The Crucible Essay
On one level, The Crucible by Arthur Miller is a play about the damaging effects of fear. The setting takes place in Salem during the colonial era of America, a time when the punishment for being a witch is death. One night, a group of Salem girls decided to go out into the forest to perform some witchcraft. They are caught by the town reverend, Mr. Parris, right in the middle of their devious actions. Fortunately for the girls, Reverend Parris' niece was one of the girls in the group that night. Thus lying and deception begins to set into everyone and masks over the truth about the events that aspired that night to prevent their executions. Fear is the force that motivates Abby, Mary Waren, and Reverend Parris to make statements, take actions, and fuel the witchcraft hysteria in Salem. Abby is the niece of Reverend Parris and is the person who is responsible for starting the witchcraft that took place that night. She takes part in the worst of the rituals performed by the girls even going as far as to drink blood to curse John Proctor's wife. Abby's afraid of the consequences for her actions and immediately begins controlling all the girls as soon as the event was over by pounding threats and fear into them. With the girls unde
Fear drove Parris this far, far enough to make him abandon the basic principles of Christian living. The evil desires kept in the heart of Abby used her until fear controlled her. Mary's faltering was used to the girls advantage, and soon they were accusing her of witchcraft and acted so believably that Mary was forced under the fear of her condemnation to bend to Abby's will and tell lies to save her own life. Parris was already on the bad side of many of the town and he would rather see innocents murdered than lose his job to a ruined pride. And Mary Warren was manipulated by her timidity to support a hysteria which surmounted to the deaths of many. Reverend Parris should never have been the town's minister because of the thick web of deception that he helped to spin by protecting his damaged pride. Reverend Paris allowed the destruction of his niece to rampage on until he was ruined by her in the end anyway. Fear, caused by so many things, used others to destroy not only the people in its way but also to ruin a society. When Mary did stand to testify against all of the girls and their lies, even though many of the townspeople now stood condemned to death because of their false accusations, she quivered and shook, unable to give an accredited presentation of herself to the judges. Mary, not being a very stable person, was very much influenced by the peer pressure and fear that came associated with this particular event. This fear caused Mary to eventually lie as was necessary to save herself. r Abby's control they follow and do whatever she tells them to do in court and in front of the rest of the town to keep up the act that Abby was trying to portray of their innocence. In the Crucible the Devil used the power of superstition and fear to prod the people of Salem into self-destruction. So when the court of Salem used Abby and the girls because of their possession of a trustworthy testimony, partly on account of Parris saying that he saw them do no witchcraft, many were tried and condemned. Parris had seen the horrid things that his niece had done, and yet he refused to expose her to the public for fear of having his name stained because of the actions done within his family.
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Acceptance Essays
