Lies In The Crucible Essay

In a life filled with many difficult decisions people often choose the easy way out by lying to better their situation. Arthur Miller, the author of The Crucible, lived during the communist scare that took place during the late 40s and early 50s in America. Noticing how false and unjust the accusations were, and how people accepted the accusations and falsely confessed to the crime as to save themselves, just as people had during the Salem witch trials, he decided to write an allegory show how time hasn't changed anything. A human's natural response in life is to do what betters their own situation even if that means lying or going against what they know to be right or true. Spreading hysteria, during McCarthyism and The Crucible, puts many
The Crucible is a great example of how even the slightest of lies can have great and everlasting consequences. Often time a simple white lie expands as the creator has to cover it up with more lies and deceit until this little white lie has turned into a gargantuan monster that can cause chaos and destruction in the lives of those around them. This is shown in The Crucible when Abigail tries to cover up the girls dancing in the forest which somehow manages to turn itself into a full on witch hunt causing the deaths of multiple innocent people. Abigail said, when speaking to Proctor, “The town's been mumbling witchcraft. Oh, posh! We were dancin’ in the woods last night, and my uncle leaped in on us. She took fright, is all” (Act 1, pg 20). This shows how every lie has a beginning, by choosing to withhold information and telling people many different versions of the same story, Abigail managed to start a craze throughout the village. Not every lie had to be something big, in fact it was the small lies told throughout the the towns, and cities in the two different eras that kept the hunt going. Thus proving that lies big or small can cause a huge impact to an entire population or