Austin Meyer R10286217 The Crucible In 1692, the Puritans believed in the supernatural power of witchcraft and that the devil is responsible if anything bad happens. This belief in sorcery plays a very important role in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and sets the tone for how the play progresses. In the small Massachusetts town of Salem, religion is viewed as law and anything that goes against the bible is considered a dreadful sin. During this time, a person’s name meant everything to their honor and respect from others. An easy accusation of one’s name could tarnish their reputation and ruin their career.
Hoping to end relations between Daisy and Jay, Tom did not hold back when confronting Gatsby. This whole situation is very ironic considering Tom is also having an affair with Myrtle and Daisy knows all about it. Tom only thought about himself and his image and got terribly mad because there was the chance of him losing his wife. George Wilson, compared to Tom, acts a lot like him except the abusiveness towards his wife, Myrtle. George owned a gas station in the Valley of Ashes and was very poor.
When Abigail creates hysteria over witchcraft that sweeps over Salem, she views the situation as a chance to lie and manipulate to achieve her goals, while John Proctor sees through Abigail’s deceit and views the situation as a childish stunt that could get many innocent townspeople hurt. Proctor’s fears come true when Abigail begins accusing innocent women, including Elizabeth, John Proctor’s wife, of witchcraft, hoping to have Proctor for herself after Elizabeth has been hanged. Abigail sees Salem as full of gullible and easily manipulated pawns in her evil game of self-aggrandizement and in her quest to be with John Proctor. Proctor, however, regards Abigail’s plot as an atrocity and tries to save his wife and the other accused townspeople at all costs. Unlike Abigail, Proctor degrades himself in front of all of his fellow townspeople by admitting his lechery to the court in an attempt
In the 1950's, however, people were terrified of the red Communists coming to take over their beloved country. Senator McCarthy was the one taking out other people in the govornment that he suspected to be a communist via inprisonment. The witch trials and McCarthyism started differently as well, for one started with a group of young girls' voodoo practice and the other started when senator McCarthy was trying to win an election and took advantage of the peoples feelings toward the "Red scare." A lot of the evil things McCarthyism did were private and behind closed govornment doors. During the Salem Witch Trials the accused people were forced to make a public confession and be killed in front of their family and friends.
Rough Draft “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” Edmund Berke said. In this story the crucible by Arthur Miller. There is a small town in Salem where an outbreak of witch trails has happened. The people are being accused by a group of teenage girls. Many people are hanged for crime of witch craft…many for their land.
“A person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between” (Miller 87). This particular quote from Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, first and foremost portrays the intolerant nature of Puritan society in Salem, Massachusetts during 1692 at the peak of the Salem Witch Trials. The witch hunts stemmed from a mass religious hysteria that resulted in a tragedy of nineteen executions while hundreds of others faced accusations of witchcraft. Fear in such an intolerant Puritan society is what primarily fueled this mass hysteria that took over Massachusetts. Miller uses this tactic and focuses on emotions rather than logic to exhibit the psychological representation of a tense period in history.
Author Millers, The Crucible, is a play about the fear, of witchcraft in the sixteenth century, and what fear does to people in the small town of Salem, Massachusetts. During the colonial time period, witchcraft was punishable by death. In Salem the idea of witchcraft not only feared the people, but also the community as a whole. The community of Salem was split into two demographics by poor farmers, and wealthy merchants, becomes a scared fearful town during the accusations, not knowing if your neighbor was or was not a witch. The church of Salem plays an important role in the outcome of the town; the church has immense power and control of the town.
This vindictive hatred from Abigail soon prompts a witch hunt involving many innocent people: “Twelve have already hanged for the same crime.” While many panics, John Procter knows this from the start ; “this is a whore’s vengeance”. He tersely identifies the main cause for the witch trials to be directly linked with a spurned lover, who has become disemployed by Procter after having a brief extra-marital affair with her. Still overwhelmed with lustful feelings for John Procter, Abigail decides to manipulate the situation by accusing innocent people of witchcraft, to achieve her own revengeful goal. Abigail is not the only one who takes advantage of the witch trials, to accomplish their revenge. Thomas and Ann Putnam, as a resentful and greedy couple, will take it out on anyone who has caused them trouble.
A crucible represents the events in the town because it suggests how the town is boiling due to all the incidences going on within the society and how the court is trying to purify Salem of witchcraft and evil. The poppet represents the witchcraft within the play, because these types of dolls are connected to voodoo and other superstitious deeds that the Puritans considered evil. As it was found in the hands of the accused Elizabeth Proctor, they immediately concluded she was associated with witchcraft, this is obvious when Ezekiel Cheever says “’Tis hard proof! I find here a poppet Goody Proctor keeps.” When Abigail accuses Mary Warren of sending her spirit out to harm her in the church, Abigail uses the symbol of a bird and relates it to evil when she says “Why do you come, yellow bird?” Throughout history, bird
We speak of destiny or fate, as if it were some external force or moral order, compelling him against his will to certain destruction." Most readers have felt that after the initial crime there is something compulsive in Macbeth's murders; and at the end, for all his "valiant fury," he is certainly not a free agent. He is like a bear tied to a stake, he says; but it is not only the besieging army that hems him in; he is imprisoned in the world he has made. Northrop Frye stresses the connection between the witches and fate: The successful ruler is a combination of nature and fortune, de jure and de facto power. He steers his course by the tiller of an immediate past and by the stars of an immediate future.