The Crucible Analysis

Tena Desae once said, “The biggest challenge is not to be affected by praise because a lot of it is not from the heart. Being true to yourself about your strengths, and weaknesses, when everyone out there has a strong opinion and wants to give advice, is another challenge.” In the play, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, many characters are affected by their own strengths and weaknesses. In this time period, many Salem townspeople were not opened to form new ideas and opinions, yet this caused several beliefs and effects on the town. The characters reveal different sides of themselves to protect or seek revenge on one another. For example, Mary Warren expresses many traits of strength and weakness that contribute to the trials throughout the

Humans act and react for a variety of reasons based on the context and their motivations. There is some part of human nature that prompts people to think, feel, and act in certain ways. This facet of the human condition transcends both time and place; it crosses all cultures. Moreover, human motivations transfer to the fictional world. For example, the characters found in Arthur Miller’s classic American play The Crucible provide a poignant and timeless commentary on human behavior. Act III in particular highlights the best and worst of human nature. This best and worst is equally seen in every day life, even at middle school. The character motivations in The Crucible effectively mirror those found in middle school.

One’s words have many meaning and can change shape by different people. Reputation is the beliefs or opinions that are generally held about someone or something. Thomas Paine a famous English-American political activist, the philosopher born in 1774 best describes Reputation as, “what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.” Applying that one true identity lies beyond human vision but only truly seen by the god. This message is repeated in ‘The Crucible’ as many characters are challenged between telling the truth to risk their lives to keep their reputations rather than do the right thing. Whether it be, by lying about one’s action,

The Crucible presents itself as one of the most controversial books of all time, seeing as its written by a man who got not just accused of communism, but asked by the FBI to change one of his screenplays because he got wrapped up the ‘witch hunt’ of his time. This books written not only to convey the messages and important lesson from the Salem Trials, but to also draw parallels to the modern events in the lives of the audience. Arthur Miller came up with the richly significant name of his book by sampling bits from linguistic, scientific, and biblical definitions of the word “crucible.”

The point of “The Crucible by Arthur Miller in 1952” is to point out how humans go through the thought and struggles that happen when they get scared, or when something happens and someone shows up and they take the blame. They force it onto someone to help relieve their fear of what's going on, in this case witches they force people into admitting to being witches otherwise they hang. The crucible is stating to the audience that humans react terribly when one person brings a claim that makes sense to people who are scared of things going on so they overreact to what happened.

During the 1690’s people had to deal with the Salem witch trials and during the 1950’s they had to live in the McCarthy Era. Despite the time difference, both correlate with each other. The Salem witch trials are hearings that were conducted in several towns in Province of Massachusetts with little or no proof. McCarthyism is accusations of treason without proper evidence. In The Crucible, Arthur Miller creates a story about McCarthyism, Puritan lifestyle, and witchcraft that can only exist with the historical time period of 1690’s.

In the beginning of the play, John is a well-respected farmer who is steadfast in his beliefs. He cares deeply about the reputation of his name and goes to great lengths to keep his adultery with Abigail Williams a private affair. During an encounter with Abby, he tells her, “But I will cut off my hand before I’ll ever reach for you again. Wipe it out of mind. We never touched, Abby.” (Pg. 22). This quote shows John’s desperation for Abby to forget their encounter, partly because he regrets his actions and wishes to hide his discretion, but partly also because he is afraid he will fall for her temptations again. John’s frame of mind quickly changes once he realizes the lengths Abby is willing to go to take Elizabeth’s place by his side. After John realizes Abby and the other so-called afflicted girls are placing blame on those in the community who are guilty of no crimes, including his wife Elizabeth, John feels it is his duty to restore order to Salem. He goes in front of the court and, in an attempt to undermine Abby’s credibility, admits to committing adultery with the statement “I have known her, sir. I have known her.” (Pg. 102). John’s change in attitude clearly marks him as a dynamic character. His transformation of desperately trying to hide his lechery with Abby to fully admitting to the court his misdoings shows the dire situation John was placed in and the personal change he was forced to go

The Relevance of The Crucible Today In the history of civilization, previous generations have set rules and implemented new concepts and/or ideas for the welfare of humanity. The founding fathers of the United States of America came up with the modern U.S. Constitution as a guideline of how the people and the government should act in order to coexist. Fear is something that causes people to do crazy things. Whenever people fear something, he/she literally begins to think irrationally.

Together they attempt to fight on Elizabeth’s behalf, however, through the tension and hysteria created by Miller in this scene Mary Warren’s argument collapses as she is manipulated by Abigail and the other girls. At this point in the play John has no hope left and no possible argument which would prove Abigail is lying so instead we see John confess to his sins in an act of integrity in order to save his wife. “I have known her.” John confesses to the court of his affair with Abigail and this is the first time we see John as a honest and loyal character in the play, this shows that deep down he is a good man who cannot forgive himself for his own sins and it is this which conveys John as finally beginning to redeem himself for what he has done. However, the tension in the court room increases as when Elizabeth is asked to confirm that John did actually have an affair, she chooses to lie in order to save her husband, not knowing he had already confessed it. From this point on in the play Elizabeth is taken back to jail and we see John become accused of witchcraft by the court due to when john says: “God is dead!” This shows john has lost all faith as he feels if god were real then this hysteria and nonsense would not be allowed to take place. However, the court sees this as an act of witchcraft and John now becomes wrongly

After reading “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller I could not believe that some elements from this story actually happened. The book is filled with evil deeds, deception, manipulation, witches, witchcraft and terrible lies that cause destruction in the little village of Salem. It’s rather scary to think that the work of the devil was so prominent during this time period and in other times in history. In the 1950’s it was as if history was beginning to repeat itself; witch hunts were happening again, but this time the cause was different. World War two just ended and the fear of communists in the United States was running high. This time is known for being the era of McCarthyism and the Red Scare, which greatly inspired Arthur Miller to write “The

In a religious aspect, to continue a strong establishment and denomination, it's crucial to have a strong government within the founding. In the Crucible, many aspects were taken to continue the Salem built and founded. In this book, the actions of the Witch Hunts, came from the Salem’s worry to keep everyone faithful to the beliefs endowed. The kind of government Salem has, is by the control and worry of the people to stay faithful in God's eye, the worry and control of keeping the faith accurate in everyone's life, and worry and control in the father and founder. All of these components play a role into the actions of Salem’s government.

Jumping to conclusions, bad assumptions, and false information can cause much hysteria within a society. This can be surely bad if you are dealing with people who are hypochondriacs. In The Crucible, Arthur Miller displays how hysteria is used to cover the truth, but can cause suffering for many of those who are innocent. The play strongly illustrates the hysteria that brushed through Salem because of the fear that Satan had haunted the town. When you have an entire society in an uproar it is usually because of false information being spread and people who are just reacting without thinking about what could possibly be happening. There are some people

Proctor. For the first and only time in the play we see Abigail as her

The Crucible book written by Arthur Miller  based on a real life story that happened in 1692 to 1693 In Salem Massachusetts was based on lies and injustice, genre is play, The author's purpose is to inform the audience about what happened during the witch trials .  The Salem Village was full Puritans and they was very strict based on church rules. People that missed church regularly will be justified as a witch or malignant and will be put to shame on a stockade. People that break the rules of the strict religious town will hang or live if such person decides to confess, If they confess the accused person will still be imprisoned and not killed. Also if you was accused of practicing witchcraft you will be accused by the people and go

There’s a handful of plays that you just can’t go through life without watching. The soul-shattering immortal plays that lose no impact or resonance as time goes on. For Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, the emotional connection to present day is arguably stronger than at the time of production; transforming it from a historical tragedy to a contemporary morality play.