Slippery Slope in The Crucible By: Jordan Constant

Definition of Slippery Slope Slippery Slope is when a relatively insignificant first event is suggested to lead to a more significant event, which leads to a more significant event, and so on until some significant event is reached where the connection of each event is not only unwarranted, but with each step it becomes more and more improbable and ultimately ridiculous. Bennett, Bo. "Slippery Slope." Logically Fallacious. Logically Fallacious. Web. 16 Mar. 2015. In this example, Dilbert offers a proposal to his boss and his boss rejects it. Dilbert then questions the rejection, and the boss explains he has to reject proposals or else he will have nothing to do, which will lead to him getting fired, which will then lead to him starving to death because he won’t have a job to pay for food.

Universal Example of Slippery Slope https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2WM0W1PPU0 In this DirecTV commercial, DirecTV explains that when you wait for the cable guy, you get bored and see things you shouldn’t, which then leads you to vanishing and faking your own death, which then leads to you dying your eyebrows, which then eventually leads attending your own funeral as a guy named Phil Schifley. This commercial depicts an irrational chain of events, which makes it a slippery slope fallacy. DirectTV. “DIRECTV Don't Attend Your Own Funeral 2012 Commercial.” Online Video Clip. YouTube. Web. 16 March 2015.

Examples in The Crucible Abigail: “We did dance uncle, and when you leaped out of the bushes so suddenly, Betty was frightened and then she fainted. And there’s a whole of it. Parris: “Child, sit you down.” Abigail: “But we never conjured spirits.” Parris: “I would never hurt Betty. I love her dearly.” … Parris: “Then why can she not move herself since midnight? The child is desperate! It must come out– my enemies will bring it out. Let me know what you done there. Abigail, do you understand that I have enemies?” Act 1, page 170 Parris believes that because she caught Abigail and Betty in the bushes, they conjured spirits that eventually lead to Betty’s paralysis.

Examples in The Crucible Elizabeth: “The Deputy Governor promise hangin’ if they’ll not confess, John. The town’s gone wild, I think. She speak of Abigail, and I thought she were a saint, to hear her. Abigail brings the other girls into the court, and where she walks the crowd will part like the sea for Israel. And folks are brought before them, and if they scream and howl and fall to the floor– the person’s clapped in the jail for bewitchin’.” Act 2, page 193 Elizabeth explains that when Abigail leads the “other girls” into the court and they start acting absurd by screaming and falling to the floor, then the court is convinced that the girls are witches and they are immediately thrown into jail.

Examples in The Crucible Parris: “Thomas, Thomas, I pray you, leap not to witchcraft. I know that you– you least of all, Thomas, would ever wish to a disastrous a charge laid up on me. We cannot leap to witchcraft. They will howl me out of Salem for such corruption in my house.” Act 1, page 172 Parris is trying to convince Thomas not to take up witchcraft because Parris believes if Thomas does, then Parris will soon find himself exiled from Salem.

Works Cited http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallacies/163-slippery-slope https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2WM0W1PPU0 Miller, Arthur. The Language of Literature. The Crucible. Evanston: McDougal Littell Inc, 2006. 166-240. Print.