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Scenario: Journalist writing in the Newspapers

I'm not sure that I completely understand the assignment or the question, but let me assume that you have to pretend that you are a journalist writing an article for a pretend newspaper, about how during the Salem witch trials, conflict caused people to act irrationally.  Is this correct?  I hope so.

I can't write the article for you, but I can give you some help.  Start of with that quote as the title of the article, adding a the witch trials into it; for example,"Conflict in the witch trials causes people to act irrationally."  That can make the title of the article.  Then, in the article itself, you need examples from the play where the conflicts that have existed in the town and caused people to act in very silly and illogical ways.  To look for a couple examples, look at the very end of act two where Miller is explaining why Martha Corey was arrested.  Miller has Giles Corey say that because Walcott wasn't feeding his pigs properly, they kept dying, and his wife told him,

"Walcott, if you haven't the wit to feed a pig properly, you'll not live to own many."

Then, Walcot went to the courts and said,

"from that day to this he cannot keep a pig alive for more than four weeks because my Martha bewitch them with her books!"

This is a prime example of someone making the silly, illogical conclusion that his pigs are bewitched instead of starved, and it was caused because he had a conflict with Martha Corey.  Earlier in the act, Mary Warren is discussing how she turned Sarah Good away from the house as she was begging for food, and she "thought [her] guts would burst for two days after."  Because of the conflict between Mary Warren and Sarah Good, and the fact that Mary got sick after their encounter, her illogical conclusion is that Sarah Good had put a curse on her because she didn't share food with her.  So, that is another example of conflict causing people to act irrationally.

To use these examples in a newspaper-style article, pretend that you are interviewing Giles Corey and Mary Warren, and that their responses are the ones above, from the play.  Find a couple other examples, include those, then sum it up in your own words and draw conclusions about it.  I hope those examples help a bit, and good luck!

If you are suggesting that a journalist is reporting on the irrationality of the situation then an article written about the behavior of the young girls would confirm irrationality. However, if you are a journalist concerned that the irrational behavior proported by a few young girls led to the deaths of others...well thats a different story. The Crucible is filled with conflict. At every turn the reader is asked to make judgements and then wonders if they even had the right to make those judgements.... (the genius of Arthur Miller) If you are commenting on journalism today then I'd have to say that conflict...regardless of of truth will monopolize the attention of the people. Unfortunately meaning that there are those who thrive on conflict and others make money off it. If the storyline of The Crucible were to appear in the news today...many people would be glued to the story for all the wrong reasons.