reflection - 5

how is human nature expressed in the events so far in the crucible?

Human nature is much depicted and expressed in the events so far in The Crucible, by the characters and how they react, respond, and behave to certain things within the play. A big way that human nature is expressed, is that most of the characters in this play respond to things on impulse. They do not stop to think about things or to thing logically, they simply reply. Most of their responses are on pure emotion, especially Mr. Parris. Mr. Parris even within the first few pages of the book responds out of emotion. He snaps at Abigail, and does not believe the things that she says or even take them into consideration. Later he is very obnoxious and responds to all of the other characters on impulse.

Also, in this play, many of the characters lie. This shows that it is in our human nature to be sinful and to lie. When the characters of this play are under pressure, instead of being honest, they just lie. We see the lying begin with Abigail in the beginning of the play as she lies to Mr. Parris about what the girls were doing in the woods. After she lies about it, so does Tituba, Mary Warren, and all of the other girls. Instead of taking their punishment of a whipping, they continue to lie, which eventually leads them to the courthouse and to jail. Also in this play, the women lie. They blame other women for things that supposedly happened, when really they know the truth that the other woman did not do the things they accuse her of. They lie and falsely accuse each other because they are trying to save their own butts. They do not want to get into trouble or to get blamed, so instead of being honest, they blame someone else in hopes that they can shift the blame from them to the other woman so that people will forget about them and focus on another woman's inequities. Lying is definitely a part of human nature and this play really helps to illustrate that. Another thing that is somewhat incorporated within lying and is covered in this book is selfishness. All of the girls and women that were lying only lied to keep themselves safe and out of blame. They lied for selfish reasons. They were all being very selfish and did not think of others before themselves. Selfishness is a part of human nature. The men and women that were on the board to decide who was guilty and innocent and who should be hung and who should live were extremely selfish. I have a feeling that most of these people were not actually fully convinced that the people they were blaming were actually guilty. The only one of them to ever look at it at a logical standpoint was Hale, and he ended by pleading with people to confess so that he would not feel guilty. All of the other people did not look at it logically. They looked at it selfishly and thought that if they could keep the blame on others, they would not get hurt, even to the point of killing others. It was ridiculous how things went down. If everyone would have just told the truth instead of lying and pretending, nobody would have to be lynched. Instead, everyone would have a better understanding of each other and they could just try to figure things out another way. Telling the truth would have been so much more beneficial to all of the people than lying. The problem was that the lying was an epidemic and it got to the point that if people did tell the truth, there was nothing they could do to stop what was happening because it got to the point that people were in the lies so deep that things would have unravelled if people started to peel back the lies to look at the truth.

Miller, Arthur. The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts. New York, NY: Penguin, 2003. Print.