The Crucible By Arthur Miller

The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller, is a play about the Salem witch hunt trials. Accusations of witchcraft made by townspeople against their neighbors led to confessions, by the accused, in order to save their own lives. As a result, hysteria ensued because the townspeople were suspicious of one another. Miller tried to point out the similarity between the fear during the Salem witch trials and the fear of communism in the 1950’s. John McCarthy, a politician, falsely accused government officials of supporting communism and, as a result, American citizens became afraid that communism was corrupting the US government. Both events were characterized by hysteria. Abigail Williams, a townsperson in The Crucible, contributes to the spread of

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Reputation can play an important role in our everyday lives. It is how we are defined as people. There is no middle when it comes to reputation, only good or bad. People will act a certain way based on their reputations. Some will go out of their way to the last dying breath to make sure they leave with a good or bad reputation. In one of the recent literature study in class “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller, Miller uses characterization to illustrate reputation throughout the play. “The Crucible” takes place in Salem, Massachusetts. It is based upon the Salem witch trails. In “The Crucible”, we journey through the life of three characters who reputations plays a major role in the play. The three characters are John Proctor, Abigail Williams, and Reverend Parris. When put in a tight situation dealing with life or death, all of these characters choose to keep their reputations rather than save their lives or do the right thing. The preponderance of having a good name is a very prevalent theme in “The Crucible”.

Joseph McCarthy is a desperate and unlikeable U.S senator who uses fear against others, which leads to the use of the horrific use of McCarthyism. Mccarthy is not a supporter of communists, “Thus he spread terror among his peers. His Republican colleagues were torn between fear of his prowess and willingness to use his attacks on President Harry Truman” (“Joseph”). McCarthy claims that people working within the U.S government are communists and that they should be exposed. Mccarthy blames others so people see him as a hero for saving the country from communist. His desperateness causes him to accuse his peers of being communists. For that reason people do not want to be around him because of the “terror” he causes and “spreads”. Mccarthy wants to do everything to address the problem of communism. Therefore, to prove that there is a problem going on, “McCarthy claimed to have in hand a list of 205 people in the U.S. State Department

To summarize Lusted, Mccarthy disregarded constitutional rights in order to move up the ranks in the senate and focused on disadvantaged groups, like homosexuals, and accused them of communist sympathies (1). Along with being an avid anti-communist, McCarthy also harbored deep feelings of prejudice towards minorities, as did most of America at the time, and discriminated against them at any chance he got. Sam Roberts wrote, “McCarthy has given considerable comfort to our enemies”(1). By acting ridiculous and using power to persecute minorities, McCarthy ironically made all searches for spies seem like blind hysteria and allowed the USSR to increase their espionage activities. Roberts also stated, “As if an air raid wasn't enough to worry about, anybody, it seemed, could be a spy seeking to undermine American values by infiltrating civic institutions and the government--from local school boards to the White House itself” (1). American distrust and disconnects between communities was at an all time high. All of these prejudices mixed with deceit and power hunger led to many horrible

The world is built around labels and categories. People get comfortable with their nice little boxes and wish to organize everything into their specific box. However, not everything is so simple. Not everyone is so black and white; in fact, no one is. Nobody stays the same either. Everyone is always changing and interacting with different people and engaging in different activities and making different choices. The reputation of a person, although changing in small ways, often doesn 't change drastically, unless something drastic happens. An exquisite example of this is in the play The Crucible. Due to the extreme circumstances of the Salem Witch Trials people cling stubbornly to their reputations. During the time period the play was set

Our English II class approached Arthur Miller’s The Crucible from a way unique to any previous English assignment. We decided to operate as an unified ensemble to generate a singular and complete project that demonstrated our growth as readers, writers, and thinkers. Originally we were scared at the prospect of this unorthodox assignment; as Jada put it, “[we] thought it was gonna be a hot mess” (Jant). But in the end, I believe it was correct to do it as an ensemble. We were able to work as individual members of a group, each producing our own contribution to the final product. Our class eventually produced a completed project that emerged as a representation of our ability to analyze the play deeper than we could have as individuals.

A twisted part of American history is well explained throughout the play. The Crucible by Arthur Miller. After a group of young girls got caught dancing around naked in the forest by Rev. Parris all kinds of crazy let loose. In turn of the girls being caught, Rev. Parris wants to protect his family name by covering it up and accusing others of witchcraft.The girls go on and on listing people who were ‘involved’ in the act of witchery. Abigail Williams, the heart of most of the problems that came about in Salem. Her wanting of Proctor leads to vengeance towards Elizabeth. Rev. Parris calls for Rev. Hale of Beverly to come and help remove witchery from the town of Salem. Once time to do the trials judge Danforth immediately starts the hanging for punishment. Mary Warren and John Proctor try to go to the court and tell them that it is all a lie and that the girls were just accusing others so that they wouldn’t be hanged. There are four main keys in this play that bring out different sides to all the characters. Hysteria being Abigail Williams, reputation being Rev. Parris, intolerance being Elizabeth not letting John lie to her, and lastly empowerment being John in Act III. The events in the play show the true colors of some who try to keep their name as clean as it was before the witchery came into the town of Salem.

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.

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.