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Role of fear in human life essay
Role of fear in human life essay
Role of fear in human life essay
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Its easier to know which characters verge upon fright, and who was scared of the life and wanted to seek help on getting out. The Crucible is all about the desperation, hysteria. and fear of Salem’s people. The theme of the Crucible was more so fear.The Crucible takes place in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. Everything to me seem to begins at Reverend Parris house where he finds out his daughter Betty is sick. the doctor couldn't figure out what was wrong with betty, but what Reverend Parris didn't mention that he found his daughter dancing in the wood. which is forbidden and known as witch craft!
people who where accused of the witch craft in the Crucible were, Tituba (Rev. Parris slave), Corey and his wife, Giles, John Proctor and his wife Elizabeth, the three local beggar women
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When Abigail started accusing people of being witches , everyone was scared that she would accuse them. A lot of people were afraid to do every day things because they were afraid of being accused. this is very simiale to the McCarthyism situation because it was started by the fear of nuclear war. Communists snuck into America from the Soviet Union to spy on the U.S. and the Soviet Union were on the border of a nuclear war, so McCarthy put fear in everybody because no one had any clue who was a communist and who wasn't. He made everyone hesitant to trust people, and they were scared they would be accused themselves. Unlike the Salem witch trail when people where accussed of being a witch they were hanged. being accused of communist your reputation would be tarnish. people begin accused people of communist in 1600 and unlike the salem witch trail were the outsider were accused it was the insider people in the entertainment business and more so of famus people who were well
The Crucible was set in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. It was set in a little country town full of what everyone thought were good people. When we started reading The Crucible we were introduced to many people from this small town of Salem. There are many pros and cons to living in a small town, but this book shows us many of these pros and cons. The three main characters that we were introduced are Abigail Williams, John Proctor, and Reverend Hale. In this story these characters contributed some of the most irrational things that caused most of the problems in this small town.
Joseph McCarthy was a Republican senator who did as much as he could to whip up anti-communism in the 1950s. In the time of his term, he didn’t attach his name to anything significant until February 9, 1950. On that day, he gave a political speech claiming that he had a list of 205 Communists in the State Department. Although nobody saw the list of names and it wasn’t clarified by anybody else, the speech made national news. Furthermore, this relates to The Crucible because Abigail, like McCarthy, made multiple false witch accusations on women in Salem. Arthur Miller’s historical play, The Crucible, portrays the historical events of the Salem witch trials through a number of memorable characters and a background based off of McCarthyism. While
The Crucible by Arthur Miller is set in Salem in a Puritan community. John Proctor, Elizabeth Proctor, Reverend Hale, Reverend Paris, and Abigail are the main characters. The book is about witchcraft or what the town thinks is witchcraft. John Proctor is the tragic hero because he is loving, loyal, authoritative, but his tragic flaw is his temper.
In the Town of Salem Massachusetts, 1692, a group of adolescents are caught dancing in the forest. Among the adolescents in The Crucible, Abigail Williams and Mary Warren. The girls are horrified that they have been caught dancing, a sinful act, therefore they devise a story to evade punishment: they claim to have been bewitched. The first person who they accuse of witchcraft is a the black maid, Tituba. This results in her jail sentence as well as fearful suspicion throughout the town. Arthur Miller demonstrates the impact of lying as the girls recognise and manipulate their power in the town. Lead by Abigail, they go further, claiming countless others guilty and dooming them to exile. Miller demonstrates that there power is so great that even when Mary attempts to stand against her friends, she is quickly overwhelmed and once again plays along with their trickery. As the girls’ conspiracy continues, controversy arise over their truthfulness; people choose sides often lying themselves to support their side, further altering the lives of all involved.
20 were executed” (Blumberg). The Crucible setting is based on The Salem Witch trials, but the plot is based on The Red Scare. The author employs strict tone and rhetorical questions to convey power. This connects to the purpose of how a occurring can devastate a whole community and the people in it. Arthur Miller, the author of The Crucible, employs empowerment by expressing the challenges within each character and their influence on the trial through the characters John Proctor, Abigail, and Danforth.
Many people look back on the events of the Salem witch trials and laugh at the absurdity of the allegations. It seems crazy that society could be fooled into believing in things like witches and deal with the events in such an extreme manner. It is a common belief that witch hunts are things of the past. Many people would agree that they no longer exist today; however Arthur Miller, author of the play, "The Crucible", points out that society has not come very far from the days of the Salem witch trials. In his play, he used the Salem witch trials to represent the McCarthy Era because he saw that the nation was facing the same events that Salem went through back in the late 1600's. Arthur Miller wrote "The Crucible" in an attempt to create moral awareness for society. He did so by making a few small changes to the history and creating parallels in the play with racism, human tendencies, and H.U.A.C.
The Crucible is set in this mass hysteria in Salem, Massachusetts during the mad witch hunts in the late 17th century. It tells a true tale about a town, after accusations from a few girls, which begins a mad witch hunt for witches that did not even exist. In result, many townspeople were hanged on charges of witchcraft. The Crucible demonstrates the cruelties people face when society turns their back upon them.
What is McCarthyism? It is the public onslaught of an individual or an individual’s character by means of baseless and uncorroborated charges, basically the repudiation of a person’s reputation. Joe McCarthy was the Wisconsin senator that evoked this era of fear and paranoia by inflaming the current fear of world domination by the Communist party that enveloped the Nation. He did this by announcing that he had discovered “57 cases of individuals who would appear to be either card carrying members or certainly loyal to the Communist Party, but who nevertheless are still helping to shape our foreign policy.” (McCarthy, 1950, p. 2), later the amount of implicated individuals rose to 205. These accusations launched McCarthy into the national spotlight where he then began his smear campaign against many well-known Americans, which was commonly referred to as “witch-hunts”. Because of McCarthy’s actions, up to 12, people lots their jobs hundreds were incarcerated. He then turned his sights to book banning because he claimed there were 30,000 books written by all shades of Communists. After his lists were made public all were removed from the Overseas Library Program. But he was not finished yet, he then assailed members of the entertainment business. He had writers and actors brought to trial. Many of these people were blacklisted and worse, all without a single shred of evidence. When people spoke out against McCarthy they were thrown onto the communist train, until enough people came forward to rebuke McCarthy’s unprecedented tactics. At this point he fell from political power into dishonor on December 2, 1954. This ended the McCarthy era, but not the atmosphere of paranoia that lingers in the nation today.
A very famous man once said, “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.” (Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933). This is certainly true when it comes to Arthur Miller’s, The Crucible. Arthur Miller lived through the Red Scare, also known as McCarthyism. After living through this era and being one of the accused communists Miller wrote the book titled The Crucible in 1952. This book told the story of the Salem witch trials with some modifications to make it more relevant to the current situation. The book ultimately became an allegory devoted solely to McCarthyism. In The Crucible it uses situations such as the actual trials; direct comparisons of the characters in the book to those that participated in the McCarthy trials and, the atmosphere of the two events were almost identical.
At the Salem Witch Trials, one hundred fifty people were accused of practicing witchcraft and nineteen of those were convicted and executed. The evidence against these people is hardly substantial. At the McCarthy hearings, thousands of people were “blacklisted.” Anyone who tried to oppose the accusations was also viewed as a Communist. No one was convicted due to the more advanced legal system; still, that did not erase the fear that was instilled by the allegations.
The lack of evidence was why so many innocent people were convicted when it was obvious no harm was done. Everyone who were “accused in The Crucible and those accused during the McCarthy hearings were found guilty with such little evidence” (Comparing the Crucible and the McCarthy Hearings). In “The Crucible” many false accusations can be seen throughout the play, but the major ones are at the beginning of play with numerous characters being accused including Sarah Good and Goody Osburn. The accusers are no other than the little girls who are accusing others for their own personal gain. The girls’ “unsubstantiated claims about the existence of witches in Salem” not only led to their own downfall but it also “[ruined] lives and lead to increased hostility in Salem” (Similarities between McCarthyism and The Crucible). The same lack of evidence plays out in McCarthyism. Joseph McCarthy came in during the 1950s when “it [was] obvious that America’s position in world affairs [was] seriously weakened” because it allowed him to gain people through peoples’ fears (Pg. 7 McCarthyism - The Fight for America). Since there were rumors of communists of America it “sparked a hunt that many backed because they were scared” and so even with the lack of evidence “everyone was willing to support it” just out of fear (Comparing the Crucible). McCarthy’s use of fear on the people also led to unsubstantiated
BEGIN The root of the problem in both The Crucible and McCarthyism was an extreme desire for power. In the novel, Danforth and Hathorne instantly gained power as they sentenced the accused to jail and death. They were so caught up in the power that they were gaining, that they listened to outlandish accusations, not stopping to think if they could be false. Danforth and Hathorne were seen as heroes to the people that were caught up in the chaos and paranoia of witchcraft. This was their motivation in their prosecution. Also, Abigail and the other girls were driven by selfishness. Ruth and Betty accused innocent people of the crime because they did not want to get in trouble, as did Tituba. Abigail accused Elizabeth Proctor because she wanted to be with John. Mary went along with the girls for fear that they would turn on her. No one with power had the courage to speak up and admit what they were doing was wrong (The Crucible). Because of their abuse of power, the town was destroyed. Power in the hands of a selfish person is disastrous.
Miller directly targets McCarthy through the character Abigail Williams in The Crucible. Abigail is portrayed as a sneaky, manipulative girl, not unlike McCarthy. Abigail desperately yearned for John Proctor, begging him to “give [her] a word…a soft word,” but when John pushed her away and told her “that’s done with,” Abigail felt that the only way she could have John to herself was to accuse his wife, Elizabeth Proctor, of practicing witchcraft (Miller 1246). Although Abigail had no evidence that the people she accused were practicing witchcraft, the court took her accusations seriously because Abigail had credibility. Abigail accused Tituba of witchery, and when Tituba confessed that she had, in fact, conversed with the devil, it proved to the townspeople that Abigail had told the truth (1262). Similarly, McCarthy accused innocent people of being communists in order to get what he wanted: popularity in the political race for reelection for senator of Wisconsin (“Persecution” 1). McCarthy gaine...
McCarthyism is the practice of making unfair allegations using unfair allegations and unfair investigative techniques. In the Committee for Cultural Freedom and the Roots of McCarthyism it articulates how McCarthyism is the practice of making unfair allegations and basically in this article it talks about communism and Hitler/Nazis. The situation with witchcraft and with the other two situations are both unfair techniques. In the Crucible basically each character was accused for doing witchcraft when they weren’t even doing it therefor they got sent to trial and put in jail to wait to be killed. This compares to the other two situations because Hitler was doing some unfair things to the Jews because of their race (Bullert,
A group of teenage girls were secretly dancing in the woods with a black slave, named Tituba. When they were discovered of what they were doing, the girls started accusing certain individuals in the village of dealing with witchcraft. Within a blink of an eye, the entire village is controlled by a devil that exists within the fear of each person. A drama of suspense and impact, Arthur Miller's The Crucible, explores through the individuals' vengeance, fear, reputation, and quest for power.