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

the questioning of everyone to begin, until finally the fear has lost its numbers and begins to trickle down.

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,

who is easily influenced and consumed by fear. We see this when Mary shrieks, "(hysterically, pointing at Proctor, fearful of him). My name, he want my name. 'I’ll murder you,' he says, 'if my wife hangs! We must go and overthrow the court,' he says!” (Crucible, 524 Act 3: 1439). In this Mary abandons her principle or fear of her life and in doing so throws Proctor under the bus. It is easier to cause more chaos than to be level headed in the face of fear for her, and this is true for anyone given enough fear. Fear is often forgotten or ignored when it is not present. This makes it harder for us to draw from other times of fear, because we have rendered it as unimportant and in many cases foolish, Fear is like the monster under your bed, it terrified you when you were little, but now it doesn't, although you still become terrified when you hear a peculiar sound at night, now you just render your ears as more realistic. This is exactly what society does with fear. The witch trials are viewed as silly business, but today’s fears are indeed entirely practical, that is until the next generation. This level of fear is a danger to humans causing irrational decisions and unfortunate turns of events as displayed in The Crucible. Miller makes this his warning to people, to not be consumed by fears because the outcome is unavoidably horrific.
Furthermore, Miller warns his audience of the danger of lies. Lies tend to have a snowball effect that can swallow a person or a people whole. This snowball begins to take on a massive scale when people will believe anything they hear. In the witch trials this unbending trust became a huge issue because as Miller recalled, "At a certain time the high court of the province made the fatal decision to admit, for the first time, the use of ‘spectral evidence’ as proof of guilt…. After all, only the Devil could lend such powers of invisible transport to confederates” (Why I Wrote, 4). This amount of trust, especially in a court setting, is absurd. This "evidence" cannot be proved in a visible, tangible, audible, tasteful, olfactible, or theoretical way, therefore is "evidence" is unexplainable and impossible to prove to people. This evidence could be then linked to a multidimensional concept that is linked to the devil, but if you prove something just by the lack of being able to disprove something, you haven't established much. You have just put yourself into a never ending paradox of arguments. You become trapped in swirling and repetitive cases where nothing is ever resolved. You become consumed. And this happened to the whole town of Salem in The Crucible. Especially to Danforth, who found himself to be at the center of this mess with no way out. Danforth becomes trapped in this loop of lies, which is evident when he confesses, "(conciliatory). You misunderstand, sir; I cannot pardon these when twelve are already hanged for the same crime. It is not just.” (Crucible, 531 Act 4:313). Danforth finds his hands tied by binding guilt. Walter Scott puts it best in his famous poem Marmion, "Oh! What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive" (Canto VI, Stanza 17), in this web we get tangled like files, despite the fact that we wove it ourselves. Miller sees this happening in the world around him, with the very ends of this web attached to the foundation of a shred of truth, and he feels the need to use The Crucible as a wake up call, he is shouting what he sees at the top of his lungs throw this play, trying to prevent history from repeating itself.
To elaborate on that concept, we come to the core reason for Miller's writing of The Crucible, perhaps the simplest, yet boldest of them all.

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

they confessed; enough pain could get almost anyone to say what they must to stop it. Miller saw the pattern that many didn't and then spoke out when those few wouldn't. This play is meant to open one's eyes, so that one can learn from history instead of constantly repeating it and making the same mistake numerous times, If this is the truth, why couldn't people stand to hear it? Well, there are two ways of reacting to the past "you can either run from it, or learn from it" (Walt Disney Company, The Past Can Hurt 0:35, 1:03). The people were choosing to run, which is the easy way out, but never a good idea when lives are on the line. Miller comes and puts the past right in front of people so they can't run, because he knows that if he doesn't, the communist trials will morph into the witch trials completely.
In conclusion, Miller write with the passion of a warning. He fears for his people that they will fall into the same fate as Salem did. He calls to our attention that we cannot be ruled by fear or we will lose out better judgement, we cannot let lies consume us or we will find ourselves trapped, and we cannot repeat history or we will find ourselves at fault. Miller warns us against this panicked and naïve side of human nature to attempt to rip us out of the enclosed box we have placed ourselves in.