Pd. 3
Alvarez
October 5, 2017
The Crucible
Fear is often the driving force behind negative human behaviors and social
inequities and dysfunctions. In ‘The Crucible’, the whole town lived in fear. They all feared
witchcraft and began to falsely accuse each other. The Crucible shows how easy it is to accuse
and manipulate each other into doing what others are doing. It shows how simply one person has
the power to cause such chaos and to turn people against each other.
Fear is often the driving force behind negative human behaviors. “I pray you not, leap not
to witchcraft. I know that you, you least of all, Thomas, would never ever wish so disastrous a
charge laid upon me. We cannot leap to witchcraft. They’ll howl me out of Salem for such
corruption in my house.” –Parris. I believe they used diction language. The speech and sound
quality manifested by the speaker makes it seem that way. He fears witchcraft, mostly he fears
the consequences of what witchcraft will do and being thrown out of Salem. Witchcraft is
causing him fear and impacting him because he’s the minister of Salem’s church, he’s paranoid
“I want to go open myself, I want the light of God, I want the sweet love of Jesus.” –
Abigail. What’s being said uses figurative language, she’s stating what she’s saying as it is.
Although, she doesn’t mean it and is only saying those things in fear of the consequences of
witchcraft. She fears what will be done to them if they don’t ask for the light and love of God. It
is impacting her because she knows she drank blood and she knows about the evil things she
“Man remember until an hour before the devil fell, God thought him to be beautiful in
heaven.” –Hale. They fear that even the people they consider saints could be practicing evil
things. It came to the point where the most loved old lady was accused of witchcraft. They
basically are saying how they may appear beautiful but you never know the evil inside them. The
accusations began to change the entire town and made them overwhelmed with all the negative
changes happening.
In conclusion, fear is the driving force behind negative human behaviors. The theme of
this is based on the universal idea of fear and its impact on an individual/society. Everyone was
afraid and fearful throughout the whole story. The feared witchcraft, being accused and