The Crucible By Arthur Miller: Summary

How many people have you met in your life that is stronger because of a difficult experience they went through? Most people are because we take these difficult experiences and grow from them and become better people. This is the exact case is expressed in the play, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller. The story begins in Salem, Massachusetts 1692 right in the middle of a period of witchcraft hysteria. During this time many people were accused of being witches and wrongly convicted by judges Danforth and Hathorne. The characters in the story are struggling because of a girl named Abigail who gets caught practicing witchcraft and then starts naming and accusing others so that she doesn’t get in trouble; one of these people being a well-respected farmer, John Proctor’s, wife Elizabeth. The title, The Crucible, refers to a test, trial, ordeal, formation by fire, and vessel baked to resist heat, and the entire story is an allegory meaning it has a hidden meaning. John Proctor symbolizes a crucible by embodying the definition of one, as he went through a test and was formed by fire.

The word crucible describes an event that involves a test or trial of someone or something. In the story The Crucible by Arthur Miller, various characters endure a severe test of honestly, bravery, and goodness. Throughout the story, a series of events lead to tragedies, which involve these characters to make important decisions. If chosen incorrectly, it may lead to the death of another innocent person, or possibly even themselves. These events however, will bring out the true colors of everyone in Salem, whether they truly good or evil.

In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible the witch trials in Salem were a devastating time. The entire community was in disorder and chaos because of personal vengeance. This included accusations of innocent town’s people being called witches, so they hanged and were jailed. Throughout the play certain characters help the rise of witchcraft as well as the disapproval of all the innocent people who were being convicted for no reason. Reverend Hale is a dynamic character whom comes to rid of the evil spirits in Salem, yet he later tries to end the trials. Hale realizes the accusations are false, attempts to postpone the hangings, and persuade the victims to lie conveys that he is a dynamic character and changes throughout the play.

The Crucible, a historical play based on events of the Salem witchcraft trials, takes place in a small Puritan village in the colony of Massachusetts in 1692. The witchcraft trials, as Miller explains in a prose prologue to the play, grew out of the particular moral system of the Puritans, which promoted interference in others' affairs as well as a repressive code of conduct that frowned on any diversion from norms of behavior.

“The Crucible” is a play that takes place in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. The play starts in the woods, the characters Abigail, Betty, Tituba, Mary Warren, and Mercy Lewis were casting spells in the forest. Samuel Parris catches them in the woods and Betty passes out. They go to the Proctors house to make sure Betty is okay. Parris is contemplating on what the town will think of him when they find out what has happened. He tells Abigail to tell him what happened in the woods. Abigail tells him they were dancing.

A man 's reputation in many forms is his, life’s work. To have your reputation dismantled is like taking away one 's accomplishments and life’s work. Arthur Miller 's The Crucible is a play about justice and injustice, and how our justice system can be easily corrupted. The story revolves around a man named John Proctor, the tragic hero of this story. John Protector is a symbolic character created by Arthur Miller, because he faced the justice system head on. Proctor’s biggest flaw would be his great amounts of pride, which unfortunately led to his own death. In Arthur Millers’ The Crucible, he characterizes John Proctor as the tragic hero of the story because of all that he lost, through his relentless crusade to free his wife and exposing injustice, illustrating that no hero is perfect.

Authority is the power or right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience. In society it has been something you are taught as toddler to respect authority, your elders. There are plenty of rules that as children we follow because it has been enforced in our minds that those are the rules and we must follow them. The rules do not tend to be questioned until someone disobeys them and did not think their actions were wrong. It is then that we being to question authority and resist the majority rule. No matter how unfair the laws of the governments might seem, it does not change the fact that people in society obey them. Henry Thoreau, Stanley Milgram and Martin Luther King have all considered the reasons as to why we obey authority and what the struggles of resisting majority rule may be. As a society there has come times that people themselves disobey the law and even in The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, the people being to resist authority. Authority may play a major role in society but when people being to come to a realization of the rules that are unjust, they being to resist and protest against them.

The Crucible was based in 1692 in and around the town of Salem, Massachusetts, USA. The Salem witch-hunt was view as one of the strangest and most horrendous chapters in the human history. People that were prosecuted were all innocent and their deaths were all due to false accusation of people’s ridiculous belief in superstition and their paranoia. The Puritans in those times were very strict in personal habits and morality; swearing, drunkenness and gambling would be punished. The people of Salem believed in the devil and thought that witchcraft should be hunted out.

The play The Crucible, was written by Arthur Miller in 1953. It is a story he wrote after his own experience being accused of communism. This affected a lot of well-known people in the United States during this time, and was considered a witch hunt similar to the Salem witch hunts. Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible about a man, John Proctor, who has an affair with Abigail Williams. She catches feelings for him and tries to cast a spell on John Proctor’s wife to kill her; this gets out of hand when Abigail’s uncle catches her and some other girls dancing during the spell in the woods. Suddenly, the whole town is living in fear of who is practicing witchcraft, who could be a witch, and innocent people are killed if they don’t confess to being witches. Overall, mass fear and panic, and false accusations are seen over and over throughout the play.

Arthur Miller is considered one of the greatest American playwrights of the 20th century. He has written many acclaimed plays, including The Crucible. Written in 1953, The Crucible uses the historical perspective of the Salem Witch Trials which took place between 1962 and 1963. A lot of the inspiration for the events that take place in the play were from the McCarthyism era that was taking place at the time. It is evident that The Crucible is a critical look at the way the Communist hunt was handled, and used the hysteria and madness of the witch trials to show how history repeats itself. The relationship between men and women and the way the woman in the society is treated is also a prominent theme throughout the play.

The Crucible by Arthur Miller is a famous play which was written in the early 1950’s. The Crucible is a play based upon the events in 1692, which led to the ‘Salem Witch Trials’, a series of hearings before local magistrates to prosecute over 150 people accused of witchcraft. This was due to the hysteria caused by a group of girls accusing innocent people of witch craft. The play was set in Salem, Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. Salem was a very isolated and puritanical community, so their biggest fear was the devil and witchcraft. A person being accused of witchcraft was the worst thing possible in this society.

The Crucible is and 1952 play. It’s a melodrama of the Salem Which took place in Massachusetts Bay during 1692. Miller wrote this play as a story to McCarthyism when the U.S Government blacklisted accused communist. The action of this story began when the girls are caught dancing in the woods and are caught by Reverend Parris That's when Abigail begins to lie and the drama begins.

There are an array of Aristotelian tragic heroes throughout American literature. One of which includes John Proctor, main character farmer in mid-30s, from Arthur Miller 's play, The Crucible. Yet, in order for him to obtain such a title he must possess specific characteristics. Five of which include possession of hubris, a flaw or decision leading to desire for revenge, a reversal of good fortune brought forth by the error of judgement, acceptance of poor fortune brought forth by their actions, and lastly the fate dealt to these characters must be greater than deserved. Aristotle once said that “ A man doesn 't become a hero until he can see the root of his own downfall.” Before the play even begins John Proctor has already conducted adultery, a fatal flaw in judgement, with Abigail Williams, a sneaky seventeen year old. This crucial crescendo leads to the development of the Salem Witch trials and the downward spiral of John`s comfortable lifestyle.

In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, the belief of witchcraft held poisonous consequences as accusations increase to devour the entire village. Since the Salem witch trials started, they heavily influenced the people and town of Salem. People of Salem were accused of being a witch on poor evidence. Such accusations of being a witch sacrificed many human lives. Even though the people of Salem realized that they were murdering the innocent, it does not make up for their deaths. The Puritan community of Salem became gripped with mass hysteria over activities that they believed to be witchcraft. It started with a strong belief system towards God but ended with on an irrational note. The death of the many witches cannot be justified by the mere fact that them being witches was a sign from god. The one societal problem that led to the Salem witch trials was perjury. This society-wide problem within the community of Salem exists solely because of human failings such as wanting high reputation, jealousy and hysteria.

In every literary work, there are themes. A theme is a broad idea, moral or message of a book or story. One individual may construe the themes of a book or story differently than another, but that is the pure beauty of themes. One great literary work is The Crucible, a play written by Arthur Miller. Succinctly, the play is about the Salem witch trials that took place in Massachusetts in 1692. Throughout the story, the townspeople indict their neighbors of being a witch and practicing witchcraft. On the surface, this historical drama has a few universal and enduring themes. Themes are universal because regardless of where in the world, the ideas still relates to everyone and is understood. Themes are enduring because the ideas are found