Mass Hysteria In The Crucible

The mass hysteria in Salem led to the most wild accusations imaginable towards basically anyone acting different or unfavorable toward their neighbor. Arthur Miller’s The Crucible revolves around accusations of witchcraft, which can either be forgiven by confessing or essentially accusing someone else. It all begins when Abigail and her group of cronies are first accusing of witchery and use blaming and jumping on the bandwagon to get out of the line of site and trouble. The corrupt and cruel court system ran by Governor Danforth only accelerated the results. No outside forces caused any of this to happen (including the deaths of multiple people), especially considering there was never any real witch in the first place, thus the citizens of Salem all caused this comotion for themselves.

John Proctor was one of the focal points of this witchcraft controversy. He indirectly started it all with his affair with Abigail. John Proctor and his wife Elizabeth do eventually patch up that part of their relationship, and Elizabeth soon gets to convincing John to tell the town Abigail is lying. He’s slow to bring himself to testify against her because it would inevitably lead to the court knowing of his own adultery. But if he had actually done it, the entire witchcraft situation would

have been solved right then and there. Also, his morals get in the way towards the end of the play. Proctor is one of the most morally and intellectually strong people in the town of Salem, but that eventually leads to his downfall. He ends up not signing his name to his confession of witchery, and is hung.
Speaking of Abigail, Abigail was arguably the biggest influence in all his chaos.

In an effort to get Proctor to come back to her, she, Tituba, and a handful of other girls dance around in the forest to try and bring death to Elizabeth. When Parris sees this go down in the middle of the night in the forest, Abigail is questioned and starts by denying everything. This is only the beginning of the hole she starts to dig herself into, which she, again, tries to dig herself out of with accusations. If Abigail had simply told the truth, she wouldn’t have caused the deaths of potentially dozens of people, and also wouldn’t have to deal with the moral dilemma of actually ending those peoples’

lives.

The final individual however in all of this witchery and hysteria, the judge: Governor Danforth. Danforth was cruel throughout the dozens of trials he held around the suspected witchcraft in Salem, even bringing Hale to question him by saying “Excellency, I have signed seventy-two death warrants; I am a minister of the Lord, and I dare not take a life without there be a proof so immaculate no slightest qualm of conscience may doubt it.” Once the first person was hung, Danforth had painted himself into a corner, and basically had to move forward without any hesitancy with the following victims, otherwise people would assume he’d made the wrong decision on people that were already dead. Danforth hardly believed in looking for real evidence, rather relying on the weight of someone’s words, or the lack of a confession. If Danforth had been a more noble judge, with a strong sense of justice, the trials could have simply ended with Abigail. Instead, innocent people died.

The people of Salem had serious issues dealing with themselves and each other throughout the play. They not only turned their backs on each other, they had little to no rights in the court. Everyone was vulnerable. Not only did the weak morals of Abigail, her cronies, and Governor Danforth bring down Salem, the strong morals of John Proctor did the same thing. Objective reasoning could have served well for Salem.