The Scarlet Letter And Arthur Miller 's The Crucible

Arthur Miller has created John Proctor the protagonist of The Crucible to be a 30 year old farmer in Salem, Massachusetts, powerful of body, even-tempered and not easily led. John speaks his mind when he recognizes injustice. He is highly respected, even feared, by some in Salem. His name is synonymous with honour and integrity. He takes pleasure in exposing hypocrisy and is respected for it. However John is a sinner, a sinner not only against the moral fashion of the time but against his own vision of decent conduct, he has come to regard himself as a kind of fraud. After admitting to lechery, John is accused of witchcraft, on this charge he is condemned.

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

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.

In The Crucible the strong effect of religion in their life made it difficult for those to confess their sins, in fear that they would be punished. These punishments were not only physical but emotional. During the colonial era many men and women strived to keep their reputation clean. However, as an adulterer or a sinner, the pride in their name

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 Scarlet Letter our main character and protagonist Hester Prynne was sent to America by her husband and antagonist Roger Chillingworth who promised to follow her a little while later. He actually turned up after seven years, so Hester begun adultery with The Reverend Dimmesdale whom she had a daughter called Pearl. Furthermore her husband Roger follows secretly and finds out about these circumstances. As in The Crucible young girls are caught in the woods dancing and acting weird and are now accused of practicing witchcraft. The leader of these girls called Abigail Williams is now questioned by John Proctor with whom Abigail had an affair with while she worked for the Proctors house. On this hand John has also begun adultery towards his wife Elizabeth. Abigail still desires Proctor and is still planning of how to get rid of his wife. In the two works The Scarlet Letter and The Crucible, Roger Chillingworth and Abigail Williams are both driven by a force of revenge in order to regain contact to their old partners. In doing so, the authors create two-faced characters depicting the dual personalities and inner struggles of good and evil within the Puritan

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 Scarlet Letter and The Crucible are two stories both set in the early days of the Massachusetts colony. Both of these stories have many similarities between them, including setting, situations, and conflict. The two stories were also very different. The effects of sin on the characters, how they deal with their sin, and the consequences of their actions are different in each story. The Crucible and The Scarlet Letter are different works and although they deal with similar conflicts the consequences and end results are very different.

“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 quote “To belong is to understand the tacit codes of the people you live with” from Michael Ignatieff is explaining that with every group of people in society, there is a certain set of logical unspoken rules that are not written rules. The understanding and following of these rules will allow you to belong in most groups. Unspoken rules are what make a group who they are. The Crucible and The Scarlet Letter both have perfect examples for the relationship between unspoken rules and belonging. Also, these works take place in the 17th century around the same area. This creates almost the same setting for both stories where the unspoken rules will be almost identical. The knowledge and ability to follow the unspoken rules will lead to

Fear can cause people to make bad decisions causing the situation to worsen. According to the play The Crucible is about a group of girls who were caught practicing witchcraft who were forced to tell lies about the devil forcing them to participate in villainous actions and then forced to name those involved in the fear of being hanged by the court. Head of the group was a young woman named Abigail Williams, who was infatuated with a married man and determined to get rid of his wife. In the play The Crucible, Arthur Miller personifies Abigail Williams as a manipulative character as seen when she successfully manages to convince the court that Elizabeth and other innocent citizens work with the devil and how she controlled the group of girls into pretending to have encounters with evil spirits of the accused. Arthur Miller wrote the play as an allegory of the McCarthyism in the 1950s. Focusing on the inconsistencies of the Salem witch trials in seventeenth-century in Salem Massachusetts, and the extreme behavior that can result from dark desires.

Most people agree that Nathaniel Hawthorne changed his last name from “Hathorne” to “Hawthorne”. This is one of the many signs that suggest that Hawthorne was ashamed of his Puritan past and tried to do anything to remove that “black mark” on his past. Furthermore, it can be seen through the themes and symbols in his play that Arthur Miller was no fan of Puritanism as well. Both Miller and Hawthorne take negative stances against Puritanism. This can be seen in their works The Crucible and The Scarlet Letter. The Scarlet Letter deals with the Puritan intolerance of those who committed a sin. In Hester Prynne’s situation, her adultery with Reverend Dimmesdale seemed to have sparked a particular hatred for her within her community. The Crucible deals with the Puritan fight against witchcraft. Many people in the town are accused of being witches and are forced to confess in order to save their lives. The intolerance that the Puritans show to witchcraft symbolize Miller’s complete dislike of Puritanism and their strictness. Both Miller and Hawthorne’s negative views on Puritanism are strongly seen in their respective works of literature. Also, both authors seem to think that the outsider is treated quite brutally. Miller’s take on the Puritan way of forgiveness of sins is somewhat painless compared to Hawthorne’s version of forgiveness. Hawthorne’s novel highlights hypocrisy and its detrimental impact. Miller similarly writes about hypocrisy and how it can destroy society as a

Puritans may have tried to give themselves the appearance of a perfect society, but it was really just as corrupt and full of sinners as any society today. In the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Crucible by Arthur Miller and “To My Dear and Loving Husband” by Anne Bradstreet, there is evidence for this. In Puritan literature, although they try to hide it, sin is very common, in that Puritans do the opposite of what they preach, but still harshly punish those who sin.

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.