preview

Lies And Deceit In The Crucible

Decent Essays

Charles Spurgeon once said, “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” The Salem Witch Trials occurred back in 1692, yet they were brought to life once again during the 1950s by Arthur Miller in his play “The Crucible.” Here, he retells the famous story in which a Puritan town falls victim to witchcraft. Although Miller retells the facts of the trials, he made some history changes in the play in order to make it more of a suspenseful drama and to incorporate other writing aspects into the story. Manipulating key factors in the play brought about different literary aspects that Miller used to send his message to the people of the 1950s to today. In “The Crucible” Arthur Miller made changes to history that developed the theme that lying and deceit can negatively impact a person and their community. The biggest change in history was the age difference between the real Abigail Williams and John Proctor and The Crucible’s version of them. In the play, Abigail was 17 years while in real life she was only 11. Likewise, John Proctor was 60 years old, however, he was depicted in mid-thirties by Arthur Miller. Due to the change in age gap, Miller decided to add drama to the play by adding an …show more content…

These changes to history allowed for theme development, particular the theme like lying can negatively impact a person or a community. Each change, large or small affected the way that the play developed and what themes were present. Lying was a huge theme and the changes brought about by Arthur Miller allowed it to develop and influence the way the characters interacted. The lies told in the town of Salem spread so quickly and soon everyone was accusing everyone of witchcraft, no one was safe. The truth was so far behind and it never had a chance to catch up until it was too late and too many casualties were

Get Access