Texts and Human Experiences Flashcards
Theocracy in the Crucible
The people of Salem developed a theocracy, a combine of state and religious power, whose function was to keep the community together and prevent any kind of disunity that might open it to destruction by material and ideological enemies.
Power in the Crucible
They believed, in short, that they held in their steady hands the candle that would light the world. We have inherited this belief, and it has helped us and hurt us.
LF: Metaphor
Parris & fear
Go directly home and speak nothing of unnatural causes.
LF: Imperative
Thesis
Satirical stories, like Miller’s The Crucible, allow us to gain a greater understanding of individual and collective human experiences/emotions/qualities, such as conformity, fear, control, and love through their drawing of parallels to contextually relevant social and political issues (in this case McCarthyism.)
Giles / rebellion
“More weight.”
Proctor / rebellion
“I mean it solemnly, Rebecca, I like not the smell of this ‘authority.”
Conformity / Miller
“It is not difficult to see how many could have been led to believe that the time of confusion had been brought upon them by deep and darkling forces.”
Parris / conformity
- First to conform
- “Danced like heathens”
- “If you trafficked with spirits in the forest, I must know it now, for surely my enemies will, and they will ruin me with it.”
Parris / authority
“Go directly home and speak nothing of unnatural causes.”
Abigail / authority & manipulation
“Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, I will come to you in the dark of some terrible night and bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you… I can make you wish you had never seen the sun go down.”
Hale / authority
Hale is a major authority figure throughout the play. Highly respected by everyone in Salem, and his word is, ironically, considered gospel. Even though his intentions are well-guided, his accidental misuse of his authority has severe impacts on the community. While he is under the pretense that he is fighting the good fight, he is essentially stoking fear and hysteria through his use of the control he has been given, giving way to evil.
Parris / fear & hysteria
“My ministry’s at stake, and perhaps your cousin’s life.”
Hale / fear & hysteria
“The Devil is out and preying on children like the beast to the flesh of the pure lamb.”
Hale becomes a broken man, the hysteria bleeding into him so he encompasses it
“What shall profit him to bleed? Shall the dust praise him? Shall the worms declare his truth?”
Richard Hayes, “Hysteria and Ideology in the Crucible”
“It is imaginative terror Miller here invokes; not the solid gallows or the rope appalls him, but the suffocating, closed world of the fanatic, against which the intellect and will are powerless.”
Proctor / hysteria
“Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies!”
