Guilt and Fear

The beginning of The Crucible sets the scene quite succinctly for the hysteria that is undoubtedly to follow. What I found interesting is how quickly individuals, most notably Abigail, utilize the small amount of fear in order to either further their own agenda or in her case to protect themselves. Since this is my first time reading the play I am very curious on how this fear is going to be developed. As of now it is a simply the best option that Abigail and Betty have in order to cover up their less than proper activities in the woods. Judging from the few historical facts that I do know of the trials, the fear within the town was real and was seemingly endorsed by the theocracy that ruled it.

So far fear is the predominant emotion within the play, which is why it is easy to cast it as a direct allegory to the times in which Miller wrote it. Judging from the criticism it appears that this is a common evaluation of the work. While Miller does admit that terror “underlies every word in The Crucible” (162) he evaluates this idea a bit further. While terror was at the surface of McCarthyism there was guilt that individuals had “resulting from their awareness that they were not as Rightist as people were supposed to be” (163). While this sense of guilt is applicable to the era of the blacklist, in terms of Miller’s play the guilt does not arise from a political platform but instead from religion. Perhaps the people in Salem were not as pious as they thought? I suppose that the cause of this guilt and fear is the forms of authority that create the, as Miller describes them, “sins” (163).

So then in terms of The Crucible perhaps the fear was not just merely endorsed by those in power. It is possible that a benchmark of piety was created that no one could meet. This continuous failure hanging over Salem provided a unique environment for the witch hunt. All it took was an unexplained illness and the fearful accusations of children for the townspeople to try and assert themselves in their religious devotion. The people in Salem found that it was much safer to declare one’s desire to be pure, rather than to refute the need for such a proclamation.