Estheffani Rodriguez

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

of the way it’ll corrupt him.

“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

wanted to get out of that ritual.

“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

eventually they feared each other.