Our theme is mass hysteria and conformity. Mass hysteria is when panic strikes a majority of the population. In Salem the mass hysteria was about witches and the devil being among them. The accusations that Abigail and her friends made of people being witches sparked the mass hysteria and witch trials. Conformity is following what everyone else is doing.
Background: The Salem witchcraft trials of 1692 have been studied by many historians looking for the complex social, political, and psychological determinants behind the community wide hysteria that led to the death of 20 innocent Puritans. Ergot poisoning has been put forth by some as a previously unsuspected cause of the bizarre behaviors of the young adolescent girls who accused the townsfolk of witchcraft. During the early winter of 1692 two young girls became inexplicably ill and started having fits of convulsion, screaming, and hallucinations. Unable to find any medical reason for their condition the village doctor declared that there must be supernatural forces of witchcraft at work. This began an outbreak of hysteria that would result in the arrest of over one hundred-fifty people and execution of twenty women and men.
The people of the town were pressured, accused, and tested simple tests but the girls would scream with such pain whenever the accused spoke. The victims, the girls, and the judges all were consumed in the anarchy and lost all sanity. Were people convicted of not only being witches in Salem but across the country suspicion arose and people convicted women of being witches for the simplest causes. Two girls took a joke way too far and caused disorder across the country. Not all "witches" were from Salem, MA.
Still tying into religious influences, the very physical appearance of a woman could lead to the belief that she is a witch. Warts and other natural marks of age were viewed as if they were stamps from the devil himself. Older women were the typical candidates for being a witch, many older than 50 years of age. They had no protectors, as they were often widowed, and could incite revenge if they erred in a way that would make them public targets of the community. These women were often
The Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692 The Salem Witchcraft Trials are so famous that people say it as if it’s one word: Salemwitchcraft. But do people really know what went on in Salem? During the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692 in a few terror-filled months, nearly 200 people were condemned as witches. Historically witches are not the funny mischievous Samanthas of the 1960s show Bewitched, nor are they the cartoon green warted witches on brooms that you see so often on Halloween decorations. Historically witchcraft has been thought of as violent horrible things.
At the beginning of the play, Reverend Parris accused Abigail of witch craft but to avoid punishment she passed the blame to Tituba saying “I never called him! Tituba, Tituba…” (Miller 42). Abigail took no responsibility for her actions but blamed another person claiming, “She made me do it! She made Betty do it!” (Miller 43). Once Tituba confessed to witchcraft, Abigail joined in by accusing others of witchcraft so the negative attention would not be on the girls.
This leads into the deaths of the innocent people who are accused and automatically found guilty. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, the people of Salem are responsible for the witch hysteria. The person with the most influence on the hysteria is Abigail. In the past, Abigail had an affair with John Proctor. She gets jealous when Proctor leaves her to go back to his wife, Elizabeth.
The Salem Witch Trials started by little girls acting strangely and then accusing others to have bewitched them. The defendants during the Salem Witch Trials took desperate matters to avoid being executed. Sarah Good resorted to saying the other accused “witch”, Sarah Osborne, had “tormented the children.” At one point Osborne even pretended to also have been infected by the witches’ magic. Tituba admitted to being a witch and told stories of flying around on broomsticks and being visited by creatures. Confessing to witchcraft was the only way a member of the accused wouldn’t be executed.
It makes perfect sense as to why Miller wrote The Crucible allegorically to these events, 1953 was a time in which American fear and madness concerning communism was frankly getting out of control, just as the experiences in Salem were in the 1690s. The Crucible is a historically fictitious adaption of the Salem Witch Trials which as previously stated, was an episode of unjust accusations of witchcraft/devil worship carried out by a group of female teens. In the play, the group of accusing teens is led by girl named Abigail Williams. In order to refocus the “heat” on another source in order to save herself from trouble, her and her peers wrongfully stage a phenomenon of witchcraft in Salem, producing mass panic in the community for months on end. It got so bad in fact, that at one point Abigail implied that even the official court judges could be guilty of wicked doings; “Let you beware, Mr. Danforth.
The Crucible: Mass Hysteria In 1692, a small town in Salem, Massachusetts experienced an outbreak of mass hysteria and pure chaos in fear of witchcraft. The incidents were started by a small group of teen girls who accused innocent people of being with the devil and witchcraft. It baffles me to see that such a religious town could be in such an uproar to these accusations. Arthur Miller uses great examples of mass hysteria within the girls and other people in the town. Many people go along with what the girls are doing, while some stick to their own belief in what is right.