The Crucible By Arthur Miller

''The Crucible,'' is a 1952 play written by Arthur Miller as an allegory of Mcarthyism. The play follows a theocratic society in which the church and the state are one, and reputation plays an important role in Salem where private and public moralities are the same. In act one, the secret affair of John Proctor and Abigail Williams was revealed that led to conflict between John and his wife. Divorce was not permitted in the late 16th century, hence, the Proctors had to maintain their marriage causing discord within the Proctor household. At the start of Act 2, Miller creates a tense atmosphere of animosity portrayed by John and Elizabeth Proctor in their lack of affection, awkwardness, appraisal and guilt leading to affliction.

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, 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

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.

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.

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.

In the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller, one of the many themes that stands out to most people is the importance of a having a good name and reputation. Miller uses certain characters outcomes in the play to prove that reputation was actually not the biggest concern. He consistently shows that reputation means nothing when it came to being accused during the Salem Witch Trials because many innocent people were killed. People began to use these accusations for their own benefit and that’s when it became chaotic. These random accusations of witchcraft could immediately cause someone’s admirable reputation to disappear. He provides evidence in the play through most characters that we would consider to have a good reputation such as: Rebecca Nurse, Elizabeth Proctor, and John Proctor.

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.

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.

While The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, is only a four act play, it still resembles the format of a five act play. The five-act structure evolved from a three-act structure, which was made famous by Roman Aelius Donatus. Donatus came up with three types of plays: Protasis, Epitasis, and Catastrophe. The five-act structure helped to expand the three act structure, mainly made famous by Shakespeare through his many tragedies. Even though The Crucible contains only four acts, it still has the common composition of a five act play: an exposition, followed by the rising action, the climax, the falling action, closing with the denouement.

Between the years of 1692 and 1693, Salem, Massachusetts had a huge political conflict over religion. Spring of 1692, was the when witchcraft became the center cause of the Salem Witch Trials, thereafter spreading fear throughout the citizens by questioning their ways of life. Hysteria tortured the people located in Salem for the next year by means of having twenty-three people hung, pressed, or drowned. This essay is the understanding of how witchcraft attempted to create political order in Salem Town and Salem village and a way of achieving the knowledge of the main residents in Salem was by Arthur Miller’s famous playwright The Crucible. The first scene in the playwright is Reverend Samuel Parris calling the doctor to examine his daughter Betty and niece Abigail who claim to have been possessed by the devil from the use of witchcraft. From that moment on witchcraft was the number one subject of hysteria.

Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible in 1953. He wrote this because he wanted to give out a central message to people all around the world. In the play, Miller presented many issues like how individual freedom was being taken away because of how society sets their laws and standards for what they believe was right or wrong. Also, he shows that there many people who do not believe in the same ideas or practices as anyone else and are forced to deal with the external pressures from society. Around the time Miller wrote the play, a lot of people in America were being accused of anything that society believed was wrong. Most people were being accused by Senator Joseph McCarthy, of being a communist and Miller was one of them. McCarthy was a man who led investigations to find unwanted communists. He accused Miller because of the political atmosphere in the 1950’s and the witchcraft that was going on in Salem. Eventually, Miller had to go to the House Committee on Un-American Activities and was forced to give up the names of the other communists. In The Crucible, there are two symbolic terms; crucible and witchcraft. A crucible is a receptacle that is used to melt down metals with the heat and separate them from whether it’s valuable or less valuable. Whereas, witchcraft is when people cast spells to conjure up spirits so that it can make bad things happen. The title of Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible is symbolic of both of these terms. In act 1 of The Crucible, Abigail was the

When eras of horrendous history are forgotten, along with valuable lessons learned from the turmoil, who suffers from the negligent ignorance? The Crucible by Arthur Miller is a compelling play about the undertakings of the Salem Witch Trials. Miller uses creative license to mold history into something literarily symbolic: the Witch Trials taught man no significance; the failure to learn from one 's mistakes caused history to repeat itself, the people that initially suffered having gone through their troubles for nothing. Therefore, the subsequent victims embody the consequences of the same unlearned lesson, and the cycle repeats. A product of the 1950s ' Cold War: a domestic struggle with the anxiety of communism, McCarthyism rooted from Americans ' suspicion of alien policy, a potential threat to their familiar ideals. The religiously intrinsic Puritans of 17th century colonial New England held firmly to their faith and disapproved of other ways to knowing God 's will, much like how Americans, dreadful of their government becoming something of the tyrannical enemies ' of Nazi Germany and communist Russia, held firmly to free will, democracy, and the ways of patriotic government. Thus, fear of foreign ideas that might endanger one 's safe and comforting standards puts those accused of such in a bind. To confess to witchcraft in 1692 meant life - and a blotched reputation; to deny, meant death. To confess in the 1950s meant an end to the relentless interrogation - and

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.

In ancient Greece, Aristotle conceived a new drama format where there would be a definitive beginning, middle and end. As time progressed, this play structure became known as Freytag’s Pyramid or the dramatic structure of a five act play, where all parts of the five act format allows for a smooth transition from the exposition to resolution. Although Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is a four act play, it can be analyzed through the combination of transitions in a five act format into one act.