The Crucible By Arthur Miller

Most people would not like to be known as a coward. Mary Warren was not aiming for that title, but that is what she ended up with. She gave herself this negative reputation. The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, is a play about the undergoing of the Salem Witchcraft Trials in 1692. A group of Salems girls, are caught dancing in the woods. To take allegation off of themselves, they accuse other innocent townspeople of practicing witchcraft. Multiple victims are murdered or imprisoned. Mary Warren, one of the accusers, plays a big role in this play. Mary Warren’s character changes from cowardly, to brave, and back to cowardly, throughout the story which shows how she evolved throughout The Crucible.

Page 1 of 3Hai Nguyen John Proctor and the McCarthyism “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller illustrates the reflection of the anti-communist hysteria in the United States known as McCarthyism. Miller uses the character John Proctor as a force in demonstrating the way lives were destroyed by McCarthyism. Throughout the story, while Proctor is respected in the community, he has conflict secretly with many people as well as himself. John Proctor is a perfect character because the readers are able to view him as a victim in the society where McCarthyism took place. He is also an adulterer, husband of Elizabeth, and knows what is happening in and outside of the Salem society. Proctor was having a conflict with his wife, Elizabeth Proctor. Elizabeth did not trust John because he had an affair with Abigail Williams. Elizabeth was supposed to trust John, but she refused to because he said he was alone with Abigail for a moment. John cannot say or argue against Elizabeth because of his guilt:” Because it speaks deceit, and I am honest! But I will plead no more! I see how your spirit twists around the single error of my life, and I will never tear it free!” Elizabeth tried to make John feel guilt, so John wanted to make sure she understood her cold nature may have prompted his cheating. He also has conflict with Abigail Williams which is his mistress. John Proctor was so angry because Abigail accused his wife to witchcraft. She sent Mary Warren with a puppet that has needle inside its

The Crucible by Arthur Miller takes place in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. It all started when Reverend Parris discovers a group of girls dancing in the woods. After he found the girls in the wood, his daughter Betty fall ill. Since Betty wouldn’t wake up, people become paranoid and started believing that witchcraft was real. Fake accusations were made and innocent people kept dying. In The Crucible there are many people to blame for all for everything that occurred, characters such a Abigail Williams, Reverend Hale, and Reverend Parris. Abigail Williams is to blame because she accused everyone else just to protect herself. Reverend Hale is also blame because he was the one who got people to think that witchcraft was real. Lastly Reverend Parris is to blame because he was just worried about himself and his reputation in Salem.

Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible show the hysteria that took place in Salem in 1692. Even though this play is fiction, Miller based the plot of his play on a real historical event which was McCarthyism in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. There’re many connection in The Crucible to be considered as an allegory due to similarities themes and how the characters are being portrayed. Miller does an excellent job of portraying numerals characters used fear for benefit and they showed selfishness and malfeasance. This is also similar to how Joseph McCarthy’s oppressive by using intense fear of the spread of the economic system called communism.

TV shows and Movies with a focus on cliques, either in high school or in the work force, are popular in our society today. For instance the movie Mean Girls is about a teenage girl moving to a new school and being recruited into a high school clique. In this clique, the members exhibit the behaviors of people experiencing the psychological phenomenon, Groupthink. Groupthink is the practice of thinking or making decisions as a group in a way that discourages creativity or individual responsibility. There are eight symptoms of Groupthink- Invulnerability, Rationale, Morality, Stereotypes, Pressure, Self-Censorship, Unanimity, and Mindguards. Groupthink has also taken place in our history a a country. The play, The Crucible by Arthur Miller is about a the real-life Salem Witch Trials that happened in 1692 - 1693, in Salem, Massachusetts. Some symptoms of Groupthink found in the Crucible are Rationale, Pressure, and Self-Censorship.

The play The Crucible written by Arthur Miller, withholds many conflicts that arise resulting in many themes as well. Such as weight, Reputation, and Good vs. Evil. These themes form from the Salem witch trials. Repeatedly people become accused of witchcraft, throughout the play this continues to drag out due to the people of Salem’s accusations and deceit for one another. The play continues to move to a tense and moving climax resulting in the death of many prominent people of Salem.

“And they feel if only they can demolish that person, then everything’s going to be okay.” -Margaret Atwood the author of “Half-Hanged Mary”. In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, ¨Why I Wrote The Crucible¨an essay by Arthur Miller, and ¨Half-Hanged Mary¨ a poem by Margaret Atwood, it shows that a society under stress will always scapegoat a person or a group of people. Defending this statement, people from each of these sources have felt betrayed by being blamed and persecuted for actions they have not done. In The Crucible, Abigail and her friends choose to scapegoat people in their society to push the attention away from them. In “Why I Wrote The Crucible”, Arthur shares with us about the communists and how it was a scapegoating society. In “Half-Hanged Mary”, Mary is blamed for witchcraft and hung for having land and being an independent woman.

“The conflict created when the will of an individual opposes the will of the majority is a recurring feature of drama.”

Long ago in the quiet town of Salem Massachusetts, witchcraft was of major concern. Throughout the chaos, keeping your name free from the attention of the village was what the townspeople wanted to do The varying degree of pride throughout the village was overpowering. If you could save yourself by throwing the blame on someone else.

In the novel The Crucible by Arthur Miller, the main character Abigail Williams is presented as a mischievous girl who feels superior over many. She is responsible for the court trials, accusations, and deaths of many people in the town of Salem, Massachusetts. Abigail is the puppeteer, who pulls the strings to deceive and twist every accusation that is thrown at her. She uses threats and intense behavior to control her friends around her, as many accuse each other for performing witchcraft. Abigail is quite the sinner rather than a saint, as she creates almost all the complications in the town. Along with the help of the girls around her, they lie and name people who they

Humans are inherently drawn to chaos. Humanity is involved in an endless war between madness and logic. Though society attempts to preserve logic and maintain order, a single event can trigger chaos and lead to the deaths of thousands; this has happened several times in every civilization and in every time period, and will continue to happen in the future. One example of this is the Red Scare in the 1900s, which disrupted decades of peace and harmony. The fear of McCarthyism was tangible and widespread; people were accused of being Communists based solely on circumstantial evidence and unfounded suspicions. Reputations and careers were destroyed over simple rumors. In some cases, innocent people were killed. Arthur Miller drew a parallel between the Salem witch trials in the late 1600s and the Red Scare in the 1950s in his novel, The Crucible. Through careful exposition, Miller argues that mayhem and hysteria can occur in any society at any time, and that logic and truth are needed in order to overcome the dark evil in the world.

What does it mean to be a victim of society? A victim of society can more or less be defined as someone who is harmed by their surrounding environment. But being a victim of society is not nearly as it seems as people may easily play the victim in order to manipulate others, and that scenario holds true in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. In this play, a crisis regarding the question of witchcraft is introduced in the village of Salem, a town ruled by a theocracy of Puritan beliefs. The dilemma first emerges when Betty, the daughter of Reverend Parris, the minister of Salem, is not responding after having danced in the forest with Abigail Williams, Parris’s niece, and many people around the village begin to believe it as an act of witchcraft.

Would an acceptable solution to get rid of a strange friend or neighbor whom you feared be reporting them to authorities as a murderer? Would you let someone go to jail or even face the death penalty on behalf of your fear of their “odd” behavior? In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, a group of young, Puritan girls is found dancing around a fire in the forests of Salem, Massachusetts. To prevent getting in trouble, the girls pretend to be overtaken by the Devil and accuse several other people in their town for conferring with the Devil. Consequent of these false accusations, more than a dozen innocent Puritans were hanged. Given the perception of the Devil by the Puritans, their fear of his powers and alliance with God drove them to the intense and harsh behaviors to eliminate individuality deemed as sinful conduct during the Salem Witch Trials.

The play, The Crucible, written in the 1950s by Arthur Miller, is an allegory to the communist investigations happening in the U.S. at that time. The story takes place in 1692 Salem, Massachusetts, and hones in on its puritan members and the witch trials that occur. In order for a healthy, well-functioning community it is necessary for it to be a sanctuary where feelings can be shared, no secrets are kept, and no corruption exists. When a community is lacking all positive traits, it is filled with mistrust, conflict, and hostility. This was especially true in the Puritan community of Salem. The Puritan religion demanded strict adherence to the law they were taught and believed that the punishment would be severe whether it be by the

The earliest dramatic works enlisted the use of a three act structure, consisting of Aristotle’s divisions of a beginning, middle, and end. These divisions were later named by Aelius Donatus, a Roman, and were given the names Protasis, Epitasis, and Catastrophe. In the midst of the European Renaissance in the 1500s, Shakespeare developed the five act structure, consisting of an exposition, a rising action, a climax, a falling action, and a final resolution. This became the standard structure for plays of the time and in years to come. The Crucible by Arthur Miller was written as a parallel between the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 and the fear of communism that was widespread through the United States after the Second World War. Although it was written with a four act structure, the plot of the play is able to fit the standard five act structure.