Hysteria

various convictions of witchcraft led to the executions that are now infamously known as the Salem Witch Trials. The main fuel behind this fire of violence is made apparent in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible to be the effects of hysteria and paranoia rooted from fear. Hysteria is defined as a condition affecting a group of people, characterized by mostly anxiety and excitement, irrational behavior or inexplicable symptoms of illness. The definition of paranoia is a constant series of cyclic…

God’s work I do” (Miller 107) in the time of they hysteria she will blame anyone to protect herself, when blamed in all the hysteria Proctor takes it a different way the denying it “I say- I say- God is dead!”(Miller 111) “You are pulling Heaven down and raising up a whore”(Miller 111) he seems to give up and go slightly crazy once Mary accuses him of being the reason for all the witchery that happened in the village this is what the mass hysteria has caused people to turn on each other and to…

especially in the practice of witchcraft. People in the society were sentence to death because of all theses accusations of the practice, they all became delirious and jump to conclusions. In the play "The Crucible" by Arthur Miller, the dangers of hysteria resulted in the false accusations upon innocent people, the possession of political power, and the corruption of the community by rumors. It all started out with the false accusations upon the innocents, when a group of girls were caught…

lose themselves among waves of self-oppression and in the course of time suffer from differentiating what is reality and deception. An individual who fled from her cruel past and the reality that substantially made her the epitome of psychological hysteria is Blanche Dubois; the protagonist of the Southern Gothic novel, A Streetcar Named Desire, composed by Tennessee Williams. It focuses on her recurring psychotic meltdowns as she suffers from the graveyard of her former self. She is an ocean…

Hysteria. Misunderstanding. Paranoia. Puritan colonists living in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692 felt these emotions, especially during the Salem witch trials. In the play The Crucible, hysteria and paranoia are two clear character feelings. Each person embodies the characteristics, whether it be for personal reasons or for the fear of the witch hunt. Abigail Williams and John Proctor represent hysteria and paranoia having to deal with personal conflicts and issues with the witch hunt. In…

The drone hysteria can be broken down into three types:the fear of the violation of privacy; the fear of weaponization of drones; and the fear of what could happen if a “drone strike” ,drone hitting a commercial jet engine, really did happen. All of these fears are well founded and have a level of concern that is pressing. Privacy is a rare commodity in today’s world. The media seems to be everywhere and the government has cameras everywhere. Drones offer a way to gather information like never…

Massachusetts, McCarthyism, and Mass Hysteria Humankind has expressed throughout time how easy and destructive it can be to accuse others without proper evidence or a truly reliable investigation. First occurring in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692, innocent individuals were unjustly persecuted as a result of their seemingly abnormal actions or personal affiliations. Behavior such as this was rekindled, witnessed during McCarthyism in the early 1950’s and the treatment of homosexuals during the…

are lower compared to those who are single. People are indeed happier if they are married especially if they both love one another and are committed to the relationship. Happiness can certainly reduce stress. However, hysteria can still occur during marriage. For instance, hysteria is not only in relation to stress but also amnesia and impulsive emotions including…

that hysteria has had on communities, fearful residents never contribute to the success and happiness of a community, but rather the destruction of one. Examples of times when hysteria has taken control of a weak community can be found in looking at the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 and in McCarthyism from the late 1940s to mid-1950s. However, while society has learned from these experiences, this does not make it so that hysteria is completely avoidable. Even in this modern-day and age, hysteria…

itself, no matter how people act. Sometimes, these relationships lead to trouble. Hysteria is an uncontrollable outburst of emotion or fear, in this case shared by the entire society. Started by numerous individual conflicts, it can bring to light problems within the society. The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, is a powerful tool in demonstrating to modern society just how easy it is for an individual to generate hysteria and for the rest of society to follow it. Conditions in a society…