Essay On Fear Is A Motivator In The Crucible

Imagine this. You’re paralyzed, unable to do anything the way you want; unable to achieve new goals, to try new things, or to simply live your life the way you want to because you are restricted. Many times we have a similar reaction to fear. Fear can motivate us to an extent, if used correctly and in small amounts. But more often than not we let fear take over and control us, stopping us from doing what we actually want to achieve. When fear completely takes over we either retreat and back down, being paralyzed so to speak, or we act upon it in an unhealthy manner causing us to make irrational and dangerous decisions. Fear is not an effective motivator as evidenced by the characters in Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible. The characters of The Crucible let fear take over, thus becoming too overwhelming to be an effective motivator. Fear causes the characters to do things unimaginable that destroy the Salem community. This begins during act one and carries on throughout the entire play when Abigail manipulates the girls that were in the forest that night to lie about the witchcraft they preformed. After being questioned and interrogated by her uncle, Reverend Parris, Abigail claims that she and the other girls were simply singing …show more content…
Out of fear she starts making false accusations to take the blame off of herself, “I saw Sarah Good with the devil! I saw Goody Osbourne with the devil!” (Miller, 158). Abby lies to keep herself safe, regardless of what it might do to the town and the people around her. A similar idea is proposed by Marc Siegel in his book False Alarm: The Truth About the Epidemic of Fear. “A system that doesn’t warn of real threats and does warn of unreal ones is broken” (Siegel, 2005). Abigail warned of unreal threats to protect herself rather than warning of the truth to potentially protect the entire