Hunting Witch Hunters In the Crucible by Arthur Miller, the author implies that there are multiple reasons that Danforth, Hathorne, and the other authorities choose to believe Abigail and the other girls, Rather than choosing to believe more respectable townspeople like Proctor and Giles. The Crucible is a story of mass hysteria in the town of Salem Massachusetts in the 1690s, where many people are accused of being witches, and many were even hanged for the accusations. The reason for Danforth and others choosing to believe the girls over Procter and other elders changes throughout the story, from the hysteria taking hold of the town at the beginning, to the simple reasoning that they couldn’t believe that these little girls would go as far
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With the complete ignorance of vital evidence to the cases, Danforth, Hathorne, and the other authorities clearly had preconceived notions of what they wanted to believe, dooming those accused from the start. If people had just acted rationally, and relied on evidence rather than anecdotes to issue their verdicts, many people could have been spared from being wrongfully hanged. It is important to take lessons from these events, like in the 1950, when Joseph MccArthy was accusing people of being Communists, Arthur Miller wrote the Crucible to show people how ridiculous they were acting. It doesn’t make any sense to believe young children over experienced adults, if children were allowed to control society, it would end up like Lord of the Flies. In the end, no matter what, if enough people believe something, it in a way, becomes the truth, and if people are told there are witches, and they go looking for witches expecting to find them, they will, even where none
With the complete ignorance of vital evidence to the cases, Danforth, Hathorne, and the other authorities clearly had preconceived notions of what they wanted to believe, dooming those accused from the start. If people had just acted rationally, and relied on evidence rather than anecdotes to issue their verdicts, many people could have been spared from being wrongfully hanged. It is important to take lessons from these events, like in the 1950, when Joseph MccArthy was accusing people of being Communists, Arthur Miller wrote the Crucible to show people how ridiculous they were acting. It doesn’t make any sense to believe young children over experienced adults, if children were allowed to control society, it would end up like Lord of the Flies. In the end, no matter what, if enough people believe something, it in a way, becomes the truth, and if people are told there are witches, and they go looking for witches expecting to find them, they will, even where none