As we know, there is a famous saying: “Tragedy is to tear up something valuable in front of people.” The Crucible is no doubt a tragedy like this, those villagers who are kindhearted and honest are all finally condemned to death while those dishonest and selfish villagers are still alive. The symbol of morality, conscience and faith is destroyed at last. The ironic ending of the story makes me think about what has caused the tragedy.
Obviously, we may blame on the rumors. There is an idiom in Chinese which goes “three men may become a tiger”, it means a rumor may seems real if many people believe in it. Without the rumor about the witch, there would not exist panic in Salem, and people may focus on finding the treatment for the illness rather than finding the fictitious “witch”.
On the other hand, what has caused Proctor and other people's death is the conscience and moral principles themselves. “To be or not to be, that is the question.” In fact, Proctor is facing the same problem as Socrates: if he insist on his conscience and morality, death is the only choice. At last, Proctor have made the same choice as Socrates too. Hemingway's sentence: “A man can be destroyed but not defeated” is exactly describing this kind of confliction.
Of course, we can also blame on the lack of science or those outworn ideas in people: if people in Salem have a good education of science, they would not believe in the existence of witch, then the ridiculous witch trail would not happen at all .
However, even though people are all equipped with science, won't the “Salem Witch Trail” happen again?
If the answer is “yes”, we may find it difficult to explain the following phenomena. In Nazi Germany, those scientists who are knowledgeable were using their science to make all kinds of machines to kill people, which is legal in Nazi Germany. During "The Culture Revolution" in China, many scholars and professors were making up all kinds of lies and slanders. When Stalin was in control of the Soviet Union, it is common that people usually applaud for 15 minutes or more because no body is brave enough to become the first to stop……
Yes, as you can see, the real problem is the Mass Irrationality. In this kind of situation, people may easily tend to not take the responsibility of their behaviors, what they are chasing for is not the satisfaction of their conscience but the identity in the mass. Obviously, this may easily cause a danger consequence.
Therefore, The Crucible is not only a parable of McCarthyism, it's a alarm bell to all eras.How to deal with the Mass Irrationality? I think only keep moral principles can't solve the problem.Everyone should be suspicious of the surroundings,we should always introspect. Skepticism is a useful weapon against the Mass Irrationality.
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