A young man sees the look of disgust as his father reads aloud from the newspaper about two men getting married in a town nearby. The young man takes this look and internalizes it creating a single elementary thought, “being gay is wrong.” This young man has just been socialized just as his father was before him, and his father’s father was before both of them. The process continues until, alas, the young man’s daughter reveals that she is a lesbian. The man is perplexed; all of his life he has been taught, and has taught others, how to look at life through the eyes of one basic thought, “being gay is wrong.” Nathaniel Mathis has lived in a similar situation having been anti-gay his whole life, until his lesbian daughter killed herself
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In Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, John Proctor and Giles Corey refuse to remain silent. They go to the courts to plea for their wives’ lives and reveal the fallacies the girls have been telling. After rushing into the court to bring their evidence, the two men are taken aside where Judge Danforth, in an uproar, states, “And how do you imagine to help her cause with such contemptuous riot? Now be gone. Your old age alone keeps you out of jail for this” (Miller III. 85). Prior to even meeting the two men Danforth has signed the death warrants of many accused witches and is in the process of condemning another. When these men interrupt, his first instinct is that they are attempting to delay the court and cause a riot. Danforth does not even begin to consider that these two men may be the voice of logic. This vital first impression eventually has massive consequences for both Proctor and Giles as Danforth refuses to give them a real opportunity to prove their point and sentences both of them to death. The overarching goal of Miller was to ridicule McCarthyism which had been spreading through the country at the time The Crucible was made. Out of fear of the communist Soviet Union, Senator McCarthy accused over 205 U.S. State …show more content…
It requires, as they say, to walk a mile in someone else's shoes in order to accurately judge the character of a person or idea. The people of Salem and Hillsboro, with the exception of a few members, struggled to break away from this monotony. The few members who did break away only did so after an event forced them to, and once they were free they walked in the shoes of those against whom they had been prejudiced. Nathaniel Mathis fell victim to the cruelties of first impressions and had a hard-fought battle with what he thought was the status quo. Once the monstrous hand of reality slapped him in the face with the loss of his daughter’s life, he overcame a deeply-embedded prejudice. Once Mathis overcame his prejudice he then took another step by speaking out and raising awareness in hopes of provoking others to remove bias and prejudice from their lives. Maybe if we all change our perspective society will begin to let go of these barbaric biases that have gripped it for millennia, and prejudice may at long last be
In Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, John Proctor and Giles Corey refuse to remain silent. They go to the courts to plea for their wives’ lives and reveal the fallacies the girls have been telling. After rushing into the court to bring their evidence, the two men are taken aside where Judge Danforth, in an uproar, states, “And how do you imagine to help her cause with such contemptuous riot? Now be gone. Your old age alone keeps you out of jail for this” (Miller III. 85). Prior to even meeting the two men Danforth has signed the death warrants of many accused witches and is in the process of condemning another. When these men interrupt, his first instinct is that they are attempting to delay the court and cause a riot. Danforth does not even begin to consider that these two men may be the voice of logic. This vital first impression eventually has massive consequences for both Proctor and Giles as Danforth refuses to give them a real opportunity to prove their point and sentences both of them to death. The overarching goal of Miller was to ridicule McCarthyism which had been spreading through the country at the time The Crucible was made. Out of fear of the communist Soviet Union, Senator McCarthy accused over 205 U.S. State …show more content…
It requires, as they say, to walk a mile in someone else's shoes in order to accurately judge the character of a person or idea. The people of Salem and Hillsboro, with the exception of a few members, struggled to break away from this monotony. The few members who did break away only did so after an event forced them to, and once they were free they walked in the shoes of those against whom they had been prejudiced. Nathaniel Mathis fell victim to the cruelties of first impressions and had a hard-fought battle with what he thought was the status quo. Once the monstrous hand of reality slapped him in the face with the loss of his daughter’s life, he overcame a deeply-embedded prejudice. Once Mathis overcame his prejudice he then took another step by speaking out and raising awareness in hopes of provoking others to remove bias and prejudice from their lives. Maybe if we all change our perspective society will begin to let go of these barbaric biases that have gripped it for millennia, and prejudice may at long last be