The Crucible by Arthur Miller
In this essay I will be assessing Proctors dramatic confrontations. In
the play The Crucible the author Arthur Miller has very strong hidden
messages against 'McCarthyism', the singling out of individuals in
American society and accusing them of an association with groups who
are said to be against the American way of life. He expresses his
thoughts indirectly instead of writing a play that directly condemns
'McCarthyism'. Miller's message is that the Salem witch trials were
wrong, they were destroying innocent individuals with no real
evidence. This works as an allegorical metaphor for the wrongs of
'McCarthyism'. In the play The Crucible the key events focus around
the character John Proctor, who is the main character, around whom the
play revolves and ultimately he is central to the plays intend
message.
The audience first meets John Proctor when he goes into the crowded
parlour in Salem and sees Abigail Williams, who is being questioned
about witchcraft. John Proctor says to her 'Ah, you're wicked yet,
aren't y'. You'll be clapped in the stocks before you're twenty.' This
shows he is a laid back man, who has a different approach to life than
most people then, it also shows he knows Abigail well and knows what
she is capable of. When John Proctor approaches Abigail you can tell
she is attracted to him, as it says 'Since Proctors entrance, Abigail
has stood as though on tiptoe, absorbing his presence, wide-eyed.' He
is obviously attractive and has a lot of confidence.
In this first dramatic confrontation you find out that Proctor has
sinned and is therefore classed as a sinner, but not only against the
moral fashion of the time, but against his own vision of decent
conduct. Now that the audience knows he is a sinner they can relate to
him as they know no one is perfect and everyone makes mistakes. As the
audience it is important that you believe and be attracted to John
Proctors character.
Act one ends in hysteria with Abigail and Betty crying out, naming,
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.
Buddha once said, “Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” Buddha states that the truth is one of the things that cannot be overlooked as the truth is eventually revealed, and the truth might end up having bad effects. Buddha’s quote is significantly true in the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller which discusses the Joseph McCarthy era. Miller shows that McCarthy manipulated and abused his power and fame, leading to his downfall. In The Crucible, Miller uses parallelism between Judge Danforth and Joseph McCarthy to accentuate the horrific, unlawful, and untrustworthy complications that they brought to the United States in the 1690's and the 1950's.
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.
John and Elizabeth continue to argue. John Hale appears at their doorway. He is traveling to each house, talking to those who were mentioned in court, trying to find out more information about them. John says that he knows that Abigail and the other girls are not telling the truth. Two Salem citizens that have had wives arrested show up and a short time passes before a party comes to arrest Elizabeth.
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.
Arthur Miller’s dramatic play The Crucible, takes place during 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts. The setting is important because it takes place during the time of the Salem Witch Trials. The play begins with the town’s girls, led by Abigail Williams, gathering in the forest and starting to dance around a fire, chanting. Reverend Parris catches them dancing, sending the girls into a panic and causing two of the girls to go into a coma-like state. The townspeople spread rumors that there are witches lurking throughout the the town that have put the girls under their spells. This causes Reverend Parris to send for Reverend Hale, an expert in witchcraft and the devil's work, who hopes to rid the town of all witchcraft. John Proctor, a local farmer, asks Abigail to stop accusing innocent people and start telling the truth about what happened in the forest. Elizabeth Proctor, John Proctor's wife, excused Abigail from their house because she found out about an affair between Abigail and John. She lies to the court when she is asked about John’s affair to save him from any punishment. In doing so, they were both sent to jail for witchcraft because they knew she had lied. Abigail and the girls continued to lie about people in the town being witches, causing many innocent people to be killed, including John Proctor. Miller shows the dangers of scapegoating when lies that are regarded as the truth, and can kill innocent characters.
"'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 .
The Crucible – It can withstand extreme conditions. While heating metals in it, the impurities come up to the surface and the pure substance can be obtained. It basically helps in separating pure and impure substances.
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.