Hypocrisy Essay

A Destructive and Deceitful Everyday Occurrence

Whether you know it or not; Hypocrisy is part of almost everybody’s everyday life. You deal with hypocrisy on a regular basis without probably even recognizing it. Arthur Miller tries to stress this throughout The Crucible. Many towns had issues in the late 1690’s with witchcraft and as did the town of Salem. In the crucible townspeople were being accused of witchcraft by a group of girls who were essentially trying to get revenge against the citizens they didn’t particularly care for. Hypocrisy was mentioned throughout the book in various negative ways. There were many instances where the characters were very hypocritical verbally and physically. Many friendships were torn apart and shattered, while the whole society and town was slowly losing its faith in others and its court system. Hypocrisy poses a big problem especially in major issues that need people to tell the truth and not go against their own word. Hypocrisy is a destructive and deceitful act which can result in breakdown of relationships and chaos within a society.

Hypocrisy can cause absolute chaos within a town or society. An example would be when Betty was pretending to be “under a curse” (15) when she was really just pretending to be sick. Everyone but the girls thought and believed she was possessed and couldn’t wake up on her own. This caused the town to go into a craze and start to question and worry about witchcraft. Another example would be when John Proctor, Rebecca Nurse, and Martha Corey got hung in the end of the final Act (134). This made the town realize how hypocritical the whole situation was. Once they got hung the hypocrisy hit the towns’ people. A final example of hypocrisy that caused chaos in the town was when the accusations started. Abigail and the girls accused a lot of the town of witchcraft. This was hypocritical because witchcraft was nonexistent and Abigail and the girls started the problems in the town....