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Crucible arthur miller
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The crucible and contemporary society
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Alexa lizarraga Mrs. Jimenez English 3A 22 February 2017 What modern Americans can learn from the Crucible The Crucible is about the Salem witch trials in 1692.salem was a Puritan town where people would be accused of witchcraft if they weren't very religious or had different beliefs. People who weren't very religious would get whipped, tortured and hanged. The Puritans had a very strict religion that created fear in people which led them to follow the religion (Arthur Miller 1952). Modern Americans are entitled to believe in any religion of their choice, unlike the Puritans. Today if you commit a crime you won't be punished until there is evidence that you are guilty. In the crucible people were guilty based on accusations and their beliefs …show more content…
In the play, the characters are intolerant of the people who are not very religious and have other beliefs. They are accused of working for the devil and doing witchcraft. Today, someone can openly say they don't believe in God without being hanged but intolerance can be seen in racial and gender discrimination so the theme of intolerance is still relevant today. Religion for the Puritans is nothing like religion in America today. Modern Americans are not forced to believe in a religion. People now have rights and they can choose their lifestyle (The Patriot Act: Mike Kubic). However, Americans today just like the puritans, are obsessed with fear. This fear, like in Salem creates issues in our society. We are afraid of what we see on the news and social media and we let our fears control the way we think and do things. In “The Crucible”, if you weren't very religious you were accused of working with the Devil and eventually hanged. Today if you are accused of something you are not considered guilty based on your religious believes. Also, modern American have more choices and rights. Some punishments today are less cruel depending on the crime. Someone will not get hanged just because they were accused. The choice of punishment could take many trials to be
The Crucible uses fear of witchcraft in the America of the 1600s as a metaphor for the fear of communism that was widespread in America in the 1950s. Arthur Miller wished to show that the attitudes and behaviour of the villagers of Salem were as irrational and ill-founded as the attitude and behaviour of the committee chaired by Senator McCarthy. Essentially Miller uses the 17th century setting to provide critical distance between the events described and the emotions that they aroused. After three hundred years everyone understands that witchcraft was never a threat to society and we can look at the way people behaved fairly sensibly. The Crucible argues that communism is not a threat to American society, but that the irrational behaviour and injustice that fear of it causes is very dangerous indeed.
One of the subjects on which Miller commented was that of the notion that there is only pure, white goodness and cruel, unbending evil. In the play he shows us how people chase what they think is evil, (For example: not going to church, not knowing the Commandments, etc.) persecuting basically good people while the truly evil escape and are even seen as the innocent victims. The people of Salem condemned many based on the few things that were considered 'ungodly' and since they committed one sin, then it was assumed that they were committing many others.
God may be the supreme creator, but religion is the ultimate destroyer. In The Crucible by the Arthur Miller, religion plays a major role in the Puritan society. The Puritans live in constant fear of the church and of each other. Although religion can bring a community together to work for a greater good, the high moral standards that citizens are supposed to uphold is often what causes people to look down on others and sparks tension amongst the Puritans. The fears of being unholy, sinning, and having their name blackened by society are what kept the Salem witch trials alive, a tragedy that resulted in the death of
People were being persecuted for acting or thinking a peculiar way in each novel. The play is a parable for the McCarthy era, in which similar ‘witch hunts’ occurred targeting citizens as communists rather than disciples of Satan. In the Red Scare people were accused of being witches, were arrested, given a quick trial, and then burned at the stake. In The Crucible, people were being found guilty of witchcraft with no real proof at all.
“There is a misty plot afoot so subtle we should be criminal to cling to old respects and ancient friendships. I have seen too many frightful proofs in court - the Devil is alive in Salem, and we dare not quail to follow wherever the accusing finger points” (1304). The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller and published on January 22, 1953, takes place in a Puritan village in Massachusetts that is ruled by a theocracy. Many characters are accused of witchcraft and are put on trial to prove their innocence. John Proctor to be specific, the main character, is falsely hanged and is a tragic hero in The Crucible. On the same note, during the Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union were tight. The Red Scare was the time period when hysteria toward communists were present in the United States. The Crucible is an allegory for the Red Scare because fear was present in everyone, people were wrongly accused, and there were power-hungry people.
In the book “The Crucible” , Arthur Miller explains this conflict between goodness and evil between society and it's people. The setting takes place in the late 1600's and the early 1700's in a little town in Salem, Massachusetts. The people in this town were settling in this new land, and they had been going on for about a few years settling in quietly. But things started to arouse, as people heard of this new magic called witchcraft, in which it has said that witchcraft is used by witches, who use this power to abuse others, and cause chaos to the world, and it is only given to witches by none other than the Devil himself. Now, most of the people in Salem didn't believe in this witchcraft, and went on with their daily lives. But when a group of young girls, along with a black slave-woman, committed a ritual to get in contact with the Devil in some way, the ritual apparently was interrupted and was deemed incomplete, due to one of the people in Salem finding out that a ritual to conjure to dead was commencing. Soon, more and more people hear about the use of witchcraft, and started to blame others in the town, because they had very bad relations with each other. In the end, the town eventually dwindled down to the point where hundreds of people were accused and ...
The Crucible was a play written about the false accusations towards people in Salem that were apparent “witches” and out to get others on behalf of Satan. None of which was true, and many innocent were put to death because of the lying, deceiving children. Arthur Miller really made his point across by writing this play and showing the reader the actual truth behind the hidden lies of the government during the time this was written. Reading and watching these events were both educational, but watching the events occur made The Crucible easier to understand the characters they portray and the emotions and thoughts of each character throughout the movie.
The Crucible is a 1996 film depicting the Salem Witch Trials. Originally a play in the 1950s, it has always left out many facts, important people, and had the added Hollywood touch of a love interest. While the author, Arthur Miller, did stay true to actual names, he failed to stay true to actual history. In interviews he has claimed he cannot recall what was fact in his play or what he made up.
The Crucible is a piece of literature written by Arthur Miller in the early 1950s. The award winning play is a relatively fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials in the Massachusetts Bay area in the 1600s. Miller develops the idea of a historical period and the Puritan culture. Their culture includes a strict moral religious code. An all knowing third person narrates The Crucible which revolves around several people put on trial for witchcraft. Arthur Miller used the Salem witch trials as an allegory to describe American politics in the 1950s.Throughout the storyline characters make questionable decisions that have dark consequences. These problems are also caused by the mix of church and state. Arthur Miller wrote this play because he had a story to tell. In Why I Wrote The Crucible it explains that he was inspired to the the play because of the current government situation and his past personal experiences.
The Crucible is one of the most famous American plays, written by Arthur Miller in the 1950s as an attack on McCarthyism. The play takes place in the Salem Witch Trials of the 1690s, but was created as an allegory for the 1950s McCarthyism campaign. This campaign was similar to a witch hunt, in the way that it ruined people’s lives through accusations with no background. However, even the allegory of the story is something that happened more than half a century ago. The story needs to be updated so it is both more culturally relevant and more easily understood by this generation.
The Crucible is a 1953 play by Arthur Miller. Initially, it was known as The Chronicles of Sarah Good. The Crucible was set in the Puritan town of Salem, Massachusetts. It talks of McCarthyism that happened in the late 1600’s whereby the general public and people like Arthur Miller were tried and persecuted. The Crucible exemplifies persecutions during the Salem Witch Trials. The people were convicted and hung without any tangible proof of committing any crime. Persecutions were the order of the day. When a finger was pointed at any individual as a witch, the Deputy Governor Danforth never looked for evidence against them or evidence that incriminated them; he ordered them to be hanged. This can be seen through his words “Hang them high over the town! Who weeps for those, weeps for corruption!” (1273), the people were persecuted aimlessly. The four main characters in the play, John Proctor, Abigail Adams, Reverend Hale and Reverend Parris, are caught in the middle of the witchcraft panic in the religious Salem, Massachusetts in late 1690’s. Persecution is the most important theme in the Crucible, the leaders and citizens of Salem attacks and persecutes one of their own without any tangible evidence against them.
The court system is flawed today as well, even with state and church separated. State officials banned gay marriage and in a few states took away their rights entirely because some Christians think that god hates gays. A person’s rights should not be dependent on faith, in The Crucible Abigail is able to twist her people’s beliefs to benefit her and take away other people’s right to defend themselves. She makes accusations based on how they would benefit her, and she knows there is only two options once you are accused, confess or
The crucible, written by Arthur Miller, is about the Salem witch trials. This was all about how people react from the fear of witches. In the movie, the Salem government persecute or hangs people that are believed to be a witch. Many people were caught doing witchcraft including Abigail Williams. When Abigail and her friends got caught they started accusing other people of causing them to do it. The reason behind accusing other people of witchcraft is because they do not want to get in trouble themselves. Abigail Williams one of the main characters in this movie, uses the fear of witches to make the court believe her stories.
“The Crucible” is a play written by Arthur Miller in 1953. Arthur Miller read the “Salem Witch Trials” when he was in college and in that moment he knew he had to write about the period. Miller said in an article: “The Crucible was an act of desperation. Much of my desperation branched out, I suppose, from a typical Depression -- era trauma -- the blow struck on the mind by the rise of European Fascism and the brutal anti-Semitism it had brought to power”. He compared the actions committed in the late 1600’s with the actions committed in the process of the Second World War. Arthur Miller was an atheist and that is why the character “John Proctor” did not believe in fantastic events. This play was written with three main themes called guilt, ignorance, and intolerance that will be explained in the next paragraphs.
Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, describes the hysteria that took place during the witch trials. The Crucible shows us how manipulation can easily cause human minds to support and condone a terrible tragedy like that of the witch trials. The Red Scare, meaning the fear of communism, took hold in America during the Cold War and caused a very similar kind of hysteria, thus, making events like these seemingly repeatable and not as rare as hoped. Moreover, this frenzy described in the play is one expected to repeat itself throughout American history.