The Standards Of Conformity In The Crucible By Arthur Miller

Throughout society, adolescent girls have often been pressured to conform to one another or impossible standards. In Katherine Howe’s novel Conversion, she comments on this pressure to conform by relating a unexplainable illness in modern times to Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, which occurred during the Salem witch trials in the late 1600s. The plot of both literary works revolves around a mass hysteria caused by a group of strangely behaving girls. Colleen, the protagonist of Conversion, is dumbfounded after the most popular girl in school begins odd behaviors, but the entire community and even nation is confused by the group of girls who mimic these behaviors—and with no scientific reason of why. The Crucible mirrors this plot, though witchcraft is blamed for the girls’ actions. After Abigail Williams, a stunning, …show more content…
In both Danvers and Salem, the community is expected to be what is considered an ideal citizen. Because the pressure is so harsh, it is when the standards of conformity are not met that the community self-destructs. Had there been no intense need to conform, those who were different would not have had the power to corrupt the communities as they did. Their need blinded the viewers ability to act on their own independent thought and instead follow what the courtroom or media instructed them to. And as readers see that the consequences fro this behavior are intolerable—death in the crucible and the deconstruction of a school in conversion. They inform readers that he pressures to conform and uphold reputation is that individual thought and actions should guide of people’s behavior, not the expectations of others. Most of all, these literary works show readers that the truth is necessary to keep from corruption. Both societies in the literary works are corrupted with lies, which are then followed by the people either because they do not know any better or are