The Crucible by Arthur Miller
John Proctor says, I'll tell you what's walking Salem,
vengeance is walking Salem. Discuss the real evil in Salem, who
contributed to it and their motives who do you blame the most?
John Proctor says, "I'll tell you what's walking Salem, vengeance is
walking Salem." Discuss the real evil in Salem, who contributed to it
and their motives who do you blame the most?
Before I begin to tell you my opinion on who was to blame, and my
reasoning for saying so, I will give you a brief insight into the real
point of Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible. Arthur Miller first
produced his play in 1953, in the middle of the McCarthy political
'witch-hunt', although the story had applied for playwright for many
years prior to this. This meant that the play was seen as a political
parable - it represented the goings on in actual political life.
Since 1938, an organisation had existed in America called the House
Un-American Activities Committee with the right to investigate any
movement, or anyone who seemed to put at risk America's safety. The
chairman of this was Senator Joseph McCarthy. Under his rule, the
committee became paranoid in its search for people who sympathised
with communists.
Almost any criticism of the government or its instructions was seen,
in the eyes of McCarthy, as an admission of devotion or loyalty to
communism beliefs. Witnesses were made to appear in court and answer
charges that they were sympathisers of communist followers, and made
to name others that they saw at these meetings which took place as
long as twenty years ago. Liberal writers, film directors and actors
all appeared before the committee and, as a result, many of them found
it hard to fin...
... middle of paper ...
... tries to convince all the others that Mary just acting out of fear
but he fails, and John Proctor is accused of witchcraft.
In the last scene in the whole play, when Proctor is to be hanged,
Danforth makes him sign a written copy of his confession so that he
can hang it on the church door. Proctor signs it, but then refuses to
have his name hung on the church that he built, with so many people
feeling disgust with him. Also, seeing the others that are to hang
influences his confession as he feels guilt for letting the others die
by not submitting to lies. He pleads with Danforth to leave things as
they were, saying his confession by mouth was enough, but Danforth
will not accept anything unless it be written and signed. Danforth is
heartless in doing this, as he knows the confession is not necessary,
for he has not taken a confession from anyone else.
In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, both pride and excessive pride influence the characters throughout the play. Pride is a sense of one's dignity and worth. Excessive pride is being overly confident of one's own self worth. Throughout, pride influences the actions, reactions, and emotions of the characters in such ways to establish the outcome of the story. Three characters are impelled by their pride. Hale, who takes pride in his ability to detect witchcraft; Elizabeth Proctor, whose pride makes forgiving her husband difficult; Proctor, whose excessive pride causes him to overlook reality and the truth.
Context: This part of the text is included at the beginning of the drama, telling the audience about Salem and its people. The author explains how a theocracy would lead to a tragedy like the Salem witch-hunts. This is the initial setting and is based on the principle that some people should be included and some excluded from society, according to their religious beliefs and their actions. This is basically the idea that religious passion, taken to extremes, results in tragedy. Miller is saying that even today extremes end up bad- communism, like strict puritans, was restrictive and extreme. It only made people suffer.
likelihood of victory is small.” It is a person’s mental or moral strength to resist extreme
The Crucible by Arthur Miller The Crucible is a fictional retelling of events in American history surrounding the Salem witch trials of the seventeenth century, yet is as much a product of the time in which Arthur Miller wrote it, the early 1950s, as it is description of Puritan society. At that particular time in the 1950s, when Arthur Miller wrote the play the American Senator McCarthy who chaired the ‘House Un-American Activities Committee’ was very conscious of communism and feared its influence in America. It stopped authors’ writings being published in fear of them being socialist sympathisers. Miller was fascinated by the Salem Witch Trials and that human beings were capable of such madness. In the 1950s the audience would have seen the play as a parallel between the McCarthy trials and the Salem Trials.
Arthur Miller wrote plays as a way of showing people the real picture of what life was really like during the Great Depression and after World War II. Before the Great Depression many Americans were living in a significant time period, the Roaring Twenties. People had radios, automobiles, and movies with sounds. Then it all suddenly came to an end with the Stock Market Crash, leading to the Great Depression. During the Great Depression, Americans faced poverty, and had no income because jobs weren’t available. Throughout his life Miller influenced many people with his plays, and his contributions to this day because people want to read and understand what was truly happening in past history. For example, “The Crucible” is a play about the Salem Witch Trials, giving a good understanding of the basics that went on in this time period. Another example of Miller’s influential work is “The Death of a Sales Man”, which is his way of showing what life was like when people were struggling financially during the Stock Market Crash. Overall, Arthur Miller is one of the leading American playwrights of the twentieth century.
The Crucible is a novel based on the Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts, written by Arthur Miller. The Crucible demonstrates forbidden temptation between John Proctor and Abigail Williams, honor and dishonor in the town of Salem, ruthless revenge, and the strive for high social status. The narrative style of this play is standard 1950s everyday language. The Crucible is set in a theocratic society of Puritanism in 1692.
The Crucible, takes place in the small Puritan village called Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. The witchcraft trials grew out of the moral system of the Puritans. This split the town into two, those who were considered witches and those who wanted good.
"'A person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between.'" Act 3, Scene 1 pg. 87 . The characters in the play are either portrayed as good or evil with no in between , which makes life even harder for them . Salem mislabeled people in town as good or evil , but they had very little or no evidence at all to support it . Salem labels Rebecca nurse as a witch and evil , when really she was innocent and took care of everyone's babies. Abigail was an evil character who was a liar, vindictive and careless , the people of Salem viewed her as good character .
Many years ago, the culture and atmosphere was amazingly different. The expectations of people and communities are extremely high. During the Puritan times, many laws and regulations existed pertaining to government, religion, and witchcraft. In the play, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, the one word that best describes the Puritan beliefs and the community structure is strict.
The crucible, written by Arthur Miller, is about the Salem witch trials and how people react to hysteria created from the fear of witches. In the play, after hysteria breaks out, the Salem government starts persecute and hang people it believes are witches. This prompts people to start to accusing people of witchcraft. Some people who accuse others of committing witchcraft are Abigail Williams and Thomas Putnam. They do not accuse people of witchcraft to stop witchcraft, but for personal gain or to hurt others. Thomas Putnam, one of the many characters who takes advantage of the witch trials, is able to use the fear of witches to bend the court to his will. Hysteria causes people to believe claims that are clearly false. This allows Putnam to persecute his enemies. He and many other are able to get away with this because hysteria driven persecutions are not run like regular courts and the fact that witchcraft is an invisible crime allows evidence to be made up. The theme of The Crucible is when any persecution is driven by fear and people can and will manipulate the system so they can gain and hurt another.
A tragedy should bring fear and pity to the reader. A man in this tragedy should not be exceptionally righteous, but his faults should come about because of a certain irreversible error on his part. This man should find a bad or fatal ending to add to the tragedy of the story, for this man in the tragic hero. The protagonist John Proctor portrays a tragic hero in The Crucible; his hamartia of adultery causes great internal struggles, he displays hubris by challenging authority, and he encounters catastrophe through recognition and reversal.
Persecution has been a round for sometime and can be traced historically from the time of Jesus to the present time. Early Christians were persecuted for their faith in the hands of the Jews. Many Christians have been persecuted in history for their allegiance to Christ and forced to denounce Christ and others have been persecuted for failing to follow the laws of the land. The act of persecution is on the basis of religion, gender, race, differing beliefs and sex orientation. Persecution is a cruel and inhumane act that should not be supported since people are tortured to death. In the crucible, people were persecuted because of alleged witchcraft.
Thou sable, luminous, hair which falls right below the arches in her broad shoulders. The shoulders toned by hard work to hold the town together. The deep black circles that cast deathly shadows under her eyes from lack of rest. The woman who turns all the heads of the people in this small town of Salem Massachusetts. I must come to encounter this woman who cast the beat to my heart.
Thomas Putnam plays a major role in the Salem witch hunt in Arthur Miller's The Crucible. Inheriting a handsome amount of property makes Putnam a wealthy person; however, it doesn't seem to satisfy his ambition. After the town terribly rejected Putnam's brother-in-law, Bayley, Putnam's bitterness has increased. Finally his prodigious involvement in the relentless accusations places him in the center of the spot light, making him a salient character in both the play and the indignant period of the American history.
The issues of power, that Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, portrays are concerned with, who has the power, the shifts of power that take place and how power can consume people and try to abuse it, for either vengeance, jealously, material gain or sexual desire.