Arthur Miller's The Crucible

Arthur Miller's The Crucible

Arthur Miller has crafted 'The Crucible' to constantly engage the

audience. With reference to significant moments in the play, discuss

how tension is achieved and how the audience may react.

The Crucible was wrote by Arthur Miller in 1953 in the height of the

cold war. Miller wrote it because of what he felt about McCarthyism.

McCarthyism:

Senator Joe McCarthy organized a twentieth-century version of

witch-hunting. In the early 1950's he exploited the US fears about

Communism and managed to create a national campaign against

Communists. As chairman of a senate committee, the House Un-American

Activities Committee, he interrogated many witnesses and tried to make

them inform on their friends and colleagues. Powerful figures like J.

Edgar Hoover, the Director of the FBI, were happy to support McCarthy.

This was when McCarthy's anti-Communist campaign was at its height and

there are obvious parallels in the Crucible: unsupported accusations;

people encouraged to denounce their friends and acquaintances; a

spiral of fear and suspicion.

The Salem which trials:

The belief in witchcraft persisted among the English colonists in

America. In 1692 there was an outbreak of accusations of witchcraft in

Salem, Massachusetts. The colonists were Puritans who followed a

particular form of Protestant Christianity and would tolerate no

other. They felt surrounded by ungodly people and associated the

forest with savages and evil. Two young girls had been taking part in

magic ceremonies. Ministers, doctors and magistrates were called in

and soon accusations were multiplying. Before the panic had burned

itself out, twenty people had been executed (one man pressed to death

by stones) and about two hundred had been accused. Later some of the

witnesses and judges who had been involved publicly regretted what had

taken place.

I have written about 3 dramatic moments during the play. The first one

is when Parris' Barbadian slave confesses to have compacted with the

devil. The second is when Elizabeth Proctor is arrested and the last

is the 'yellow bird' scene in court.