Examples Of Hysteria In The Crucible

The overall message of Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, is that when uncontrolled hysteria is combined with ignorance, the outcome is tragic. While Miller offers his audience some comic dialogue to soften the events it does not mask the horrifying reality of the witch hunt and its aftermath. Rather, the humorous insights serve to reveal the simplicity and innocence of people living rustic lives in a God-fearing community. Several characters, Paris and Hale, Mary Warren and John Proctor, provide the audience with some comic dialogue, and Giles Corey is the most amusing character of them all.
The hysteria which abounded in Salem allowed small, inconsequential, even comic, events to form the basis of sinister fabrications. Farmers who