The CrucibleAfter spending the last few weeks studying The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, I have really been left with a lasting impression. Even though it is set in the late 1600,s and forms an allegory for McCarthyism, I can easily see parallels to things that still happen in our time. Mass hysteria and false imprisonment over the Ebola outbreak; the current cries of racism in all police incidents; and in the 1980,s, the false prosecution of many people for child molestation. You can even see elements of The Crucible in all of the false confessions coerced out of people who were eventually cleared by DNA advances. All of these things show me that The Crucible is still a relevant piece of literature that I enjoyed learning about.
According to the website dictionary.com, an allegory is defined as “A representation of an abstract or spiritual meaning through concrete or material forms; figurative treatment of one subject under the guise of another. A symbolic narrative” (dictionary.com). The definition of the word does not adequately explain the significance of the meaning of the word to the work of The Crucible. Arthur Miller used this play as a statement on current events that were happening in his time that he was not happy with. He was upset with a figurative witch hunt that was taking place in the United States, accusing people of being communist. After a prominent government employee was convicted of spying for the communist party, hysteria took over the United States and the hunt was on. Senator Joseph McCarthy led this hunt for communist and brought those accused before a congressional panel, even though there was no real evidence of wrongdoing on their part. Many people were accused by people out of jealousy and to throw suspicion off themselves. “In the 1950,s, thousands of Americans who toiled in the government, served in the army, worked in the movie industry, or came from various walks of life…” were questioned about being a communist before that panel (U.S.History.com). Arthur Miller himself was caught up in this hysteria and held to his morals and refused to accuse his friends as communists. These were the events that Arthur Miller used The Crucible as an allegory.
Hysteria is a major factor in both the play and in the events that were happening in Arthur Miller’s time. In The Crucible, the townsfolk wanted an explanation for the bad things that were happening in their town. Since they were a religion driven society, they believed that evil must be the cause of anything bad. By bringing in an “expert” on witchcraft, they put their faith in him to fix their town. Even though he was trying to be fair and act only on proof, the people of Salem got caught up in accusing others. This began because people acted out of jealousy and fear. They also wanted to to appear righteous themselves. This snowballed until anyone and everyone is There was no being proven guilty or innocent. It was just assumed they were guilty because
The Problem
After the game began, the people began to take to their forums to complain about unfairness and unfairness in the world, and it began to happen to them. The problem comes through of a couple of factors.
First of all, you are not supposed to say “yes” to everything. (You should. But you need to be careful about what you say or say.) As one member of a community points out, all their posts and comments were written about. Their beliefs are true, but they do not share an opinion about things on here, instead the comments are filled with the same things. This means if something you said was wrong, then you should not have said so. As a consequence, even if the person who is accusing you is right and the things you said that were true actually were wrong, the community can start a debate and start blaming your friends and coworkers. In fact, the “f**k you” attitude towards a player is actually one of the greatest mistakes, one of the worst mistakes in history.
A second factor is that you do not feel safe in that community after this. People seem to feel that you and others have a certain way of speaking. For instance, you may not like the fact someone named Michael Hynes or even Michael Menezes has stated that everything he does is based on some sort of religious, political or cultural idea, and because that makes you think that you are something that makes anyone believe, or thinks that anyone is a good person in the game, then because you take it to a different level, the community is more inclined to believe that you are a bad person. This is exactly what happened when Michael Hynes and I wrote the original game. People wanted to have this discussion, but it felt like it didn’t make sense. We had to start all over again to change things.
For the player that took the action from here, the only way off from this is not to say yes. If someone on this very forum said “yeah, but we are looking at you,” they would probably be banned from the forum for playing games and saying stupid things. It’s not true that you have to just say yes to that, you must have been a terrible person, so you had to be trying to be just a bad person to become a better person. You had to make excuses. This makes your actions even more wrong if you are not in an open and honest conversation with your person.
Second, and finally, this question of having a fair argument about what to believe is the biggest problem with the game right now. Even if there is absolutely no way you can convince everyone that you are right, sometimes you will just try to say “yeah, but don’t just let everybody know I am completely wrong until I disagree.” This works best if you have a good set of teammates and a real interest in helping each other make their arguments; at times the community