The Influence of Society: The Crucible

526 Words2 Pages

Stephen King once stated “We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why.” People can be influenced greatly by their society and surrounding environment. Once a common belief is generated, it is usually difficult or others if. In the play, The Crucible, such is shown through the Salem witch trials. In the article, “It’s 2013, and They’re Burning ‘Witches’” the people of Papua New Guinea, also known as PNG, still believe that black magic is used to kill people who have no relation to each other. The general belief that the society influences determine the rash decisions that people take and the fear the unknown results in the blame of the unknown.
In the play, The Crucible, the general belief of witchcraft leads innocent people to be executed. The whole town of Salem believed the false accusations of Abigail, which were supported by her group of friends. Abigail pretends to feel a cold wind and as Judge Hathorne felt “touching Abigail’s hand: she is cold, Your Honor, touch her!” (Miller, Act III). It is one thing for the girls to be pretending, and another if one psychologica...

Show More
Related

  • Abigail William's Arrogance In The Crucible Essay

    889 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, Miller demonstrated that it was Abigail William’s flaws – mendacity, lust, and arrogance – that led her to be responsible the most for the tragedy of the witch hunt in Salem, Massachusetts. Driven by lust, Abigail was able to lie to the Salem community in hopes of covering her and her friends’ deeds and gaining the attention of John Proctor. Her arrogance enabled her t0 advance her deceit.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Conformity In The Crucible

    1087 Words  | 3 Pages

    Arthur Miller’s 1953 play The Crucible and Alfonso Cuarón’s 2006 dystopian science-fiction film Children of Men both represent people and politics through an exploration of the concept of justice and conformity and non-conformity. Both texts represent people and politics in a unique and evocative way through their differing textual forms, contexts and techniques.

    Read More

  • The Crucible Synthesis Essay

    567 Words  | 2 Pages

    To begin, teenager Abigail Williams exhibits the sinister side of human’s natural tendencies towards desire and deceit through her role in the play, identified Jungian archetype, and Kohlberg moral stage. First, as a female and an orphan, Abigail expresses the desperate sentiments of powerless women in the hierarchy of Salem society. Evident in Miller’s stage direction description, seventeen-year old Abigail depicts “a strikingly beautiful girl, an orphan, with an endless capacity for dissembling” (Miller I.8). Abigail’s dissembling or “hiding under a false appearance” (Webster Dictionary), reveals women’s inability to express genuine feelings, often out of fear of societal judgment or intolerance. As a female teen and orphan, Abigail represents a character with no authority in the Salem community, forced to act with malice and spite to get attention (as any female with a desire for influence would in this time). Second, identified with the Jungian archetype of the rebel, Abigail Williams acts with rage in an attempt to reveal and upend the immoral expectations present in Salem. Evidence of Abigail’s

    Read More

  • Corruption In The Salem Witch Trials By Arthur Miller

    1388 Words  | 3 Pages

    At the end of act one, Abigail and the girls, who confessed to witnessing and being victims of witchcrafts, have established themselves as saints within the community. While Salem is corrupt and the community was fill with suspicion, a saint is the greatest and safest role to be seen; Abigail and the girls are now at the top of the hierarchy and no one within the community can speak against them or harm them because Abigail’s solitary power protects them. To establish her hierarchy, Abigail threatens the girls: “Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you” (Miller 19). Abigail exerts her power to control these girls through threat, and letting the girls know that she is in-charge and to maintain that leadership, she will harm them. Confirming Abigail’s exertion of solitary power and corruption is James H. Read. According to James H. Read, “Hobbes subjects internalize a certain “picture” of that power and of their own roles and obligations” (507).Abigail internalizes power as dominating and controlling others weaker than her. Additionally, Abigail’s corruption is so deep that she demonstrates her hierarchy with Mary Warren. When Mary Warren began to tell the truth about the witch accusations,

    Read More

  • Free Essay on The Crucible: The Deterioration of Social Structure

    919 Words  | 2 Pages

    The deterioration of Salem's social structure precipitated the murders of many innocent people. Arthur Miller's depiction of the Salem witch trials, The Crucible, deals with a community that starts out looking like it is tightly knit and church loving. It turns out that once Tituba starts pointing her finger at the witches, the community starts pointing their fingers at each other. Hysteria and hidden agendas break down the social structure and then everyone must protect themselves from the people that they thought were their friends. The togetherness of the community, the church and legal system died so that the children could protect their families' social status.

    Read More

  • Power In The Crucible

    556 Words  | 2 Pages

    Power and fear can affect people´s sense of what's wrong and what's right. In “the Crucible” by Miller, we can see how the trials affected every individual in a negative aspect. people suffered because of such power and unfairness the authority had. The witch trials affected a lot of individuals from an emotional aspect to a psychological trauma.

    Read More

  • Abigail Williams's Malevolence And Manipulation

    1499 Words  | 3 Pages

    Her ability to lie, her outspokenness and developing sexuality, is unlawful against the Puritan views and deemed as evil. If convicted of the acts she has committed, including her apparent interaction with the Devil, she would face severe consequences. But to avoid this, Abigail realizes that through deceiving innocence she can control and manipulate murderous acts to save herself and her reputation. This was a new opportunity for her to expand her rule over the town. Controlling the young girls around her, Abigail uses her newfound sense of power to manipulate the group in fear. Driving them to aid her accusations, she uses them in the court to prove her claims. Abigail quickly strikes fear into the girls when she begins to hit and threaten the girls screaming, “And mark this. Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring you a pointy reckoning that will shudder you” (Miller 19). By threatening the girls, Abigail easily frightens them enough to do her bidding. Using fear to her advantage is evil and this act of manipulation only furthers her antagonism. Abigail now has the ability to use facades and delusion with the loyalty of the other girls, to convince the people that it is not her conjuring spirits, but others in the town attacking

    Read More

  • The Crucible - Emnity And Distrust

    1761 Words  | 4 Pages

    Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, is set in Salem village where an atmosphere of enmity and mistrust has been created through the conflicts and disagreements many villagers experience throughout the play. Many of these are caused by or, similar to the conflict between Parris and Proctor, are inflated by the many accusations of witchcraft occurring in the village.

    Read More

  • The Crucible: Hysteria And Injustice

    1618 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Crucible: Hysteria and Injustice Thesis Statement: The purpose is to educate and display to the reader the hysteria and injustice that can come from a group of people that thinks it's doing the "right" thing for society in relation to The Crucible by Arthur Miller. I. Introduction: The play is based on the real life witch hunts that occurred in the late 1600's in Salem, Massachusetts. It shows the people's fear of what they felt was the Devil's work and shows how a small group of powerful people wrongly accused and killed many people out of this fear and ignorance.

    Read More

  • An Analytical Essay Explaining Why Arthur Miller Wrote The Crucible

    740 Words  | 2 Pages

    hysteria brought about by the witchcraft scare in The Crucible leads to the upheaval in people’s differentiation between right and wrong, fogging their sense of true justice.

    Read More

  • The Social Issues Happening In The Crucible By Arthur Miller

    1770 Words  | 4 Pages

    The reputation of a person is very important to their standing in the community, and especially in a religious community. In the play the Crucible, Arthur Miller shows the importance of social standing by religious beliefs and contemporary social dynamics. Therefore, the play was based off of a historical context, witchcraft, some characters represent as a scapegoat while others act as an antithesis of being a witch to meet the society’s standards.

    Read More

  • Personal and Social Struggles in The Crucible by Arthur Miller

    1093 Words  | 3 Pages

    Abigail’s struggles come from many of her personal desires that are forbidden in her society, causing her to lie. However, this also creates further social problems, such as the initiation of the witch trials. After Betty is stuck in a coma, Reverend Parris questions Abigail about the night in the woods, because he is suspicious and she denies that it had anything to do with witchcraft. Abigail replies to Parris saying, “ We never conjured spirits” (24). Abigail lies to Parris, denies the statement that witchcraft ever occurred, and says that all they did was danced. Witchcraft and dancing both are sins in the society, and she knows that her reputation is at stake and finds the need to lie to look innocent. Parris wants to be sure and calls Reverend Hale to look further into the issue. Once Reverend Hale comes into town, he questions Abigail about the night, and she once again denies everything he asks her. Abigail is being questioned by Hale, and once Tituba enters she screams, “ She made me do it! She made Betty do it! She makes me drink blood!” (45). Abigail denies every...

    Read More

  • The Crucible Act 2 Essay

    797 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Crucible is an incredibly influential play no only in the fact that it displays many important themes, but it also portrays how a theocracy impacts societal actions. The Salem witch trials were the culmination of the problems with theocracy. The actions of society, not only are impacted by their personal thoughts, but also in religious undertones affect them. Act two in the play portrays not only all of these themes, but also some important events leading towards the witchcraft hysteria. Act two in the play portrays how theocracy ultimately leads to chaos.

    Read More

  • The Crucible 'And Extended Forecast: Bloodshed'

    586 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Crucible, the play by Arthur Miller, illustrates the perception about fear that can impact a person’s judgements, decisions and actions. During the play, there was a numerous amount of people who was accused for being witches. In the acts, fear seem like has taken controls over Salem, the girls decided to condemn innocent villagers in order to save their own lives. Not only did things go wrong in the play, but similar things like that also happened nowaday, based on “Extended Forecast: Bloodshed” by Nicholas Kristof,happens around the world which lead to the dead of million people. The Crucible and “Extended Forecast: Bloodshed” shows how fear turns small problems into underestimated consequences to each individual and society. Conception of fear, crisis in community reflect on the crisis of individuals and affect people’s judgements.

    Read More

  • Individuallity vs. Conformity

    1102 Words  | 3 Pages

    Having too much conformity causes detrimental repercussions on both the individual causing the issue and innocent bystanders. When facing an overwhelming amount of conformity, pressures from peers and society tend to force individuals to do tasks that go against what they believe and causes them to doubt their actions despite it being moral. When conformity rules over individuality, individuality tends to be pushed out of the equation, where conformers “expect” others to conform with their beliefs, “to shoot an elephant”, even if it means going against the individual’s will (Orwell). An individual’s voice, or identity is muffled and ignored. During the witch trials in The Crucible, victims who were accused had no opportunity or way to prove their innocence. The options they were offered to resolve the accusation was torture or death. Most who were accused of being witches admitted to being them even thou...

    Read More

More about The Influence of Society: The Crucible

Open Document