The Theme Of Violence In The Crucible By Arthur Miller

Focus on the Real World

In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, it has a variety of different themes that could come from the novel. The one specific theme that stood out to me was hostility. This theme stuck out to me because hostility happens a lot in the real world as well as it happens in books, plays and movies. I have found many news stories of things that have recently happened, and a lot of it has to do with hostility and violence.

The theme hostility relates to many different kinds of scenarios of real life and in books or movies. One real life scenario that has happened recently was a school shooting and the gunman killed 17 victims. Many people didn’t think that it was real they thought it was a drill. In the article, Gunman Confessed

to Florida High School Shooting, Police Say, an example of hostility is “until that moment, she'd hoped it was an active-shooter drill, with police officers firing blanks, ‘until I saw my teacher dead on the floor.’” This quote is related to the theme hostility because it shows how violent things are and how people choose to be violent and hurt people. This also relates to my theme hostility because in the article it talks about how many people were killed. This shows that hostility does happen out of books and movies and that it actually happens in real life too. An example that shows the theme of hostility in the book The Crucible by Arthur Miller is “Great stones lay upon his chest until he plead aye or nay. They say he gave them but two words. ‘More weight,’ he says. And died” - (Miller 125). This quote relates to the theme of hostility because Giles Corey, the one who was crushed by stones, was not answering one question that was being asked and the men were getting very angry with him so he said “more weight” so that he didn’t have to answer the question because he knew that he was going to die anyway.
To continue, there are many more examples of hostility in the real world. In the article Suspect in Quadruple Killing at Car Wash Dies there is an example of a 28 year old male shooting people possibly out of anger.
The quote is “Smith apparently shot the victims with the AR-15 and the 9 mm, police said. Citing the ongoing investigation, officials said at a press conference that they couldn't comment on the relationship between Smith and the four victims and haven't released a potential motive.One of the slain victims, Chelsie Cline, had briefly been involved with Smith, but broke things off months ago.”
This quote is related to the theme hostility because Smith the gunman, could have been very angry at one of the victims that he shot and took it out on all of them because he didn’t know how else to express his anger towards them.

He also could have been just angry in general or mad at someone else and just took it out on whomever he saw, while he was angry. Another example in the book The Crucible by Arthur Miller is “Why? Do you mean to deny this confession when you are free? I mean to deny nothing! Then explain to me. Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without a name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!” - (Miller 133). This quote relates to the theme hostility because Proctor is denying his confession which means that he is going to be hung. This is considered as hostility, it is violent because people are angry, everyone is accusing each other for witchcraft, and the people being accused are being trialed and

hung.
Two more examples of hostility, one from the real world and one from the book The Crucible, is from the article 'Suicide contagion': 6 teens die in 6 months in small Ohio school district’.

The quote is “Three of the suicides occurred in a span of 11 days in January. Police say the suicides don't look like they are linked, and the methods the children used were varied”. This quote potentially relates to the theme hostility because the kids that commited suicide could have been being bullied by someone or multiple people. They also could have been very angry at themselves for doing something wrong and just couldn’t handle it by themselves and didn’t want to talk about it so they took their life, so they didn’t have to explain it to anyone, or didn’t have anyone to talk to. My last example from the book The Crucible by Arthur Miller is “You drank blood, Abby! You didn't tell him that! Betty, you never say that again! You will never—You did, you did! You drank a charm to kill John Proctor's wife! You drank a charm to kill Goody Proctor!(smashes her across the face) Shut it! Now shut it!” (pg.113). This quote relates to the theme hostility because Abigail is getting very angry with Betty because she does not want her to tell anyone what actually happened so she gets violent and smacks

Betty.
To conclude, the one major theme present in the book The Crucible by Arthur Miller is hostility. Hostility stood out because some people don’t realize how much hostility actually happens in the real world as well as in books or movies. Even on the news there is so much that goes on and a lot of it has to do with violence and hostility towards each other. Overall, our society is filled with hostility because it is everywhere you go, or look.