How do you interpret Mary's visions and accusations in Act 2 of The Crucible?

Mary Warren seems particularly susceptible to others' influence, and the fact that the girls' claims are upheld by the court (and Hathorne and Danforth, both very powerful men) and confirmed by the confessions of some of the accused seems to convince Mary that there really are witches in Salem.  Further, the sort of mob response she experiences when she's with the girls -- fainting when they faint, turning cold when they do -- seems to convince her that she's being influenced by something, and she attributes this influence to witchcraft, as the judges do, rather than the other girls. 

Mary sees evidence where she's told it should be because she trusts the court's authority.  She believes Sarah Good's confession.  She believes that Goody Osburn cursed her for turning the old woman away hungry because she fell ill days after.  Further, sitting in court, Mary says, "I feel a misty coldness climbin' up my back, and the skin on my skull begin to creep, and I feel a clamp around my neck and I cannot breathe air; and then -- entranced -- I hear a voice, a screamin' voice, and it were my voice -- and all at once I remembered everything she done to me!"  Many in the court believe that Osburn is a witch, and so Mary begins to experience the symptoms she's learned are evidence of witchcraft.  Her experience of these symptoms, created by her own mind, convinces her that Osburn and others really are witches, and so it continues.

The visions and accusations that Mary Warren mentions in Act II are due to the mass hysteria that she is being exposed to. I believe that she is "caught up in the moment" and is following what the other girls are doing at first. Once she begins to do this on a daily basis, she begins to think that she really sees or feels what she is pretending to see or feel. This is evident when we get to Act III, and Mary Warren can not prove to the judges nor can she explain to the judges why she can not faint at this point when, meanwhile, she had been pretending to do it for weeks prior.

In The Crucible, how do you interpret Mary's visions and her motivation?

I interpret Mary's visions to be based on the combination of mass hysteria and pure fear of being accused of being a witch.   Mary herself admits to the power of being in a hyper-emotional crowd that is freaking out.  She states that "I heard the other girls screaming, and you, Your Honor, you seemed to believe them, and...I-I promise you...I only thought I saw them but I did not."  Anyone who has been in a scary movie theater, and had one person scream, only to set off everyone else, can understand that effect.  When in a crowd of people who are terrified, the fear is contagious, and the mind easily plays tricks on you. 

Her motivation behind some of her visions were probably just the hysteria speaking, but we also know that Mary is terrified that if she doesn't go along with it, the girls will accuse her of being a witch.  At the end of Act 2, she refuses to charge fraud on the girls, stating, "I cannot, they'll turn on me".  Unfortunately, she is correct in that prediction, and when they do turn on her, accusing her of being a vicious yellow bird coming to attack, Mary caves and calls John "the Devil's man" and declares her vision of John coming to her and saying, "I'll murder you...if my wife hangs!"  Her declaration here is prompted purely by fear and self-preservation.  If seeing a "vision" of someone tormenting her is what it takes to live, she'll do it.

Mary is presented as a shy,young and very impressionable girl, qualities which make her all too susceptible to the mass hysteria that surrounds the witchcraft court. The allegations appear to be deliberately started by Abigail and her cohorts, as a means of deflecting blame from their own activities such as dancing in the woods at night which is strictly frowned upon in that community, but the situation spirals out of control. It is not surprising that a gullible young girl like Mary might actually start believing in the reality of spirits and having visions of them. In the atmosphere of sheer excitement and drama she started to believe that she really did see spirits, because everyone else seemed to believe in them too. She confesses all this, but goes back to Abigail in the end out of fear of being punished by the court. Therefore, we can point to a psychological explanation for her visions. We might also add that she also goes along with Abigail and the witchcraft pretence out of her need to belong to a peer group.

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