The Crucible And Hysteria Analysis

Manipulation, Power and Hysteria Humans, from birth, have an innate desire to follow powerful and respected leaders in a crowd-- even through times of madness and savagery, such as Adolf Hitler and the propaganda and manipulation techniques he put into use to gain his desires. Both The Crucible and Lord of the Flies target the dangers of hysteria that humans manufacture, panic that one person fabricates that another person or group accepts, through the comparative pairings of the witches and the beast, Abigail Williams and Jack Merridew, and the Devil and the Lord of the Flies. These characters and manifestations all incite or take part in fabricating the mass hysteria and mob mentality that plague the civilizations in both The Crucible and …show more content…
Children are associated with being innocent and pure of sin. Arthur Miller questions the innocence of children throughout The Crucible. Abigail Williams is a young, headstrong and manipulative girl in Salem village who is a leader and well respected in her group of friends. Abigail begins as an innocent adolescent child who is in love with a man much older than her, John Proctor, this causes her to sin. She goes out into the woods to cast spells on boys to make them fall in love with the girls, she even asks for the death of John Proctor’s wife because she believes that without Elizabeth proctor, John Proctor will choose to spend his life with her. She is then found out, and out of fear and frustration, she chooses to lie by confessing she is a witch who wants to be with God, so she accuses other villagers she dislikes. Abigail is shown throughout The Crucible to be corrupted by her ill-minded love for John Proctor , which clouds her sight, making her impure. Her actions create hysteria and chaos amongst the villagers because of all the people who die as a result of her manipulation over her follower friends and the judges, making her a creator of hysteria. Abigail’s Lord of the Flies counterpart, Jack Merridew, is also a headstrong and strong-willed young adolescent child, and leader of his group, the choir boys. Jack begins on the island as an innocent and well behaved child; however, after Jack kills his first pig and loses some of his innocence, he begins to enjoy hunting and manipulates his group into following him to create a new group called “the hunters”. Jack becomes a creator of hysteria when he informs the other boys about the beast and how it is real and should be hunted down, even though he does not think the beast is real earlier in the book. Simon becomes the target of the boys after he runs out of the woods dirty, bleeding, and crawling--Golding describes Simon’s