In The Crucible, discuss the differences between truth and lies in Act 2 and Act 1.

In The Crucible, neighbors suddenly
turn on each other and accuse people they’ve known for years of practicing witchcraft
and devil-worship. The town of Salem falls into mass hysteria, a condition in which
community-wide fear overwhelms logic and individual thought and ends up justifying its
own existence. Fear feeds fear: in order to explain to itself why so many people are
afraid, the community begins to believe that the fear must have legitimate origins. In
The Crucible, hysterical fear becomes an unconscious means of
expressing the resentment and anger suppressed by strict Puritan society. Some citizens
of Salem use the charge of witchcraft willfully and for personal gain, but most are
genuinely overcome by the town’s collective hysteria: they believe the devil is
attacking Salem. And if the devil is attacking your town, then ensuring that your
neighbor is punished for selling you a sick pig suddenly becomes a religious necessity,
a righteous act that protects the God you love and proves that you’re not a witch or a
devil-worshipper. The Crucible shows how religious fervor fuels
hysteria and leads to conditions that sacrifice justice and
reason.

Reputation is the way that other people perceive
you. Integrity is the way you perceive yourself. Several characters in The
Crucible face a tough decision: to protect their reputation or their
integrity. Parris, Abigail,
and others to protect their reputations. Rebecca Nurse and,
eventually, John Proctor, choose to protect their
integrity. In rigid communities like Salem, a bad reputation can result in social or
even physical punishment. The Crucible argues that those most
concerned with reputation, like Parris, are dangerous to
society: to protect themselves, they’re willing to let others be harmed and fuel
hysteria in the process. In contrast,

The
Crucible shows that those who favor integrity by admitting mistakes and
refusing to lie just to save their own lives help defy hysteria. Willing to die for what
they believe in, they put a stop to the baseless fear that feeds
hysteria.