The play The Crucible by Arthur Miller is a play set in the late 1600s as an allegory of the hysteria of McCarthyism in 1950s America. The relationship between John Proctor and his wife, Elizabeth Proctor is crucial to understanding the main concerns of the play such as corruption, forgiveness and reputation through features such as key scenes and key dialogue.
Near the beginning of The Crucible it is revealed that a group of girls and Tituba - a slave from Barbados - were found dancing in the forest and members of the Puritan society believe they are working for the Devil as they ventured into the forest - or the 'Devil's land'. The girls and Tituba lie about how they want to escape the power of the Devil to save themselves and in the process name other innocent people who 'work for him'. This eventually leads to the persecution and murder of many innocent people and other innocent important characters such as Rebecca Nurse and John Proctor, a man who had an affair with the leader of the girls, Abigail Williams.
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It is also revealed near the start of The Crucible that John Proctor had cheated on his wife Elizabeth with Abigail Williams, in a discontinued affair.
Elizabeth still does not trust her husband as Abigail had completely corrupted their relationship. As much as John wants to bury their affair, as shown in the key dialogue directed to Abigail 'wipe it out of mind, we never touched, Abby' whilst Abigail is 'waitin' for you [John] every night' and wants the affair to continue. This shows that Abigail wants to further corrupt John by continuing the
affair. The news of someone in the village being a lecher would completely 'blacken' the reputation of the villager. As lechery is shunned in the Puritan society of Salem, Elizabeth cannot admit to the court that her husband is a lecher. When Danforth asks in the key dialogue 'is your husband a lecher' she quietly replies 'no, sir' to save John Proctor's 'white' reputation; Elizabeth understands the importance of reputation in such a small village where gossip travels fast so she lies for the first time in her life to save her husband. The key scene where Elizabeth lies to save her husband's reputation is the first stage of Elizabeth forgiving John as if she did not still love him then she would have admitted to her husband being a lecher. However, Elizabeth forgives John when he is deciding whether to 'confess' or hang in the key dialogue 'it come to naught that I should forgive you, if you'll not forgive yourself'. Elizabeth forgives John because she realises that he can't 'forgive himself' for allowing the affair to happen. The relationship between John Proctor and his wife, Elizabeth and the reader in understanding the main themes and contributes as a whole to the play.
Written in the 1950s, Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible delineates the situation of the McCarthy conflicts in America while the plays’ events revolve around the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692. In the play, two major characters are Reverend Hale, an expert on witches sent to Salem for investigation, and John Proctor, a man known for his leadership and hard work. Proctor and Hale, in addition to both being Puritans, are alike in their actions and motives since they both see the depravity of the court and seek to protect people from it. However, they have major differences in their characters as they have contrasting dedication to Christianity and the values that they live by.
Elizabeth and John start to feel the tension when Elizabeth tries to convince John about going to court and persecuting Abigail but he refuses. When he disputes with his wife he argues, “you will judge me no more Elizabeth I have good reason to charge fraud on Abigail and I will think on it” (193). Proctor is not completely satisfied about throwing Abigail under the bus because he doesn’t want to initially hurt her and he would lose his respect in the town if he did. So he isn’t convinced about the fact that his wife is trying to get him to charge fraud at this point of the play. Soon afterward Mary the proctor’s servant comes home with news that Elizabeth has been convicted of witchcraft as well and was arrested by the sheriff in town to be brought to the trials.
The Crucible is a famous play written by Arthur Miller. This play centers around the witch trials that took place in Salem, Massachusetts. In Act II, Abigail and her friends accuse several innocent people of witchcraft. Once they leave the court, Reverend Hale goes to John Proctor’s house to inform Elizabeth Proctor that people in the court have mentioned her name. Then officials of the court, Herrick and Cheever, arrive at the Proctor’s house. They claim to have a warrant for Elizabeth’s arrest because the court declares she practices witchcraft. After, Herrick and Cheever take Elizabeth to jail. Injustice in Act II prevails because of the inability to see the truth. Reverend Hale and John Proctor illuminate the theme that closed-mindedness
Miller completed "The Crucible" in the 1950's. At that time, America was engulfed in the civil rights movement. Racism was a huge issue and people were fighting for equality and respect. African Americans were among the minorities that were persecuted by society. Miller touched on the subject of racism and related it the present time by his characterization of the woman, Tituba. Historically, Tituba was a native woman; however, in the story she was portrayed as a black woman. Tituba was a servant of Reverend Parris and one of the first to be accused of witchcraft. She was an easy target because she was a minority and did not have a lot. Her different culture made her stick out which caused people to surmise that she was witch. Abigail whined, "I could hear her singing her Barbados songs and tempting me..." Tituba's language was different, which made it seem evil to the sheltered community. Miller included the present day struggles of African Americans by changing the character of Tituba to a black woman. Although she was not persecuted only for being black, the fact that she was a minority made her easy to blame.
What is McCarthyism? It is the public onslaught of an individual or an individual’s character by means of baseless and uncorroborated charges, basically the repudiation of a person’s reputation. Joe McCarthy was the Wisconsin senator that evoked this era of fear and paranoia by inflaming the current fear of world domination by the Communist party that enveloped the Nation. He did this by announcing that he had discovered “57 cases of individuals who would appear to be either card carrying members or certainly loyal to the Communist Party, but who nevertheless are still helping to shape our foreign policy.” (McCarthy, 1950, p. 2), later the amount of implicated individuals rose to 205. These accusations launched McCarthy into the national spotlight where he then began his smear campaign against many well-known Americans, which was commonly referred to as “witch-hunts”. Because of McCarthy’s actions, up to 12, people lots their jobs hundreds were incarcerated. He then turned his sights to book banning because he claimed there were 30,000 books written by all shades of Communists. After his lists were made public all were removed from the Overseas Library Program. But he was not finished yet, he then assailed members of the entertainment business. He had writers and actors brought to trial. Many of these people were blacklisted and worse, all without a single shred of evidence. When people spoke out against McCarthy they were thrown onto the communist train, until enough people came forward to rebuke McCarthy’s unprecedented tactics. At this point he fell from political power into dishonor on December 2, 1954. This ended the McCarthy era, but not the atmosphere of paranoia that lingers in the nation today.
A very famous man once said, “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.” (Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933). This is certainly true when it comes to Arthur Miller’s, The Crucible. Arthur Miller lived through the Red Scare, also known as McCarthyism. After living through this era and being one of the accused communists Miller wrote the book titled The Crucible in 1952. This book told the story of the Salem witch trials with some modifications to make it more relevant to the current situation. The book ultimately became an allegory devoted solely to McCarthyism. In The Crucible it uses situations such as the actual trials; direct comparisons of the characters in the book to those that participated in the McCarthy trials and, the atmosphere of the two events were almost identical.
“The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse” (Burke). Lies, power, and selfishness can destroy families, friendships, and towns. When a person has power, they may not use it properly. There have been many instances where this has happened, but two main examples are in the novel The Crucible, and in McCarthyism. The Crucible is connected to McCarthyism by its model of a desire for power, unsubstantiated accusations, and the detrimental effects of these accusations.
The witch hunt in the crucible is initiated when Abigail and her friends fear the consequences of their ‘dancing’ in the forest. This connects to McCarthyism as the HUAC is represented by the judges and the ‘accuses’ (the girls) are representatives of Elia Kazan and others like him. The theocratic society of Salem is what the girls fear as the forest is seen as the devils resting place and the puritan nature of the town forbid dancing as it was seen as ‘vain enjoyment’ which as Miller himself states at the beginning of the novel to not be allowed. The character of Mary Warren begs the girls to just admit they were dancing as “…you’ll only be whipped for dancin’…”, but as Abigail is questioned and Parris mentions the kettle and how he believed “…there to be some movement- in the soup…”, the devil becomes prominent in the conversation. This is due to Abigail fearing that she will be blamed for devil worshipp...
The horrors of history are passed on from generation to generation in hopes that they will never occur again. People look back on these times and are appalled at how horrendous the times were; yet, in the 1950s, history repeated itself. During this time, Joseph McCarthy, a United States senator from Wisconsin, began accusing people of being communists or communist sympathizers, which is parallel to the Salem witch trials in the late 1690s when innocent people were accused of practicing witchcraft. One of the people McCarthy accused was author and playwright Arthur Miller. To express his outrage at McCarthy’s actions, miller wrote The Crucible, intentionally drawing similarities between the McCarthy hearings and the Salem witch trials.
The Crucible is a 1953 play by Arthur Miller. Initially, it was known as The Chronicles of Sarah Good. The Crucible was set in the Puritan town of Salem, Massachusetts. It talks of McCarthyism that happened in the late 1600’s whereby the general public and people like Arthur Miller were tried and persecuted. The Crucible exemplifies persecutions during the Salem Witch Trials. The people were convicted and hung without any tangible proof of committing any crime. Persecutions were the order of the day. When a finger was pointed at any individual as a witch, the Deputy Governor Danforth never looked for evidence against them or evidence that incriminated them; he ordered them to be hanged. This can be seen through his words “Hang them high over the town! Who weeps for those, weeps for corruption!” (1273), the people were persecuted aimlessly. The four main characters in the play, John Proctor, Abigail Adams, Reverend Hale and Reverend Parris, are caught in the middle of the witchcraft panic in the religious Salem, Massachusetts in late 1690’s. Persecution is the most important theme in the Crucible, the leaders and citizens of Salem attacks and persecutes one of their own without any tangible evidence against them.
Elizabeth at first starts to slowly distrust John more and more as she realizes he is hiding something big from her. She then confronts John to find out about what he has been hiding. After he tells her she starts to demand that he go break his ties to her. “You’ll tear it free when you have come to know that I will be your only wife or none at all! She has an arrow in you yet John and you know it well.” pg 855 In this passage Elizabeth is yelling at John to cut his ties with Abby once and for all. John is reluctant to go and speak out against her, not because he still has feelings but because she can and most likely will bring him down as well. After some persuasion from Elizabeth John finally agrees to end it and starts out the door. “I will curse her hotter than the oldest cinder in hell. But pray begrudge me not my anger.” Pg 855 In this passage John is telling Elizabeth he will go face Abigail in court and tell her off. Later in act two Abigail frames Elizabeth for witchcraft. This clearly portrays how desperate Abby is; someone who does all of that cannot truly be sure that the love interest loves them back. All of Abigail's acts sound a little too desperate to me and seems like she is unsure. The entire act she is trying to get herself closer to John. Someone who goes to such desperate acts such as her cannot be sure about John’s love
Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is a play that was first performed in 1953 in the United States of America in the midst of the persecution of alleged communists during the era of McCarthyism. Although the play explicitly addresses the Salem which hunt, many find that the play is an analogy to McCarthyism due to the striking similarities in which the people behaved. Miller highlight the different groups of characters in order to reveal overlying ideas of the play such as: Self preservation, power, and hypocrisy.
In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, which details the Salem witch trials, Abigail has an affair with John Proctor, and then tries to kill his wife with a charm. This leads to her being thought a witch, but they point fingers at others to keep the spotlight off of them. Eventually many people are hung for witchcraft because Abigail and her friends will not tell the truth of what happened the night they were dancing. During the McCarthy trials, the Cold War was currently going on, and the public was getting anxious about the recent findings that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were found guilty of being communist spies. Joseph McCarthy used this to get power by convicting others of Communism in his trials. McCarthy and the witch trials is a classic example of history repeating itself, when there is no way to prove yourself innocent of an invisible crime.
There have been major events that have shaped American history. The Salem Witch Trials and The Red Scare/McCarthyism are two of them. Arthur Miller took these two separate events in US history and realized they were connected in many ways. He wrote The Crucible, as an allegory of McCarthyism. Through his work, Americans could see the hysteria that the Salem Witch trials conveyed and made associations to what was happening in their world with regards to the Red Scare.
To further complicate matters, John decides not to reveal to the court that Abigail has admitted to him in private that they were just sporting in the woods. Abigail spreads additional accusations and false rumors about her neighbors. These accusations have no basis in truth and their only purpose is for Abigail’s own benefit. Furthermore, Abigail is jealous of John’s wife, Elizabeth, and she schemes to get rid of her in order to take her place. Abigail’s plot is to accuse Elizabeth of witchcraft.