Boredom and Its Victims in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible When bored, people
tend to portray or act differently to either attract attention or change
society. The girls in The Crucible are bored of Puritan life and want to do more
to get more fun out of Salem life. Boredom led the girls to perform sins that
the Puritan society disagrees with entirely. In The Crucible By Arthur Miller,
boredom proves to be a catalyst for murder. The girls in Salem wanted more
attention and more out of Puritan life. Being bored by following the strict
Puritan society, the girls rebel against the traditional ways by dancing,
singing, and laughing at prayer. What the girls hope to accomplish by rebellion
is to draw attention and hope to change the ways the Puritans act or think.
Boredom causes people to act differently to get what they want. With the girls
in The Crucible, they wanted to show others that there are things that they want
to do that will not send them to hell. This is true in today’s world too with
people getting bored of the same old tradition, so they change their clothes,
looks, music, and attitude to change society. The girls getting caught dancing
and singing made them to believe that their fun time was over. When asked about
the dancing and the singing, they did what any child would do in fear and deny
it. But soon the girls were getting bored with denying about the singing and
dancing so the girls told more lies to gain attention from the others. With
saying more lies, the girls got too much they could handle. With accusing
someone of being a witch, they brought attention to everyone in Salem. This
attention excited some of the girls because they were finally getting attention
from everyone. Yet there are others who are afraid that all this attention will
break right in front of them and expose the frauds they are. This is true in
today’s world where almost everyone in today’s society has told a lie in
order to either gain respect, attention, or to get higher position in the world.
As the events in Salem began to progress faster and faster with the witch
trials, so did the numerous lies that came from the girls. The girls thirst for
attention led them to their thirst for murder. As each girl announce names of
witches they claimed to see, they announced names of those they hated, disliked,
loved or seek revenge upon them. This was their chance to get back at those who
hurt them in the past. This shows the evil side of mankind, shows that mankind
will seek revenge on the first chance he/she gets. It also shows that mankind
would rather have dozens of people be killed then themselves be beaten or
killed. It is human nature to protect ourselves from death at any cost. It shows
here in The Crucible that the girls went too far and still decided to proceed
having people killed instead themselves suffer the consequences of lying. In
conclusion, boredom not only leads the girls to murder but also the Puritan
society for following. Society never showed rebellion to the traditional Puritan
way, but followed in what the girls performed by dancing and singing. Then when
the trials came along, almost all of Salem joined in with the girls because it
was something different for them to do. It seems that the Puritan society and
our modern society are the same with this issue. Both societies are afraid to do
something different, but until a person or a group of people does it, then
everyone follows the bandwagon. It shows us that society is the followers while
the people are the leaders making the changes for all of us.