The Crucible

Arthur Miller's classic play, The Crucible, deals with the witch-hunts and trials in seventeenth century Salem, Massachusetts. What starts with several girls practicing magic in the woods, escalates to a massive hysteria, with the "afflicted" girls falsely accusing even the respected women in the community with witchcraft. Eager to "utterly crush the servants of the devil", church leaders and townspeople insist on trying the accused. Death by hanging resulted from failing to confess to witchcraft. In the end imaginary crimes led to the hanging of many, crimes for which no actual proof existed, but for the word of a handful of girls.

Hysteria of this kind did not prevail only in the old days, but it exists even today. It reigns in our government and revolves around events that took place in the past two years, such as those, dealing with war and terrorism. For example, the incidents with anthrax. Anthrax brought with it such trepidation, that people avoided using even the baby powder. The fear of finding white powder in the mails left them unopened for days or weeks. This panic increased to such an extent that even the post offices shut down. Almost a year has passed by, but the fear still resides in people's mind.

The episodes with airport authorities asking passengers to take off their shoes and other belongings, just to check if they have anything that poses a threat to America, exemplifies the issue of mass hysteria. How would a seventy- year old woman, who can barely walk, pose a threat to this nation or to anyone else for that matter? Extreme precautionary measures, such as these, take place only to avoid further attacks of terrorism. But these measures have terrified people to an extent that this whole idea of terrorism has developed into a mass hysteria.

Miller wrote The Crucible as a parallel to the anticommunist hysteria in the 1940's. Today, however, The Crucible shows a resemblance to an entirely different kind of social hysteria. Accusations of sexual-abuse against child-care providers and others, sometimes referred to as "witch hunts" when, as in Miller's play, the accusers would lie. Children's advocates will of course say that one must believe children's claims of abuse, because, tragically, it does occur. However, a recent trend has shown the presence of more and more false accusations, and even when a trial determines the innocence of the accused, their