The Folly of Succumbing To Collective Anxiety

Purpose:

This essay is meant to look at the folly of succumbing to collective anxiety, and letting hysteria take a hold of society.

Thesis Paragraph:

Falling victim to unnecessary fear and paranoia is likely to ruin the reputations of members of society and harming their lives and should be avoided through all means possible. Of particular note, the society should be on the lookout for those who induce fear and paranoia and take advantage of the resulting situation to advance their own personal goals and ambitions. Needless paranoia has the effect of ruining reputations and harming lives and should be avoided at all costs, particularly when the paranoia is nothing but a means for some to advance personal ambition.

Purpose Paragraph:

There is an inherent danger in allowing the society to fall victim to those who incite mass hysteria and panic, especially if they do so for their own purposes. As evidenced in the two historical accounts, one in Salem in 1692 and another in 1952 in the cold war era, the society derives no benefits from allowing fear to control it. Under such conditions, unscrupulous persons may take advantage, and push for their own ends without regard about who they hurt in the process.

Outline

History repeats itself, the Red hunt that characterized McCarthyism was a reflection of the Salem witch trials. Collective anxiety has the potential to lead to wrongful accusations, and ruining people’s lives as people take advantage of the situation. Letting fear and paranoia control society presents a danger to the society and can ruin reputations and harm lives.

II.        Accusations served to advance personal agendas.

A.        Abigail accuses Elizabeth Proctor of being a witch because she desires her husband.

B.        McCarthy accuses people of being communists to advance his political ambitions.

III.       Lack of intervention led to the trials continuing for longer and affecting more people.

A.        The townsfolk did not intervene in time to stop the witch hunt.

B.        The media did not interrogate McCarthy’s claims.

IV.       Unsubstantiated claims ruined lives and increased hostility.

A.        Elizabeth is accused falsely and imprisoned, her husband is sentenced to hang, and their  reputations are both ruined.

B.        McCarthy accuses a large number of people, blacklisting them, and preventing them from working in their industry.

To conclude, we should not let fear and paranoia rule us since they may be as a result of accusations that serve to advance personal agendas and the unsubstantiated claims that spawn the fear and paranoia ruin lives and increased hostility. Where needless fear and paranoia afflicts the community we should intervene since the lack of intervention can lead a protracted situation that will end up affecting more people.

The Folly of Succumbing To Collective Anxiety

History does repeat itself. The similarities between two of the darkest chapters in American history illustrate this point clearly enough. In 1692, Salem which was a small Puritanical village in colonial Massachusetts, a number of people resorted to settling old scores through accusations of witchcraft. Accused parties were tried, convicted and in a majority of cases burnt as witches. All this based on spectral evidence (Latner 139). The situation was closely mirrored almost three centuries later during the McCarthyism era (Adams 24). In 1952, millions of people are accused of being communists, put to trial and convicted. In this instance too, spectral evidence was applied. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, the author chooses to focus the ills of paranoia and hysteria, and the destruction these two qualities can wrought in a community. The collective anxiety displayed in the Salem witch trials of 1692 and the McCarthyism era of 1952 point to how individuals can incite mass fear and hysteria to their own ends. The ensuing hysteria and collective anxiety, and the resulting unfair treatment of members of the society point to the dangers of letting paranoia gain control society. Needless paranoia has the effect of ruining reputations and harming lives and should be avoided at all costs, particularly when the paranoia is nothing but a means for some to advance personal ambition.

In both cases accusations served to advance personal agendas. In The Crucible, the young girls make unsubstantiated claims about the existence of witches in the community (Miller 12). Abigail uses the witch hunt as an opportunity to get at Elizabeth, Proctor’s wife, her rival for Proctor’s attentions. Fear pervades Salem, the villagers are seeing the possibility of witchcraft in everything that happens and Abigail plays upon these fears. Betty had collapsed in the midst of a ritual and all attempts to revive her had failed. The girls had been seen performing a ritual around a cauldron led by Tituba. The Reverend Parris had seen a frog jump out of the cauldron. Abigail on being rejected by Proctor sets her plan into action, her manipulations undetected by the adults who are too scared to notice. She does not present any proof, but that does not stop Elizabeth Proctor’s interrogation, or subsequent imprisonment. Others who use false accusations to settle scores are Ann Putnam against Rebecca Nurse, and Ruth Putnam whose accusations enable her father to acquire land (Miller 99). The community took advantage of the fact to settle old scores (Lauter and Bruce-Novoa 2059). The same can be said for McCarthyism, as the Communist witch hunt of the 1950s has come to be known. Senator Joseph McCarthy made the claim that some “200 card carrying members of the Communist party” had infiltrated the American government. He sensationalized the issue, and used every minute he could get in the media to play on Americans fear of an imminent threat from the Soviets. While he had no substantive proof, that did not stop the establishment of the House Un-American Committee (HUAC) from investigating suspected communists. McCarthy’s aim was to advance his political ambitions, and in this respect he succeeded for a time. In both cases, personal interests drove the false accusations.

In both incidents, unsubstantiated claims ruined lives and increased hostility. In The Crucible, the girls’ unsubstantiated claims only serve to fraction the community further and ruin lives. The community becomes so fragmented every person is suspecting everyone else of being a witch. The fear runs so deep that even upstanding members of the community are not spared. By 1692 when the Salem witch trials came to an end, nineteen people-and two dogs-had been convicted for practicing witchcraft and hanged. To make the farce even greater, the accused were asked to name other witches in the community. Proctor is sentenced to hang because he will not confess or divulge the identities of others. McCarthyism was no different as those who were accused were assumed guilty, put on trial, and under threat of imprisonment asked to divulge the names of fellow Communists. The end result was destruction of his family’s livelihood. Some of the more prominent victims of McCarthyism include Owen Lattimore, a career diplomat accused of being a soviet spy and Val Lorwin, a labor economist who was accused of harboring communists (Turpen n.p). Those accused were blacklisted, they faced ridicule from their colleagues, could no longer work, and in some cases were forced to relocate to the Great Britain (Goodman 62). Even when the accusations were proven to be shams, they had already taken their toll. The sorriest case though was that of William Remington. Remington was killed by a prisoner hoping to get a lighter sentence for “killing a Communist” (Meyer Filardo 178). Evidently, in both cases, the accusations led to the destruction of lives.

Both situations were enabled by people failing to act to stop the trials before they went too far. In The Crucible, the people are afraid to stand up and oppose the proceedings in fear of being accused of being witches. Mary Warren is afraid to tell on Abigail when she threatens to say she participated as well (Miller 20). In the end, she is probably Abigail’s greatest accomplice. Betty comes out of her reverie and talks of how Abigail took a charm that was meant to end Elizabeth’s life. Her antics around the cauldron in the fire the closes thing to witchcraft. Yet, she is never accused and manages to escape all accusation. Even Proctor is initially reluctant to defend those that Abigail accuses because he fears their affair will come to light. In the McCarthyism era, the media is reluctant to intervene. They gave prominence to McCarthy’s accusations, but fail to point out the responses of the accused. The media were afraid by raising objections they would be accused of being communists. In the process, they fail in their duty to interrogate the truth of McCarthy’s accusations. Admittedly, the failure by the townspeople and the media to intervene in the Salem witch trials and McCarthy’s red hunt respectively paved way for the protracted trials.

To conclude, hysteria and collective anxiety have the capability to reduce members of society to mindless acts all in the name of fear. In such situations, it is also likely that some people will take advantage of the fear to pursue their own objectives, usually to the detriment of society. Further, it is the responsibility of society to identify when individuals are merely pushing their own ends, and stopping them before any damage is done. In all, the two incidents serve to warn of the dangers of letting fear take control of our sensibilities.

Works Cited

Adams, Gretchen A. ‘The Specter Of Salem: Remembering The Witch Trials In Nineteenth-Century America’. Choice Reviews Online 47.04 (2009): 47-2185-47-2185. Web.

Goodman, Giora. ‘The British Government And The Challenge Of Mccarthyism In The Early Cold War’. Journal of Cold War Studies 12.1 (2010): 62-97. Web.

Latner, R. ‘The Long And Short Of Salem Witchcraft: Chronology And Collective Violence In 1692’. Journal of Social History 42.1 (2008): 137-156. Web.

Lauter, Paul, and Bruce-Novoa. The Heath Anthology Of American Literature. Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1990. Print.

Meyer Filardo, Peter. ‘United States Communist History Bibliography, 2007–2008’. American Communist History 8.2 (2009): 197-223. Web.

Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. Evanston, IL: McDougal Littell, 1997. Print.

Turpen, Bill L. “Remembering Sen. Joseph Mccarthy With A New ‘Campus-Watch’ Witch Hunt.” Washington Report On Middle East Affairs 21.9 (2002): 62. Academic Search Complete. Web. 24 Oct. 2015.