...Mass hysteria is the phenomenon in which a group of people experience similar symptoms of anxiety, fear, or other physical symptoms. A well-known case of mass hysteria in history was the Salem Witch Trials in 1692. This incident was portrayed by the Arthur Miller play The Crucible, in which a group of girls starting falsely accusing multiple women in their town of witchcraft, starting a wave of hysterical fear throughout the village. Neighbors would accuse others of witchcraft over land disputes, petty squabbles or simply because they did not like them (Miller). A more recent case, and on a much greater scale, was the Pokémon Panic of 1997, when an episode of Pokémon in Japan sent hundreds of children to the hospital with seizure-like symptoms....
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..."Until an hour before the Devil fell, God thought him beautiful in Heaven" (1156 Crucible). Mass hysteria has been an issue all throughout history. The root cause of this is usually just misinformation or straight up lies. Although sometimes you cannot blame the people who regard the hysteria as truth. Threatening someone's livelihood, family, and well being causes them to think irrationally. Mass hysteria in a time or crisis can result in an overreaction and loss of critical thinking. Examples of this throughout history are the Salem Witch Trials, The Red Scare, and the 2012 Mayan Calendar scare. Within the Salem Witch Trials, was a vast amount of hysteria that cost the lives of many people. Religion and “the devil” played a key role in the cause of the trials and even does today “The Christian belief in the existence of the Devil is widely accepted in modern-America” (Kenneth). The use of unknown evils as well as spectral evidence to instill fear into the commoners propelled the hysteria “witchcraft is... an invisible crime, is it not? Therefore, who may possibly be witness to it?” (Miller). Leaders of the court realize that witchcraft is something with no real evidence to it other than he said she said. Evidence during this time was allowed to be completely circumstantial, which in turn made claims by people get too much traction too quickly. Even the more level headed characters in the crucible could succumb to the nonsense. One of...
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...National public justice systems worldwide can provide many different examples of fatal situations that turn into giant losses, ruined careers, and lives. There are many present-day cases, one of those terrible and neglected cases is known as McMartin Preschool Abuse Trial. It is considered to be the most costly and the most overwhelmed criminal trial in the modern history of the American society. According to the official data, during seven years of constant hearings and investigations, the American government spent $ 15 million on prosecutions. However, the investigation finally ended up with no convictions and the crime was never committed. The process involved hundreds of emotionally injured children and broke lives for the McMartin family. Some of the causes had problems in the investigation, public hysteria, and mass media effect, that led to such a tragic. We may all agree on the fact that this “ criminal trial in American history, should serve as a cautionary tale”( Linder, 2003)....
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...Massachusetts during the 1690s. Mass hysteria broke out as young girls accused people of dealing in witchcraft. The accused were punished and killed for these false accusations. Eventually, the town shamefully realized what they had done. The playwright, Arthur Miller, wrote The Crucible as a display of a corrupt Puritan society as well as an allegory of modern American history. Miller demonstrates the government issues and religious conflicts of colonial and modern-day America in his play, The Crucible. Miller’s play reflects the corruption of humanity that is seen throughout American history. Puritan hypocrisy is a major focus of this work which is portrayed at the end of act one when Abigail Williams...
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...jennifer lux 12/8/15 The Crucible analysis “We consume our tomorrows fretting about our yesterday”- Persius. There have been moments in history where people were too consumed in fear that they broke many of their morals and due to powerful situations people behaved differently than their normal self. A play called the Crucible was written in 1953 by Author Miller to portray the unfairness at that time due to people being accused of witches with little to no evidence and then hanged. This event was called the Salem witch trials, which took place in the province of Massachusetts Bay. This play is an allegory to the McCarthy Hearings that took place from 1950 to 1956. The McCarthy hearings occurred in 1947; President Truman ordered background checks of every civilian in service to the government due to a fear of people within the United States being a communist spy. The fear of communism intensified when a high ranked official Alger Hiss was convicted of being a communist spy. Senator Joseph McCarthy stepped in and convinced/alarm people within the U.S that there were Communist and Communist sympathizers that would try to overthrow the government. As a result, he formed a special Congressional committee to investigate Americans who were suspected of Communist activities and this movement was named McCarthyism. The Crucible is a play that is universal and enduring because it uses allegory and archetypes to teach readers that...
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...own land. Therefor the blacks could not even own/operate the clubs in their very own neighborhoods, the whites owned some of the most famous nightclubs in Harlem. This fact is intriguing all by itself. It is very similar to the south the white man benefiting off African American labor and culture. The whites were going into Harlem to have these crazy adventures on the other side of the tracks sort of speak. Meanwhile the club owners were mostly white. It seems so wrong that the blacks had come from the South to the North to have a better version of freedom. I am sure after surviving the South the North probably did seem better. Really it was the same story different setting. With that said after reading more and...
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... He makes us look twice before we turn the lights off at night. But what makes a whole society become scared? Well on two occasions, there were situations in which the society of the United States fell victim to fear. This fear brought two separate movements to try and keep the “Boogeyman” from trying to get into the United States. These movements were both commonly known as the Red Scare. This scare was willing to take anyone as it’s victim. Celebrities, politicians, or common Americans were all vulnerable to this phenomena that brought forth a Salem Witch Trial type of environment. The government of the United States of America tried to take many precautions, whether it was a success or failure, to try and prevent the spread of Communism in a country that is considered the greatest country on the Earth. Whenever there is a moment in history that brings on a mass hysteria, it shows what kind of people are really out there lurking around. This moment in history illustrates what happens during hysteria and what it makes people do in a time in which a common fear is shared amongst individuals of a society. “The scariest moment is always just before you start.” - Stephen King (269) This quote illustrates the moment in time just before the second Red Scare. Unlike the first Red Scare, this Red Scare had many components that provided more fear to the United States citizens. The citizens were not only in fear of the spread of communism, but they were also fearful of the United...
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...Throughout history fear has invoked society into violence, division ,and also hatred. Fear does not discriminate, it can be shown in every nationality, race and gender. Fear takes form in many different ways. In The Crucible by Arthur Miller fear was in a form of assumption and accusation.During the 1800’s, The Ku Klux Klan was one of the biggest cults based of fear along with hysteria during the depression. In the 1990’s The Red Scare was parallel to The Crucible based on accusing citizen of communism. The most powerful motivator in society is fear, because it develops a change in society. The Crucible along with The Ku Klux Klan intersect with each other. In both incidents fear was used as an crucial instrument. This was the main reason...
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...Putting oneself on the line, and willingness to sacrifice oneself for the greater good of the community is an attribute borne by very few people in history. However, such people do exist - and they are the individuals that transform the world for the better, through their unfailing belief in goodness. In Arthur Miller’s, The Crucible, this elusive quality is displayed by John Proctor, and over two centuries later in 1955, we see it again in an African-American Civil Rights Activist, Rosa Parks. John Proctor is an honourable farmer from Massachusetts, USA, who after making the mistake of committing adultery with Abigail Williams, becomes caught up in the mass-hysteria of the Salem Witch Trials. Rosa Parks is a Coloured-Rights Activist from Alabama, USA, who’s defiance of American Segregation Laws features as an important landmark of the Civil Rights Movement in the US. Themes such as justice and community, found within the play The Crucible and Rosa Parks’ story are universal, and apply as much today as they did in 1955 and 1692. In The Crucible, a single, small accusation of witchcraft escalates into a full-blown witch hunt, in which dozens of innocent citizens are accused and persecuted on the basis of false charges. This opportunity for allegations becomes a way for people to express their grudges and upset towards others, to show them how they feel by muffling it with all the similar claims around the community. Similarly, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat once,...
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...The Japanese American citizens were treated very poorly in the United States well before World War 2 and the Japanese American internment. Racial prejudice and unfair treatment toward the Japanese American citizens began in the late 1800's and steadily built over the next few decades. Japanese Americans were subjected to getting land in areas where no one else wanted to be such as near power lines and on dirt or soil where it was hard to build. The Japanese Americans were also held down in the farming and mining industries by often paranoid local American competitors. The Japanese bombed the United States in Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941 which led to a national widespread fear of Japanese citizens, primarily on the west coast, carrying...
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...During the 1940’s through the 1950’s America was overwhelmed with concerns about the threat of communism growing in Easter Europe and China (Goss 20). The anti-Communist McCarthy hearings of the 1950’s and the witchcraft trails of 1692 both were known for accusing and imprisoning people with little proof. This is shown in Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible. He was able to capture the panic and simple madness of many Americans in a symbolic way. McCarthyism is very similar in the way that Joe McCarthy accused Americans of being communist and in The Crucible the people were being accused of being witches. Joe McCarthy, born on a farm to Irish-American Roman Catholic parents, was a relatively unknown U.S. senator from Wisconsin. He was the youngest member of the new senate and his voting record was conservative, even though he didn’t follow the Republican Party line (Appleton Public Library, pars 2). He later became a chairman of the committee on government operations. With that he became the leading spokesman of the post war anti-Communist Crusade in 1950 to 1954 (Klingaman 253). McCarthyism was a search, or “witch hunt”, led by Senator Joe McCarthy, for Communists in the 1950’s United States Government. McCarthy continued to make accusations of communist infiltration of the U.S. government, though he had failed to provide evidence. On December 2, 1954 the full senate, by vote of 67-22 passed a resolution, condemning McCarthy for abusing his power as senator. He remained as...
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...for the government’s surveillance of Japanese American communities, which began in 1935 (Hay 23). This illicit monitoring suggests that the government’s anti-Japanese sentiment had an influence even when there was little threat to national security. Lieutenant Commander and Naval Intelligence Officer Kenneth D. Ringle was trained in Japanese language and assigned to Southern California to monitor Japanese communities (Daniels 25). He officially reported in 1941 that “better than 90% of the Nisei and 5% of the original immigrants were completely loyal to the United States” (ibid). Once Pearl...
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...Supporting this argument, 3 medical reasons have been referenced as causes of the SWT. It is suggest that there was ergot (wheat) poisoning, which mirrors the effects of LSD and induces hallucinations and unnatural behaviour. The ergot is commonly found in bread and an unsuccessful crop harvest in 1692 could provide an explanation for the erratic behaviour of the afflicted. Salem was also burdened by the smallpox epidemic during this time. In addition, many of the locals suffered from outbreaks of encephalitis (Lyme) disease. Both the smallpox epidemic and the outbreak of encephalitis were frequently blamed on occult practices and this only heightened the mass hysteria. It is necessary to examine the psychological motives behind a period such as the SWT. It is commonly believed that the frontier wars with the French and the Native American attacks meant that many grew up in an unstable area and Post traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has been thought to have influenced many within the community. This would partly justify the frenzy that was experienced by some of the afflicted. Samuel Parris had an embarrassing start, at least by Puritan standards, to his career. It can be speculated that the family was plagued by the humiliation of this and this caused the girls to start an event that their father would be heroic for solving, in turn redeeming his reputation. Likewise, in terms of the psychological perspective, the generational gap between the young female accusers and the older adult...
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...Sorcery in Salem began its mass hysteria in January 1692 when Dr. William Griggs diagnosed the first girls with being “bewitched”. He was the only physician in the village and since his educational background is unknown, we do not know exactly what education he has in the medical field but we assume that he had some medical training since he was the doctor in the village. Both of the young girls that was diagnosed as “bewitched” was Reverend Samuel Parris’s own daughter and niece. (Lawson, 2007) According to psychologist Linnda Caporeal, in 1976, she believed that the girls that were considered to be “bewitched” because of the symptoms that they displayed could have very well been symptoms of a disease known as convulsive ergotism. (Lawson, 2007) Convulsive ergotism is a disease caused by eating rye that has been contaminated by ergot. This is also known as ergot poisoning because ergot is many drugs such as mythylergometrine and ergotamine. When given in high dosages, it can cause the person to get very sick. The symptoms include seizures, diarrhea, paresthesias, and mental effects. This could have been misconstrued as being “bewitched” because the doctor of the village had never seen seizures and psychotic break so he assumed that they were the work of evil and diagnosed them as such. During the Salem Witch Trials, there were more than 200 trials that took place. (Video, 2012) Out of the many trials that took place, 20 people were tried and found guilty and executed. However...
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...The Salem Witch Trials serve as a grim reminder of the dangers of mass hysteria. Though the accusations of witchcraft may seem absurd now, during the late seventeenth century, they were seen as entirely plausible by the New England Puritans. At that time, belief in witchcraft and satanic influence was widespread, and the Puritans lived in a constant state of anxiety due to war and frequent Native American attacks. This environment of fear and suspicion likely played a significant role in the readiness to believe and prosecute those accused of witchcraft. Examining primary sources such as Salem Judge Samuel Sewall’s Diary and the case file of Giles Corey’s trial reveals that the reactions of New England Puritans to accusations of witchcraft in the...
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