Ravenous Rumors Ruining Salem
Ravenous Rumors Ruining Salem
High school is a world of its own, but the plot of The Crucible is shockingly similar to one thing that can always be found in a high school hallway… a rumor. As every high school student knows, it’s almost impossible to walk down the hallway without hearing who’s dating whom and who got caught where. As we have experienced, these rumors are often distorted and become exaggerated to the point that the original truth is completely lost. This is exactly what occurred when the town of Salem was buzzing with news of witchcraft. In high school when rumors begin to spread, the majority has the upper hand and mass hysteria is many times an effect of the rumors told. In The Crucible, the majority of the town believed the massive lie, therefore causing a widespread feeling of hysteria around the town. Although on the surface you would think that simple high school activity and The Crucible would be completely opposite, but the similarities make a huge difference. The world is a fast paced place, and along with everything else, news travels fast. In high school, rumors spread like wild fire just as they did in The Crucible. When it was reported that Reverend Parris’s daughter and the Putnam girl had fallen sick with a strange illness, people began bustling with talk. Upon entering Revered Parris’s home, Mrs. Pugnam glanced at Betty and asked “How high did she fly, how high?”(11). The rumor that Betty had the ability to fly and had been seen doing so was a false rumor that would soon be believed by many of the townspeople. High school rumors are many times started and believed by people looking for an explanation for something, in Salem witchcraft was this explanation. Once there was a seemingly valid way to describe the madness occurring in this town, nobody wasted time in letting everybody else know about it. The fact that the people of Salem were shocked by this news only caused them to spread it at a more ferocious rate. As time went on and people were afflicted, accused, and hung for being associated with such an act, the news spread faster and more people became interested in the appalling activity going on in their town. Like many of the rumors that originate in the hallway, bathroom, or at the lunch table, these allegations of witchcraft in Salem were false. Accusing people of working for the devil was just the girls of Salem’s way of deflecting the attention of their dancing in the woods to something more appalling. Once the girls twisted their alibi into a universal idea, they had the whole town suckered into believing them. Just like in high school, this false rumor became the basis of the town peoples’ lives. Standing up for your beliefs is one thing, but saying something isn’t true when everyone else believes it gives you no chance at all. For example, when Proctor and Mary Warren tried to tell the court that the girls’ were making up their accounts of witchcraft, the court reacted in the way any member of a student body would: they sided with the majority. Proctor announces to the court that “she never saw no spirits” (40) and Parris objects saying, “They’ve come to overthrow the court, sir!”(41).The girls who accused many of the townspeople of being associated with witchcraft were just trying to cover up the truth. Just in the sense that false rumors complicate the lives of the average teenager, the assumption that witchcraft was present in Salem ruined and even ended many of the people’s lives who resided in the small town. The actions of a large group can many times influence the way an individual acts in a situation. Take football games, pep rallies, or the belief that there are people in your town working for the devil. If the whole has a certain attitude, an individual can be easily influenced by their actions and act in the same way. This was the case exactly in The Crucible. The trial held a widespread feeling of hysteria and panic among the accusers, accused, and witnesses. When Mary Warren goes to the court to announce that her actions were fake and influenced by her surroundings, Hathorne tries to gain understanding by saying, “And yet, when people accused of witchery confronted you in court, you would faint, saying their spirits came out of their bodies and chocked you-“(47). The response given by Mary Warren is demonstrative of the feelings of many of the girls testifying in the courthouse… “That were pretense, sir”(47). This was not because they were all feeling this way on their own, but simply because of the domino effect. If one person in the cafeteria screams that a mouse ran across their feet, the rest of the student body is then going to be reluctant to enter the cafeteria. In Salem, when one girl accused somebody of working for the devil, everybody else freaked out and every odd incident was thought to be caused by the devil. Mass hysteria was spread among the people of Salem, causing them to accuse, follow, and believe the rumors that were developing. High school is full of true, false, and distorted rumors, but when this “harmless” gossip turns into a widespread belief of an ungodly act, the act is nothing close to being harmless. The basis of the plot of The Crucible was a false rumor spread by everyone willing to listen, but how different is that from life in high school? Even though The Crucible was set in 1692, compare it to a day in the life of a high school teenager and the similarities become undeniable.
