, Abigail fears prosecution and losing John Proctor, and Tituba fears physical retribution. Fear induces people to defend their personal whims and use their power to harm others.
Lying is bad but the fear that can come from it is worse. Fear can rule a person which drives them to extreme and irrational acts that can shape society in a negative way. We as people are so accustomed to how we should act that during times of fear and crisis our vision is blurred and sometimes our decision making abilities are impaired. We often look past at how much fear can affect us and our society. Starting from Salem 1692 and going to the McCarthy era fear ruled the people and even now in present time America we are constantly living in fear.
Throughout The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller, fear is used as a control tactic. Fear escalates quickly through the responsible parties – Abigail Williams, Reverend John Hale, and Deputy Governor Danforth – and soon the town succumbs to it. Fear is not used by all of the responsible parties for control, as in controlling the people in order to be the “top dog” so to speak, but as a way to prevent their own accusation or conviction of witchcraft. They each used their own methods of creating fear in order to beat the stakes.
Context: This part of the text is included at the beginning of the drama, telling the audience about Salem and its people. The author explains how a theocracy would lead to a tragedy like the Salem witch-hunts. This is the initial setting and is based on the principle that some people should be included and some excluded from society, according to their religious beliefs and their actions. This is basically the idea that religious passion, taken to extremes, results in tragedy. Miller is saying that even today extremes end up bad- communism, like strict puritans, was restrictive and extreme. It only made people suffer.
likelihood of victory is small.” It is a person’s mental or moral strength to resist extreme
Thomas Putnam plays a major role in the Salem witch hunt in Arthur Miller's The Crucible. Inheriting a handsome amount of property makes Putnam a wealthy person; however, it doesn't seem to satisfy his ambition. After the town terribly rejected Putnam's brother-in-law, Bayley, Putnam's bitterness has increased. Finally his prodigious involvement in the relentless accusations places him in the center of the spot light, making him a salient character in both the play and the indignant period of the American history.
It comes to a point in life when fear controls you and causes harm to you and everyone else in your environment. History repeats itself when fear is involved. In the Salem Witch trials, fear caused people to accuse the innocent of being witches. After World War Two, Americans feared sabotage from Japanese and locked up all the Japanese even if they were innocent. After 9/11, fear caused people to believe all Muslims were evil and could harm you. Being afraid of something can eventually become dangerous to you. In some cases, fear becomes dangerous to other people around you like in Salem.
The play “The Crucible” is an allegory for the McCarthyism hysteria that occurred in the late 1940’s to the late 1950’s. Arthur Miller’s play “the crucible” and the McCarthyism era demonstrates how fear can begin conflict. The term McCarthyism has come to mean “the practice of making accusations of disloyalty”, which is the basis of the Salem witch trials presented in Arthur Miller’s play. The fear that the trials generate leads to the internal and external conflicts that some of the characters are faced with, in the play. The town’s people fear the consequences of admitting their displeasure of the trials and the character of John Proctor faces the same external conflict, but also his own internal conflict. The trials begin due to Abigail and her friends fearing the consequences of their defiance of Salem’s puritan society.
Persecution has been a round for sometime and can be traced historically from the time of Jesus to the present time. Early Christians were persecuted for their faith in the hands of the Jews. Many Christians have been persecuted in history for their allegiance to Christ and forced to denounce Christ and others have been persecuted for failing to follow the laws of the land. The act of persecution is on the basis of religion, gender, race, differing beliefs and sex orientation. Persecution is a cruel and inhumane act that should not be supported since people are tortured to death. In the crucible, people were persecuted because of alleged witchcraft.
In the Crucible, Arthur Miller shows us how fear and suspicion can destroy a community. As the play develops, Miller shows us how fear and suspicion increase and destroy the community. Throughout the play it becomes apparent that the community gets more and more divided as time goes on. In the beginning there were arguments about ownership of land between some of the villagers. As the story progresses people fear for their own safety and begin accusing their neighbours of witchcraft in order to escape being hanged.
How could Proctor in the “Crucible” have done more to end the hysteria in Salem? In Arthur Miller “The Crucible,” the depiction of the Salem witch trials offers a compelling parallel to the hysteria and paranoia fueled by the Communist Red Scare of the 1950s. During the Red Scare, fear was always a natural emotion that protects people from harm when they face real and imminent danger. A phobia is an excessive fear or anxiety related to specific objects or situations that are out of proportion to the actual danger they present, in easy terms, it is an uncontrollable version of fear. Both historical contexts reveal when fear worsens it can become hysteria and hysteria can become worse and once it becomes worse, it will lead to panic, uncontrollable fear, and people will start to act irrationally.
“While I cannot take the time to name all the men in the State Department who have been named as members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring, I have here in my hand a list of 205.” This quote from Joseph McCarthy accurately depicts how authority in a vulnerable society will try everything they can to get rid of the problem externally without reflecting on the effect of this to the wellbeing of the society. The Crucible was written in the early 1950s during a period of ‘McCarthyism’. During this period, the American society was very brittle due to The Red Scare which caused the Republican U.S. Senator in the Truman administration, Joseph McCarthy, to blacklist and isolate many people who he thought could be Communist. This led to everyone becoming paranoid and
In "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," a short story by Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll conjures up a potion that turns him into the evil Mr. Hyde. It can be argued that Dr. Jekyll is not solely to blame for the actions of his alter ego, even though it is clear that he is the one who fully decides to drink the potion and let Hyde loose. I think that although Hyde may have been set free by Dr. Jekyll's potion experiments, his destructive behavior is ultimately motivated by his own dark nature. This essay discusses the idea that it is, in fact, Dr. Jekyll's fault. To begin with, Dr. Jekyll continues to experiment with his serum despite being aware of its possible risks.