Hysteria in The
Crucible
Definition of hysteria: exaggerated or
uncontrollable emotion or excitement--especially
among a group of people
Hysteria continued
• Hysteria supplants logic and enables
people to believe that their neighbors,
whom they have always considered
upstanding people, are committing
absurd and unbelievable crimes-communing with the devil, killing babies
etc.
Fear in The Crucible
• Fear plays an important role in the play.
Make a three column chart. Write the
names of five characters who are acting
from fear in one column. Identify what
they are afraid of in the other column.
Decide if their fear is justified or
irrational and write your answer in the
third column Cite a page number for
evidence. This is homework if you do
not finish it now.
Tragedy
• Definition of classical tragedy:
tragedy
involves a protagonist of high estate
(“better than we are”) who falls from
prosperity to misery through a series of
reversals and discoveries as a result of
a “tragic flaw,” or hamartia which is an
error caused by human frailty. Aside
from this tragic flaw, the protagonist is
basically a good person.
Catharsis in tragedy
• Tragedy evokes pity and fear in the
audience, leading finally to catharsis
(the purging of these passions.
• What are some genres or types of film
or literature that evoke catharsis?
Frye’s five stages of
tragedy
• Encroachment:
protagonist takes on
too much and makes a mistake that
causes his or her fall
• Complication:
the building up of events
aligning opposing forces that will lead to
the tragic conclusion
5 stages con’t
• Reversal:
the point at which it becomes
clear that the hero’s expectations are
mistaken and that his fate will be the
reverse of what he had hoped
• Catastrophe:
exposes the limits of the
hero’s power and dramatizes the waste
of his life
5 stages of tragedy
con’t
• Recognition:
the audience and
sometimes the hero as well recognizes
the larger pattern of what has occurred.
From this new perspective, the
audience, and sometimes the hero, can
see the irony of his actions
Irony
• Irony: refers to a contrast between
appearance and reality.
• Three types:
• Situational Irony: is a contrast between
what is expected to happen and what actually
does happen * See when John Proctor forgets
the commandment ‘Thou shalt not commit
adultery.” because he has just broken it and it
should be fresh in his mind.
Irony
• Dramatic Irony: occurs when readers
know more about a situation or a character
in a story or play that the characters do *
See scene when Elizabeth is questioned
during the trial and asked why she released
Abigail from her service.
• Verbal Irony: occurs when someone
states one thing and means another * See
Act IV when John Proctor says he did see
the devil but what does he really mean?