The Crucible
The Salem Witch trials occurred in the Spring of 1642, when a group of Puritan girls accused hundreds of individuals of being witches. After the whole ordeal was over, 20 people lost their lives, and hundreds were locked up in poorly kept prisons. In Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, tells of a whole town of well mannered Puritan people turned into chaotic and gullible individuals. Miller’s play shows how hysteria, spectral evidence, and wrongful confessions caused an entire town to turn against one another. One of the biggest reasons that everyone believed the girls for so long was because of hysteria. Hysteria, or fear, was a huge part of the Salem Witch Trials because the Puritans were so religious that they believed that nothing bad would happen to them as long as they stayed obedient to God. So when bad things started happening, they blamed the witches for doing the “Devil’s bidding”. For example, when Mrs. Putnam lost all but one of her children, she was so afraid of loosing her last child that she blamed Rebecca Nurse of being a witch and killing all of her children. Fear of witches was so real in Salem, that they were willing to accuse and kill their neighbors in order to rid the Devil of Salem. In Miller’s The Crucible, the fear started with the girls and Tituba dancing and conjuring in the woods. Then when Ruth and Betty would not wake up, out of fear of getting caught, they started pointing fingers at everyone else. That is when the hysteria took over and started a massive witch hunt. The Crucible shows how hysteria can cause mass destruction amongst a small town. The second reason that the town believe the girls, along with fear, was spectral evidence. "Spectral evidence refers to a witness testimony that the accused person's spirit or spectral shape appeared to him/her witness in a dream at the time the accused person's physical body was at another location…(salemwitchmuseum.com).” Abigail, along with the other girls, would insist that “witches” would come to them in their dreams and traumatize them. The other way the girls used Spectral evidence to their advantage was to pretend to faint or choke, and when they were questioned, the girls would blame it on the witches’ specter. One major moment in The Crucible was when Abigail used a needle to stab herself and afterwards blamed it on Elizabeth Proctor (Miller). Because the girls didn’t want to get caught up in their lie, they continued to used spectral evidence in court to further their accusations. In modern times, spectral evidence is banned from the courts because of all the chaos it brought in the Salem Witch trials. Now that everyone believed the girls because of fear and spectral evidence, they believed every “witch” who was accused were absolutely guilty. Therefore, those accused only had two options to choose. First, they could confess that they had worked with the devil and of actually being a witch. Luckily, after they confessed, all they had to do was repent and give themselves to God, and they were saved. This was an option many took, in order to survive and not be hanged. Secondly, you could not confess to witchcraft. Unfortunately, those who would not confess would be hanged for lying, working with the devil, and performing witchcraft. Because so many people were confessing, those who refused looked even more guilty for being witches. Although they were eventually killed, their innocence was kept, and their names stayed clean. Although most people have different theories about why the Salem Witch Trials went on for so long, theories such as mental illness, tension among neighbors, or even mold that caused hallucinations, it all started with the girls. The girls used everything from spectral evidence, confessions, and using the hysteria among the people to further their lies. The Crucible shows us the horrors of the Salem Witch Trials, and all the pain it caused all the people involved. Everyone from those killed to those left in the aftermath were all affected by the events in the Spring of 1692. Despite being a devastation that is still talked about today, there was many good things that came out of it. Some include spectral evidence is no longer reliable in courts. Another is the phrase “innocent before proven guilty” and getting a fair trial in court. Arthur Miller reminded us through The Crucible that mistakes can be made when people start pointing fingers at each other. |