A.P. English Language
August 11, 2014
Novel Analysis Assignment
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
Plot and Conflict At its core, The Crucible is a chilling depiction of a community engulfed by hysteria. A fanatically religious community in Salem, Massachusetts becomes embroiled in a witch-hunt initiated by a group of adolescent girls. At the start of the play, Reverend Parris finds his teenage daughter, Betty Parris, “sick” in bed after she, along with his niece Abigail, his slave Tituba, and a few other town girls, is discovered dancing, mixing potions, and singing strange songs in the forest. As talks of witchcraft sweep through the town, people soon suspect that hidden witches have cursed the girls, and the girls support the rumors by claiming to have been possessed by Satan’s servant, Tituba, in hopes of shifting blame from themselves. This sets off a chain of accusations around town and the girls drag others into the chicanery—including Elizabeth Proctor, the object of Abigail’s selfish vengeance. Elizabeth’s predicament forces John Proctor to confront his adulterous past with Abigail, leading to the novel’s main conflict between Proctor’s desire to maintain his integrity and his instinct to survive. To save his wife and reveal the girls’ fraudulent acts in court, Proctor confesses his relationship with Abigail, but the hysteria caused by witch-hunting had already risen beyond logical reasoning. The climax is reached when Proctor is accused of being a witch and must
The Crucible is a historical play by Arthur Miller, and is set in the town of Salem during the late 1690s. The main characters are John Proctor, the protagonist, and Abigail Williams, the antagonist. The conflict occurs when Abigail falsely accuses others of witchcraft. This leads to hysteria in the town, with people turning in innocent people for witchcraft. Many people including John and Elizabeth Proctor are arrested and put on trial, despite their innocence. John Proctor is sentenced to death after refusing to denounce his friends as witches, forgiven by Elizabeth for his affair with Abigail, and restores his reputation of being a good man. The Crucible delves into the extent people will go betray others in order to benefit themselves
The Crucible by Arthur Miller is an interpretation of the Salem witch trials of 1692 in Puritan Massachusetts in which religion, justice, individuality and dignity play a vital role. These factors define the characteristics of many of the most significant characters in the play. Some of them being John Proctor, Rebecca Nurse, Reverend Hale, Danforth and many others. The Salem witch trials were a result of the lack of expression of individuality and the fact that no individual could expect justice from the majority culture as a result of the deterioration of human dignity in the Puritan society of Salem.
How many people have you met in your life that is stronger because of a difficult experience they went through? Most people are because we take these difficult experiences and grow from them and become better people. This is the exact case is expressed in the play, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller. The story begins in Salem, Massachusetts 1692 right in the middle of a period of witchcraft hysteria. During this time many people were accused of being witches and wrongly convicted by judges Danforth and Hathorne. The characters in the story are struggling because of a girl named Abigail who gets caught practicing witchcraft and then starts naming and accusing others so that she doesn’t get in trouble; one of these people being a well-respected farmer, John Proctor’s, wife Elizabeth. The title, The Crucible, refers to a test, trial, ordeal, formation by fire, and vessel baked to resist heat, and the entire story is an allegory meaning it has a hidden meaning. John Proctor symbolizes a crucible by embodying the definition of one, as he went through a test and was formed by fire.
Crucible, a noun defined as; a container of metal or refractory material employed for heating substances to high temperatures, in the traditional sense but, it also means a severe, searching test or trial. The latter of the two definitions is exactly what Arthur Miller had in mind when he wrote the play, The Crucible. The play set in Salem Massachusetts during the start of the infamous Salem Witch Trials, is about the struggle to discover truth within the twisted and brutal lies flying about the little town, started mainly by a young girl by the name of Abigail Williams. Abigail Williams, as we quickly come to know, is the past mistress of the prominent Mr. John Proctor, a local farmer. As the tension rises in the
In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible the witch trials in Salem were a devastating time. The entire community was in disorder and chaos because of personal vengeance. This included accusations of innocent town’s people being called witches, so they hanged and were jailed. Throughout the play certain characters help the rise of witchcraft as well as the disapproval of all the innocent people who were being convicted for no reason. Reverend Hale is a dynamic character whom comes to rid of the evil spirits in Salem, yet he later tries to end the trials. Hale realizes the accusations are false, attempts to postpone the hangings, and persuade the victims to lie conveys that he is a dynamic character and changes throughout the play.
The Crucible, a historical play based on events of the Salem witchcraft trials, takes place in a small Puritan village in the colony of Massachusetts in 1692. The witchcraft trials, as Miller explains in a prose prologue to the play, grew out of the particular moral system of the Puritans, which promoted interference in others' affairs as well as a repressive code of conduct that frowned on any diversion from norms of behavior.
1."Participate" in the Salem Witch Trials. Write a paragraph response, as the accused, describing your feelings.
Mistakes are part of human nature. Mistakes can happen to anyone and anything. In the play The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller, mistakes are shown all throughout the story. The whole idea of The Crucible is that a wild witch hunt is going on in the town. Names are being called out at random, and people are turning on one another. This story was written by Miller after the McCarthy Hearings, which was the period during the Cold War where Joseph McCarthy began to call many high level officials out for being a communist. The Crucible is right on along like the Hearings. One character who was of high respect in the town of Salem was John Proctor. Proctor is shown to the reader and throughout the play as the hero of the town. Proctor is a simple but well respected farmer in the town of Salem, who gets himself mixed up with witchcraft and the twisted and treacherous Abigail Williams. Through the writings of Arthur Miller, Proctor is shown to have many strengths and flaws that attribute him as the tragic hero of the play.
In The Crucible, Arthur Miller employs many rhetorical and poetic elements to depict the changing nature of relationships between the play’s characters. One of the most rhetorically dynamic relationships portrayed in the play is the marriage between the protagonist John Proctor and his wife Elizabeth. Miller skillfully uses Elizabeth and John’s language and the overall tone of their marriage to manifest John’s complex character development throughout the play. The marriage evolves from a relationship of hostility and tension to sacrifice and selflessness as John becomes a man of integrity. While John is overall more of a dynamic character than his wife, Elizabeth does not remain static for the entirety of the play; she demonstrates a slight character change in the final act that is, in a sense, opposite from her husband’s. The changes in the language of Elizabeth and John throughout the play result from the gradual breakdown and final anagnorisis of John’s character as he learns the value of the truth and becomes willing to shed his formerly coveted dignity for Elizabeth’s honor. This evolution of communication and character between the Proctors allows for mutual forgiveness and the final reconciliation of their marriage before John dies as a martyr.
you?" He asks first to see if he would be doing the right thing. After
From deciding whether or not to eat the last pudding, to stopping at a stop sign when no policemen are around, people face moral choices every day. However, sometimes a challenging decision finds its way to the forefront of someone’s life. A decision that does not only affect that person then and there but lingers and affects other people as well. Lawyers defend people they know are guilty, witnesses of crimes may not speak out in fear of their lives, and politicians lie about their opinions in order to save their public image until they get into power. A historical example a major moral test took place in Salem, 1692. When accusations of witchcraft were thrown left and right, innocent citizens were faced with the decision of saving their lives while potentially damning their souls, or saving their souls in exchange for their worldly lives. Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible highlights the difficult test of maintaining moral integrity during these times, primarily through the characters of Proctor, Elizabeth, and Mary Warren-- some pass their crucibles while others fail.
Lying leads to terrible tragedies. Lying for so long will make it unpleasant to move on and the more difficult it will become. Just like how The Crucible ends. The Crucible is set in Salem, Massachusetts, at the beginning of the 1692 Salem Witchcraft Trials. The story is centralized around John Proctor, a white, landowning Puritan who betrayed his wife, Elizabeth by having sex with Abigail Williams. Back in the day, everything was black and white, meaning if something isn’t about God then it must’ve been about the Devil, they were religious people and they would not accept the fact that he had sex with someone else outside of marriage. He denied that nothing ever happened between him and Abigail. While Proctor is not taking responsibility for his actions, he causes a big commotion: people getting arrested and hanged, Abigail and a group of other girls are being accused of being part of Witchcraft. In the fourth act, Proctor is stuck in a situation where he either says the truth about who is part of witchcraft or he gets hanged. Proctor does not confess because he does not want people to use his name in vain and he knows that if he confesses it will leave a bad example for his sons, he decided to die an honest man than to live a fraud. At the end, Proctor ripped the confession knowing that he will be hung. Throughout the play, Arthur Miller creates two themes: the past will always haunt you and as people run away from their problems, their problems will continue to follow
People often tells lies to evade punishment for their wrong doings, however sometimes these lies get out of control and a person must test their weaknesses and courage. This is exactly the situation the characters in The Crucible dealt with. It takes place in the Puritan village of Salem, Massachusetts during the Salem Witch Trials which happened from 1692-1693. The mayhem of the trials began when Abigail Williams and several other girls are caught dancing in the woods with the Barbados slave, Tituba. Dancing is considered a sin by the Puritans, the girls instead of owning up to their mistake, claim the Tituba had them under a spell. The girls later claim seeing others with the devil. Further fueling Abigail's desire to be involved in
In every literary work, there are themes. A theme is a broad idea, moral or message of a book or story. One individual may construe the themes of a book or story differently than another, but that is the pure beauty of themes. One great literary work is The Crucible, a play written by Arthur Miller. Succinctly, the play is about the Salem witch trials that took place in Massachusetts in 1692. Throughout the story, the townspeople indict their neighbors of being a witch and practicing witchcraft. On the surface, this historical drama has a few universal and enduring themes. Themes are universal because regardless of where in the world, the ideas still relates to everyone and is understood. Themes are enduring because the ideas are found
Set in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts, “The Crucible” tells the story of an isolated Puritan townspeople who participate in the Salem witch trials. Reverend Parris, the local town minister, has discovered his daughter, Betty, his niece, Abigail, and his slave, Tituba, dancing late at night in a forest. Betty has been severely frightened after getting caught and thus, lies sick and unconscious in her bed. As more questions arise, Abigail admits that they were contacting the devil after Tituba first confesses to Reverend Hale, the local witch expert. Afterwards, John Proctor and Mary Warren, his servant, go to court to defend Proctor’s wife, Elizabeth, who is accused of witchcraft by Abigail. Because Proctor was proven false when attempting to defend his wife, Judge Danforth arrests him. John Proctor decides to confess to the court in order to save his own life, but does not allow his name to be signed on the confession paper. Proctor tears the paper up, and is unapologetic about it.