The Crucible By Arthur Miller

Within the village, Hale’s arrival causes both betrayal and conflict. Parris directs Reverend Hale to come into Salem from a neighboring village in order to find the Devil after his daughter, Betty, and multiple other girls fall ill. He views Hale as being “a precaution only. He has much experience in demonic arts”

With all that is going on in the world today, what is more important to you freedom or Safety? In The Crucible, Abigale choose her own safety over hers of her friends and family, and in Fahrenheit 451, Guy choose his freedom over the safety of him and his wife and, in Berlin you either live on West Berlin were you were free or you lived on the other side of the wall where you had no freedom but you were safe. So which side of the wall do you want to live on?

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.

The Crucible, a novel/play by Arthur Miller displays the chaos of the witch trials within the small town of Salem, Mass. Of the many characters of the novel, John Proctor and Mary Warren are both characters that serve an importance to the novel. The two characters both interact in the stories in different ways. Even though both characters can be seen as minor characters because of their inferior power in the novel, Proctor and Mary Warren serve as important characters to the story line. One reason being the fact that they both bring about problems with and/or against antagonist Abigail Williams such as Mary Warren, who likes the feeling of have authority but gets into unwanted conflict often, and Proctor, who is an very aggressive person

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.

In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, hysteria breaks out in Salem when young girls begin pronouncing accusations of witchcraft. One of the accused, Elizabeth Proctor and her husband, John Proctor, live on a farm where he provides and cares for their family. When Elizabeth becomes sick John is unfaithful and has an affair with one of the accusers, Abigail Williams. Through the course of the story, John Proctor moves from denial and deflection of his actions and their consequences in order to maintain his public dignity, to public confession and condemnation for his actions in order to soothe his conscience and maintain his internal sense of integrity. This progression is illustrated by his interactions with his wife, their accusers and the court, who ultimately condemns them.

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.

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.

As the various characters in The Crucible by Arthur Miller interact, the dominant theme of the consequences of women’s nonconformity begins to slide out from behind the curtains of the play. Such a theme reveals the gripping fear that inundated the Puritans during the seventeenth century. This fear led to the famous witch-hunts that primarily terrorized women who deviated from the Puritan vision of absolute obedience and orthodoxy. Arthur Miller presents his interpretation of the suffering by subtly introducing women who strayed from convention and paid the consequences. Throughout The Crucible, Arthur Miller delineates the historically austere Puritans’ perception and punition of women who differ from expectations, all while unraveling, through the characterization of Tituba, the harsh truth of how women were vided as lesser than men and feared if deviating.

“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.

Reverend Hale believes in his second thoughts of the devil not being such a thing, and sees that Abigail has been setting this all up and framing John Proctor to have his love. Pointing at Abigail, Hale says, “I believe him!...This girl has always struck me false!...”(Act III, 50) After Abigail over-exaggerates and makes the girls believe the devil is in their presence, and the people of the court believe them, Reverend Hale walks out in frustration. People of the court and town don’t know what else to believe because they always thought the girls were saying the truth about what they saw. Hale begins to see that a lot of people in the town of Salem, are corrupted in result of the witchcraft trials.

Upon being first introduced, Reverend Hale is described as a confident, ambitious man driven by motivation to impress others with his thorough knowledge of witchcraft. He considers himself to be an expert; a veritable beacon of intellectual light who will be able to cure Salem of its supernatural affliction. By the end of The Crucible, Hale has undergone a complete character transformation, making him one of the more dynamic characters in the play. His perception of the trials are shrouded in guilt and self-doubt as he struggles with feeling responsible for those who are condemned to hang and wanting to preserve his Puritan values.

In Act 1, Hale’s devotion to carrying out God’s law reveals his sense of obligation in eradicating the diabolic disturbances in Salem, despite the negative impact it may have on its citizens. Prior to entering the town, the Reverend’s motives lie in defeating the Devil, believing that this valiance will bring preservation to the Puritans. Although “his goal is light,” he believes the people of Salem have been “called upon to face what may be a bloody fight with the Fiend himself” (36). Despite wanting to face off with the devil, Hale stands strong in his belief that this will restore peace and prove to be beneficial. Consequences aside, his heavy

Throughout this past semester, we have covered a lot of plays and their films that correspond within those plays. While I have learned a lot along the way I have found that there are certain plays that stuck out. Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, and The Importance of Being Earnest were among some of these plays from this semester. However, one of my personal favorites is The Crucible. I was able to uncover many themes from this play such as secret sin, lies and deceit, and religion.