A Theme Of Abuse Of Power In The Crucible By Arthur Miller
What would you do if thousands of people starts to blame, shame, embarrass you on social media? Will you fight back or stay quiet? Social media provided shy and voiceless people, a voice where they can share their thoughts, opinions. Also, through social media they feel connected to the society but these voiceless people can turn into completely different person in a matter of a moment. These voiceless people can take advantage of others mistake and shame them and bully them throughout their life and could potentially bring suicidal thoughts into their mind.
In the play “The Crucible” by the living legends of American theater, Arthur Miller illustrates how conflict can lead to death of an innocent people. For example, Abigail William says that the slave, Tituba called the devil on Betty. But the slave Tituba confesses even though she is completely innocent and have no connection with the devil to save her life, she said “Look! I have white people belong to me and I look-and there was Goody Good and there was Goody Osburn”. After this, girls started confessing other peoples like “I saw Goody Sibber with the devil”and “I saw Alice Barrow with the devil”, that gave lots of power to the girls so they took advantage of this new found power and think that they are the most powerful ones and no one can stop them. Fake in front of the judges to accuse innocent people guilty. In modern times, similar situations happening on social media platform.
Other than confessing each other one of the most important thing is social media shaming. Although some voiceless people are feeling connected to the society through social media, some still misusing and abusing this platform. Vulnerable people are getting hurt everything single day. For example, a woman named Justine Sacco, PR from New York. She tweeted a funny joke while she was waiting to board the plane at the airport. She said “Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white!”. After long hours of sleep, she woke up and this short joke has completely turned her life around while she was asleep. People calling her racist, horrible, worst human being ever on social media. Everybody were against her. No one supported her. After all this, Sacco was fired from her job and lost her happy life just from a single funny joke. This shows these voiceless people are really power and abusing this platform to damage people's reputation and shame people. They abusing the power they had. From this he lost everything from a short sentence that she thinks it was funny. Public shaming is starting to get out of control. Public shaming and lying to someone has become too far. The people who are hiding behind their computer screen and shame others.
In The Crucible, the girls are not receiving any kind of punishment, they get away with putting innocent people in jail and killing some of them. Judge Danforth said that “ You must understand, sir, that a person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between”. This quote shows that Salem court’s perspective toward the witchcraft. The court is belong to God and it only do God’s work and nothing else. Everything that goes against the court is associated by the Devil. Anyone who disagree with the court must be servant for the Devils. So John Proctor was sentenced to death Luvsanjambaa 3because he said “I say- I say- God is Dead!”. This is tells the court that he work for the Devils and that he is not connected with God. So must be dead to keep the town safe and clear of Devils.
Voiceless people get to have voice and connecting to the society through social media is a good thing but the misuse and abusing of this could potentially put someone in danger like Justine Sacco, that she lost her life, her job because of a joke that she tweeted spreaded throughout the social media and everybody starts shaming and attacking her. Also, the girls in the play “The Crucible” knew that they had the powers and use them to hurt people and families. So, if you have the power, don’t do anything that could potentially torn someone’s life. Be careful not to abuse the power.
