Grace Hagenson
J. Robinson
AP American Literature
23 September 2007
Just how much damage can a group of kids cause? In today’s world, teenagers are not usually given much say in “grown-up affairs.” Perhaps it is thought that anyone under the age of eighteen does not possess enough mental and physical capacity to make a difference. However, there are many cases in which an unjust child can possess too much capability, and if used fully, can wreak havoc. Although Mean Girls and The Crucible are of completely different eras and backgrounds, the same central theme lies at the backbone: an unruly group of teenagers can cause a great amount of destruction. Moreover, one very influential girl can manipulate her peers to do things they may have never considered doing before.
The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller in 1952, is a recount of the horror that befell the town of Salem, known to many as the Salem Witch Trials. The girls were motivated out of fear for their town’s harsh religious righteousness. Mean Girls, written by Tina Fey in 2004, is a tale of five girls that terrorize their high school. Motivated out of desire for high social standing, the girls stomp through the halls of high school without the slightest consideration of who they are stomping on. It is clear to see that The Crucible and Mean Girls have many structural differences, but the similarities are far more interesting.
First and foremost, both movies wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the fact that a small group of seemingly innocent teenage girls hadn’t lied and manipulated the adults and their peers. Also, both movies have a “leader of the pack”. In The Crucible, the group leader is Abigail, who scares the rest of the girls into lying and turns the blame from them to the older people in the village. In one scene Abigail says in a fury, “Let either of you breathe a word about the other things, and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you.” (Miller 13) In Mean Girls, the leader of the group is Cady, who is in charge of the other girls and directs the flow of insults at other kids at the high school. During one scene in the movie, Cady says, “I had learned to control everyone around me.” (Mean Girls. Tina Fey. 2004.) Both Abigail and Cady carry on without any regard to a moral conscience and, when caught up in the moment, do things that they probably wouldn’t have previously.
“And you know I can do it; I saw Indians smash my dear parents’ heads on the pillow next to mine, and I have seen some reddish work done at night, and I can make you wish you had never seen the sun go down!” (Miller, 13) Abigail was a bit different from the other girls. She had a dark past. She was so enthralled with Proctor that she broke the neck of a chicken and drank its blood. I believe it is fair to say that Abigail was an outsider. Likewise, Cady was born in Africa and was a new girl at the school. She knew nothing of the cruelties of the high school world. During one scene in the movie, Cady’s teacher almost loses her job because of a lie that Cady spreads about the teacher dealing drugs. Despite their exile pasts, both of the girls became insiders. Abigail’s position switched when the girls realized what she was capable of. Cady became Miss. Popularity when she sabotaged Regina, the previous group leader. However their social incline, the two girls were raised to the status of group leader, although previously having been considered a “weirdo.”
The night that Abigail led the other girls in the woods to “dance”, she couldn’t have possibly known the horrendous outcome of what seemed to her a harmless way to make Proctor her man. When the finger was pointed at her, it was only natural for her to point it at someone else. Kill or be killed? Abigail never would have danced in the woods if she had known that Proctor would rather die than have his name ruined. Similarly, Cady didn’t anticipate the outcome of her claim to popularity to be Regina in a wheelchair and the entire school hating her. I can say with confidence that she would have never taken over Regina’s “position” has she known that soon she would have no friends, her parents would think her corrupt, and a rumor that she pushed Regina into an oncoming bus would arise. Both girls ended up with an outcome that they hadn’t intended.
Thus, when my father says to me “kids can’t do anything”, I just laugh at him. Doesn’t he know how much of an impact a steadfast group of teenagers can cause? Although The Crucible was set in an entire village and Mean Girls was only staged in a high school, they have a lot of similarities. In both movies, there is an insider (Cady and Abigail), who by their circumstances, become insiders. These insiders are very persuasive leaders, and can convince the other girls to commit unmoral acts that they wouldn’t have considered before. Both packs of girls run wild and savagely destroy the lives of other people to get what they want. What at first might have seemed innocent to the girls, soon took a sharp turn. Ultimately, in both The Crucible and Mean Girls, a scene of enormous panic and mass hysteria is created by a group of mere teenage girls.
