Hysteria

Through his representation of the conflict between men of integrity and the self-serving, Miller highlights the impossibility of ascertaining the truth in corrupt social systems where individuals manipulate hysteria to gain personal power. The power play represented in the Salem Witch trials mirrors the repressive political perspective of the McCarthy tribunals, offering Miller an allegorical platform to question the legitimacy of the projected threat of Communism…

Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is one of the most compelling modern texts that discusses fear and how it affects society as a whole, as well as the individual. It is no coincidence that this play was written during the contemporary witch hunt called the Red Scare. Miller was clearly using the many similarities between the early colonial setting of his writing and the bleak truths of his time period to draw attention to patterns that repeat throughout history and will continue to repeat as long as…

her character develops you can see her true lying, cheating, and stealing personality. She takes what she wants and stops at nothing, so much as murder. Abigail's character causes the most chaos in the town's hysteria. Abigail started this uproar by lying. At the…

On February 9, 1950, Joseph McCarthy delivered an impassioned speech before the Ohio County Women's Republican Club in Wheeling, West Virginia. In the speech, chock-full of unfounded claims and comprising anti-communist sentiment, McCarthy claimed to have a list of Russian spies working within the United States government. McCarthy’s speech would have a significant impact on the state of affairs in the United States in the following years and would lead to a quick rise in prominence for the…

hero through his transformation in the town of Salem during a period of hysteria as well as strong influential forces that distract and tempt him throughout. In The Crucible John Proctor transforms as a person and as a character. His transformation leads him to become a tragic hero. In the beginning of the play, John was very careless to others.…

The Salem witch trials were a terrible time in Salem, Massachusetts between Spring of 1692 and September 1692, during which there was panic and hysteria over accusations of witchcraft. This was a time of great change. The puritans feared that their strictly religious society was crumbling, and that fear allowed for the hysteria to take over. Young women were accusing vulnerable people of the community, mostly older women, of witchcraft. Women of the time were extremely unequal to men. They were…

and came to the Parris house to hear these stories and learn these tricks. Some parents did not know what some going on at the Parris house, but some knew and did nothing to discourage their children from going there. The Parris girls began having hysteria, and exhibiting the same symptoms as the Goodwin children 4 years prior. After checked by the doctor and Sergeant they confirmed the girls were possessed. After word got around the girls friends came down with similar…

during the 1692 and 1693 in Massachusetts this really happed during this time. The main parts that started atnd fueled the trials were politics, religion, family, feuds, economics, and the imaginations and fears of people (Sutter). The seeds of the hysteria are afflicted Salem village, Massachusetts was sown on January 1692 when groups of young lady’s began to display wild behavior. The physicians called to examine the girls could find no cause of the disturbing behavior. If the source of the…

and puritan lifestyle all lead up to the tension and hysteria of the witch trials. The black slave, Tituba, whose role in Salem was to care for the family of Rev. Parris, was accused of a witch because of her knowledge of foreign magic tricks and social status. She then falsely confesses to being a witch and confesses to knowing of other witches in the village, among them, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne. Overall, the main cause of the witch hysteria was the puritan lifestyle because, not only did…

atoms move more “frantically”, as they are exposed to more and more heat. Similar to a chemical trapped in a crucible, the people of Salem were trapped in the concept of witchcraft. As each person who had been convicted, accused more and more people, hysteria rose and…