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The theme of power in the crucible
The theme of power in the crucible
Conflict in the Crucible by Arthur Miller
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The danger of ideology within The Crucible is all throughout the novel. Ideology is a firm set of beliefs that clarifies what an individual or a group within the community thinks. Within the government of religious authorities, the people of the community believe that the government's decisions are found to be “good,” also considered to be approved by Heaven. Throughout The Crucible, Judge Hathorne and Deputy Governor Danforth believe the man upstairs, which means that everything they rule must be right, makes all their decisions. They also believe everything they believe in is to be true.
In The Crucible, the play shows many quotes for evidence of ideology. “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,” (Hale, Page 68)! As Hale speaks this, he shows others that God was fooled by the Devil once before, which indicates that people should not
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be able to trust anyone. How can the everyday people know whom to trust and who is afflicted with the Devil? With everyday people not having the same knowledge and power as God, there is no way they can spot out the difference in people. Especially when God was once even saw the Devil as beautiful. “You must understand, sir, that a person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between.
This is a sharp time, now, a precise time—we live no longer in the dusky afternoon when evil mixed itself with good and befuddled the world. Now, by God's grace, the shining sun is up, and them that fear not light will surely praise it,”(Danforth, Page 87). When Danforth says this, the reader can tell that he is trying to show others within the courtroom that they are doing works of God. He declares that there is no in between, if you are not with God on situations, you are with the Devil. God is all for the courtroom sanctioning Danforth. He believes that anyone who speaks out against the ruling, they are for the Devil. He believes that the court is doing the right thing through the will of God. He and the court have convinced themselves that it is all a part of God’s plan. When he uses the phrases “shining sun” and “God’s grace,” we can assume that he is convincing himself that he is in with God’s
plan. With many quotes in The Crucible, Danforth, Hale, and Proctor are the main characters who show ideology. With the government being all for God and believing their actions are in the hands of God, these three men are completely against anyone who tries to rule against them. The quotes above show the different ways characters have expressed their beliefs to the community or individuals. The Crucible is a great example for the dangers of the ideology. With the book taking place in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts, the town was filled with Puritans. The people of the community were all for God, so when the witch trials came about, there was plenty of ideology shown in the courtroom.
Sometimes people are so narrow-minded that they do not see the whole picture. People see what they want to see because they cannot handle the actuality or do not like the truth. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, Danforth refuses to come to the truth that the witch trials in Salem were the result of a cover-up, and that the court hung a handful of innocent people because of a lie. Miller once said, “The tragedy of The Crucible is the everlasting conflict between people so fanatically wedded to this orthodoxy that they could not cope with the evidence of their senses.” In other words, the tragedy of The Crucible involved the theocracy’s failure to control Salem’s witchcraft mania. At the time, Salem was governed by a theocracy, in which the ministers also had judicial power over society. Because the judges were ministers, religion took precedence over realism and pragmatism; they were unable to come to their senses and realize that the accusations of witchcraft were out of human emotions.
The Crucible by Arthur Miller is an allegory written about the Salem witch trials in 1692. It includes a number of characters who fully conform to the trials and their consequences, it also contains the opposite, those who do not conform and fight it. Of course, as in any story there are characters in the middle that are not sure which side to take. They go along with it, not willing to stand up, but in their minds they are not completely sure whether or not what they’re doing is right. Reverend Hale is the best example of outward conformity and inward questioning.
In the past history of the country, People see that fear can persuade them from reality. Fear can blind people from seeing right from wrong. For example,The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, a play based on actual events that led to the Salem witch trials. These trials are actual hearings that prosecuted over 150 individuals. These people were charged with the crime of practicing witchcraft. Reverend Hale is a very intellectual man whose morals were persuaded by fear and the church. Hale’s morals changed in the play in three ways, at the beginning he was a witch craft expert who believed in the practice, then he started to doubt the validity of the charges, and by the end of the play, he was a disbeliever of the charges presented to the court.
A crucible has two definitions, one being a vessel in which metal is heated to a high temperature and melted for the purposes of casting, having been purified. An Alternative sense of the word may be as the focus of a baptism by fire, by which a metamorphosis in political, social, and cultural relations takes place, driven by agents of change. When a community presents a toxic environment which is seen to be flawed in major aspects of effective functionality, good may only triumph when certain individuals rise up against such a destructive system and refuse conformity in a dire attempt to reform the society for the better, despite the often tragic personal consequences. Thus the corruptness of a society can only be ameliorated by the personal sacrifice of such individuals who refuse conformity and choose to uphold their moral vision, despite the friction. This phenomenon is not only found in The Crucible, but it is universal; applicable to any culture during any era, and is a continually recurring theme in literature. It’s roots can be traced back to biblical stories, in which several of the first and most famous instances of this phenomenon can be seen in the crucifixion of Christ, in which Christ willingly died in order to change society and for the bettering of man kind, or in Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son despite the act’s complications. Other instances of this can be found in The Crucible with major characters such as Giles and John Proctor who act as the nonconformists, and it can also be seen in the case of Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher and Mohamed Bouazizi, the man who instigated the Arab Spring. These instances will be closely analyzed for their parallels and distinct similarities in distinct rel...
Arthur Miller’s 1953 play The Crucible and Alfonso Cuarón’s 2006 dystopian science-fiction film Children of Men both represent people and politics through an exploration of the concept of justice and conformity and non-conformity. Both texts represent people and politics in a unique and evocative way through their differing textual forms, contexts and techniques.
In The Crucible, there are many examples that ambition can corrupt even the most steady and kind, through the use of characters such as Elizabeth Proctor, Reverend Hale and John Proctor as well as others. Rev. Hale, as an example, came to Salem with an ambition to rid the town of witchcraft, but at the same time disregarded the fact of the matter, innocent people are being put to death for the sake of reputation. As Hale says in Arthur Millers' The Crucible, book/movie/play,
Greed and envy are two of the seven deadly sins in the Christian world that adherents must dispel from their lives. This fact makes it all the more ironic when many Christians during the Salem witch trials display these two offenses in The Crucible by Arthur Miller. One reason explaining the prevalence of sin in a society that thinks of itself as pure is that leaders demonstrate that they care more about actions rather than pureness of thought. For example, clergymen who feature themselves in the play, like Parris and Hale, often measure a person’s connection with the divine through the number of times he or she attends church. In actuality, according to many prominent officials of the Christian Church, that connection can only be achieved
Life as a human is dictated by an inborn hunger or purpose, and people, in general, will act on this hunger for their own personal gain in their individual ways. This hunger, be it for wealth, land, love, power, revenge, or pride, can, and will be the undoing or failing of all mankind as Miller so clearly points out in his play 'The Crucible';. This essay will explore the motives of characters within the play and even the motives of Arthur Miller himself and therefore show how conflict stems from certain recognisable human failings including those mentioned above, fear, and hysteria.
Salem in the 1600s was a textbook example of an extremist society with sexist norms and no separation of church and state. Because it had no laws, only people considered authorities on law, it was always a society based on norms laid down by the first settlers and severity on the verge of madness. The power was imbalanced, focused subjectively in the people who had means to control others. Some people attempted to right the wrongs of the powerful, as people are wont to do eventually. Because of them, change indeed came to Salem, slowly and after excessive ruin and death. Before the rebels’ impact took hold, Salem’s Puritan society was a religious dystopian disaster, a fact illustrated excellently by Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible. This religious dystopian disaster carried many flaws and conflicts that can be seen in other societies, both historical and modern.
In The Crucible, by Authur Miller, he was successful in fulfilling his purpose of the theme, truth versus faith. As known before, Miller wrote this play in relations to the Salem Witch Trials, and also, McCarthyism - two both very similar topics. Not to mention, both topics share a repeated theme of truth versus faith. Miller had a story to tell, along with the opinions of his own (indirectly, of course), and the only way he knew how to relate it to what was happening then, was to take something from the past. Truth and faith are two indomitable foundations, per say, that go head-to-head throughout the play. Truth is speaking without lies, while faith is confidence in what the speaker is speaking. However, faith is a continuous factor in why people are accused when they are innocent, and vice versa. Therefore, the truth is the only side to depend on. After all, truth is what tests our faith.
Oppression; an extended treatment of cruelty or injustice towards an individual or a group of people. If looked for, it can be found in every society expressed in a number of different ways. Arthur Miller, the author of The Crucible, puts it in a way that is easy to understand. "It is still impossible for man to organize his social life without repressions." This is evident in his play, The Crucible, demonstrating that within a society, oppression will always be present due to personal motives, disputes and misuses of power, as well as distorted religious beliefs.
The Puritans in The Crucible are judgment filled hypocrites. Hypocrisy is one of the most ignorant and dangerous traps that we as humans seem to fall into and commit very frequently. This hypocrisy that many of the characters have in them has many terrible effects on the society of the town of Salem.
“Looking at Giles,” he states, “who is this man?” One can evidently sense an outrage here as he cannot believe that someone is challenging his authority. On another occasion in Act 3, Danforth asks, "You deny every scrap and tittle of this?" Abigial responds by “hissing”, "If I must answer that, I will leave and I will not come back again." Momentarily, Miller then states in the stage directions that Danforth "seems unsteady."
"Them that will not confess will hang. While I speak with God 's law, I will not crack its voice with whimpering. I should hang ten thousand that dared to rise against the law, and ocean of salt tears could not the resolution of the statutes." (Miller 129). Judge Danforth is not afraid to kill those that stand in his way. He is very similar to Abigail in that he will have innocent people killed to prove a point or to get what he wants. Its his way or the highway. If you do not cooperate, you will die. He abuses his power to get people to talk and give names. He is also very similar to Parris in his concern for power. Danforth holds all the power in the courtroom and basically forces you to talk and confess. If you don 't cooperate, then you will suffer the consequences. Ergo, it is a win-win situation for the accuser. "You are the high court, you word is good enough!" (Miller 143). Proctor later denounced himself for saying this, but the phrase is completely true. This quote is a reference to Danforth 's abuse of power throughout the witch trials. The high court deeply resembles the courts during the McCarthyism era. They held all the power and had the people 's lives in their hands. Danforth was prideful and believed himself to be a honest man. So whatever he thought was right, was declared as right. If they said you were guilty of being a witch, and hanged you, then no one in Salem did anything about it. They couldn 't say or do anything because the high court was always right. Many innocent people died because Danforth couldn 't admit he was wrong. If he did admit to being wrong, then the high court would lose power and it would of hurt his
A group of teenage girls were secretly dancing in the woods with a black slave, named Tituba. When they were discovered of what they were doing, the girls started accusing certain individuals in the village of dealing with witchcraft. Within a blink of an eye, the entire village is controlled by a devil that exists within the fear of each person. A drama of suspense and impact, Arthur Miller's The Crucible, explores through the individuals' vengeance, fear, reputation, and quest for power.