Argument

In Arthur Miller's introduction to The Crucible, it states, "It is still impossible for man to organize his social life without repressions, and the balance has yet to be struck between order and freedom." I believe that what Miller says is true.  We haven't truly experienced complete order or freedom.  I was never not “free” so how could I know what true freedom is. People who have experienced not being free have the best understanding of the situation because they know both sides of the argument. In the Crucible there are an exceeding amount of faulty storytellings and it creates a society with little to no order.  If a person confirmed that they have seen the devil then they won’t hang, but if they deny it they will be hanged. Why would anyone deny it, even if they are innocent, it’s not worth dying over just to say you’re not a witch. During the time of the Salem Witch Trials I believe that society had no order.

Today, our society had more order to it, but there are still flaws. We are not perfect.  For example, if a man is accused for a crime, he can hire a lawyer with money that will win more often than an average lawyer.  Money can buy freedom in our court system, not directly but the chances of succeeding go straight up if the defendant has the money to protect themselves with a lawyer.  Our society has come a long way from the times of the Salem Witch Trials and hopefully we will continue to strive for success and maybe one day accomplish complete order and freedom.

Can Freedom and Order Coexist?

In his play, The Crucible, Arthur Miller wrote, "It is still impossible for man to organize his social life without repressions, and the balance has yet to be struck between order and freedom." This balance that  Miller describes through this statement has not yet been, and will never be, achieved by society. Simultaneously, order and freedom are not cohesive, the two concepts are contradictory. Order brings guidelines and rules which every person must live by to establish complete order. Therefore, with order, there cannot be freedom and visa-versa.

In The Crucible, the supposed order which the court was bringing to the town of Salem caused extreme fear in the citizens of Salem. The women were afraid to walk outside of their houses and avoided angering anyone of the girls working closely with the court for fear of being accused of being a witch. The court proceedings which worked towards freeing Salem of the devil caused those "against the devil" to do the devil's work, killing and condemning innocents like Rebecca Nurse and John Proctor.

Today, education is an institution which provides an example of the contradictory relationship between freedom and order. Schools encourage us to take advantage or extracurricular activities and socialize. However, with activities like sports comes the need for discipline, many students find a freedom in sports, allowing them to forget the stresses and focus on something else for a short time. This situation allows for freedom to have order, just not completely. The freedom is found but order is more important in the execution of sports, otherwise the sport would never be concrete. Either freedom or order is always more important than the other, never on the same level.

Order vs. Freedom

When analyzing the balance of order and freedom in our present day society it is crucial to look at each classes’ amount of freedom separately. If I was to answer this question based solely on my position in society as a lower-upper class white female I would be inclined to answer in disagreement to Arthur Miller and claim that I have many freedoms along with order in my life. However, when looking at people of lower classes, the amount of freedoms that they have and options they hold are resoundingly lower than mine. This evidence of a low amount of freedoms in the world without the added benefit of being in the upper class makes Arthur Miller’s argument ring true. Our society values order over freedom and this allows people of the upper class to scapegoat the lower classes and subsequently lessen their amount of freedom.

The existence of a police force in today’s society is indicative of an order based society and is the root of it. This order that exists gives one group of people power over another. Specifically when looking at recent events taking place in our nation, such as the cause of the riots in Ferguson or the New York chokehold death incident, it is clear to see that the group in charge is that of white males with the group without power being black males. In our society of racism and racial profiling the order that exists can be very harmful to the freedoms of a group of people or any groups of people not being white males. This problem is again evident when looking at the large numbers of black males that currently live in our prisons versus the number of white males. The opportunities, whether it be caused by jail time or just the color of one’s skin, are slimmed by a persons class and thus their freedoms are in jeopardy due to the order that exists.

Order Above All Else

Arthur Miller writes in his introduction to The Crucible, “It is still impossible for man to organize his social life without repressions, and the balance has yet to be struck between order and freedom.” He was correct. In American society today, order is valued more than freedom.

In The Crucible, the town of Salem spirals into madness when someone cries witch. The order of their perfect puritan ways is disrupted, and when such a thing happens, the only logical thing to do is hang as many people as possible. The leaders of the town bring in officials who have had experience in trials and saving people from hell with the hope that everything will be pure once again and the devil will no longer walk among them. They put innocent people on trial and sentence them to prison or death. These actions show how when something drives a wedge into the order of society, people start to lose their freedom.

When the planes hit the twin towers, everything changed. The order of American life was completely uprooted. One result of this tragedy was that airports tightened security. Getting through security takes longer, the size of bottles of liquid allowed on the flight are smaller, and x-ray machines are used liberally, and racial profiling leads to false suspicion. Although these measures are taken with the goal to keep all flights safe, they prevent people from traveling as freely as before the scramble to maintain order began.

The American people of today’s society are proud of their freedom. However, that freedom becomes limited when the importance of order is held above all else.

The Herd Mentality

Friedrich Nietzsche, renowned philosopher and intellectual, describes the herd as thriving on and promoting the values of dependency, weakness, and corruption. The herd fears the strong willed individual because the strong willed individual threatens the warm safety blanket the herd has thrown over itself and projected over others. Like most fear in the human mind, that fear turns to hatred, jealousy, and malevolent intentions. Those who feel a necessity to belong to ‘the herd’ reject the view of independent thought, and think of themselves as merely a function in a large working machine. This comfort, however, comes at the cost of reconciling one's experience with others. He criticizes those of the herd mentality for their communitarian tendencies. In order to reach agreements, people must have similar sets of concepts. The plebs are dishonest about their backgrounds, their history. They deny from whence they have come, the questioning beliefs they may develop, and are therefore being dishonest with themselves. Nietzsche contends that people ought to embrace their nature - embrace what it is that they are - and in doing so build on that instead of trying to build on a false platform (the social standard/believing what you are told). For people to have these similar sets of concepts, and to relate to one another, they must live in a community that is closely knit enough to foster a similitude betwixt a word and a concept. In doing so, one becomes less genuine, and more herd-like.

I think that Nietzsche's insight is particularly valuable in the application of evaluation Arthur Miller's, "The Crucible". A diverse array of Nietzche's analysis is embodied in Salem, as the town's chaotic and feverish decline leads them to hunt the "witch"; really just a supernatural embodiment of independent(and secular) thought. It is worthwhile to consider seriously not only the prodigious influence of this herd mentality in Miller's play, but also in our lives today. How many of us can say today that we have not displayed this "herd mentality"? I do not accuse this mentality of being intrinsically maladaptive, but rather a tool to be used for unity and social progress, rather than to suppress individual thought.

The Crucial Balance

The balance between order and freedom is crucial in the day to day life of a society. If there is a unbalance between order and freedom then there will be nothing but unrest and turmoil. If there is too much order then there will be an uprising against all the rules. If there is too much freedom then society will crumble due to the unorganized system.

In a society there can not be too much order or there will be unrest due to the amount of rules afflicted on the people. It will cause anarchy and fuel a rebellion with the people. There needs to be freedom so that people feel as if they are being heard and know that their opinion and input is effecting the ways things are. If the balance is found then there will be only prosperity in the society.

If there is too much freedom in day to day living eventually the outcome will turn out to be nothing but mayhem. When given absolute freedom people will take advantage of it and begin to wreak havoc. Disputes will be formed between different standpoints and anarchy will start. In Arthur Millers The Crucible there was a serious unbalance between Order and freedom. There was too much order, there is too many restrictions based off of religion. It was evident that effects peoples lives in a negative way, one example is that the girls were to afraid to say that they were dancing that they came up with a ridiculous lie. The lie ended up effecting every one in the town. It ended up resulting in the deaths of many towns people. If there was a balance between order and freedom and the children would not have feared telling the people what they were doing in the forest and by them telling it would have prevented the deaths of many. The importance of the balance between order and freedom is crucial to the survival of a sound society.