Pablo Picasso once said, “Different themes inevitably require different methods of expression.” Seeing that each book has a different theme, it is sometimes hard to establish what it is. J. D. Salinger displays this with multiple themes shown through the main character in The Catcher in the Rye. Arthur Miller also exhibits many themes in his play The Crucible. Finally, Harper Lee continues with this objective in her book, To Kill a Mockingbird. Throughout the various pieces of literature, the authors successfully demonstrate how to establish different themes. The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger, provides examples of mental health and depression through Holden’s thoughts and actions. For instance, Holden displays poor mental health at …show more content…
As Holden sits in the Grand Central Station, he thinks to himself, “I [am] more depressed than I [have] ever [been] in my whole life” (214). Holden displays great hopelessness as he realizes how horrible his life has gotten. He still has no direction in life and he feels very alone in the world. Holden’s depression and mental health develop throughout the novel, based on how he reacts to situations. In The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, systems of government are used to exploit misogyny to oppress women. In the beginning, Parris displays misogyny at the start of the play. Parris is the town of Reverend in Salem, Massachusetts. He wants power over the town and is worried about keeping a good reputation. Parris catches his daughter Betty, niece Abigail, and many other girls from the town dancing in the woods. Dancing is forbidden in Salem because it represents sin and temptation. He tells Abigail, “I have given you a home, child, I have put clothes upon your back, give me an upright answer. Your name in the town-it is entirely white, is it not?” (Miller 140.121). Abigail is known as an innocent girl who is free from …show more content…
If she chooses not to confess, “[Parris] will take [her] out and whip [her] to [her] death” (157.941). Even if she chooses not to confess, she will die either way. She will die by being whipped by Parris and he will not care because she is just his slave and she doesn't matter to him or by being hanged for witchcraft. Finally, John Proctor displays misogyny toward his maid, Mary Warren. When she comes back from the court, John starts to threaten her for leaving by telling her “I’ll whip you if you dare leave this house again!” (163.181). Mary cannot say anything or fight back against John because she is a fearful woman and John is a well-respected man in the town. Throughout the play, the men show how misogynistic they are and how they manipulated the women. In To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, the theme of evil morality is established through Bob Ewell. For example, Bob displays evil morality when he has to feed his kids. Bob Ewell is a rude man who lives in a small house at the dump behind the town of Maycomb. He is a father to eight kids and spends all of his money on alcohol, so to keep them fed he has to poach on other people's
Proctors Grave Mistake Corruption has always existed in our society since the beginning to present time due to conspiracies such as the witch trials and the communism era. The Crucible by Arthur Miller was written during the era of communism to mere the hysteria. The Crucible is about the Salem witch trials in Salem Massachusetts in 1692. It’s a corrupt witch trial in Salem that’s due to false accusations of witchcraft for personal gains. John Proctor is the protagonist in the story The Crucible who goes through the ultimate test by choosing his reputation over integrity.
The Crucible, a play by Arthur Miller, is set in Salem, Massachusetts. The hysteria begins with suspicion that a group of teenage girls found dancing in the forest are guilty of witchcraft. The reverend of Salem then calls on Reverend Hale, who hails from Beverly, to come ascertain the truth. Threatened with severe punishment girls tell lies that Satan had possessed them and falsely accuse others of working with the Devil. One of the girls has an infatuation with John Proctor, a married man, and her determination to get rid of his innocent wife, Elizabeth fuels the hysteria. Reverend Hale is a unique character because he is both a catalyst and a preventer of this hysteria. His main character flaw, like many a people, is failure to defend his beliefs. In order to characterize Hale as a naïve outsider, Miller shows Hale as misled because he defends the justness of the court and later as guilt-ridden because he realizes the court is false.
In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, both pride and excessive pride influence the characters throughout the play. Pride is a sense of one's dignity and worth. Excessive pride is being overly confident of one's own self worth. Throughout, pride influences the actions, reactions, and emotions of the characters in such ways to establish the outcome of the story. Three characters are impelled by their pride. Hale, who takes pride in his ability to detect witchcraft; Elizabeth Proctor, whose pride makes forgiving her husband difficult; Proctor, whose excessive pride causes him to overlook reality and the truth.
Context: This part of the text is included at the beginning of the drama, telling the audience about Salem and its people. The author explains how a theocracy would lead to a tragedy like the Salem witch-hunts. This is the initial setting and is based on the principle that some people should be included and some excluded from society, according to their religious beliefs and their actions. This is basically the idea that religious passion, taken to extremes, results in tragedy. Miller is saying that even today extremes end up bad- communism, like strict puritans, was restrictive and extreme. It only made people suffer.
likelihood of victory is small.” It is a person’s mental or moral strength to resist extreme
The Crucible by Arthur Miller The Crucible is a fictional retelling of events in American history surrounding the Salem witch trials of the seventeenth century, yet is as much a product of the time in which Arthur Miller wrote it, the early 1950s, as it is description of Puritan society. At that particular time in the 1950s, when Arthur Miller wrote the play the American Senator McCarthy who chaired the ‘House Un-American Activities Committee’ was very conscious of communism and feared its influence in America. It stopped authors’ writings being published in fear of them being socialist sympathisers. Miller was fascinated by the Salem Witch Trials and that human beings were capable of such madness. In the 1950s the audience would have seen the play as a parallel between the McCarthy trials and the Salem Trials.
Thomas Putnam plays a major role in the Salem witch hunt in Arthur Miller's The Crucible. Inheriting a handsome amount of property makes Putnam a wealthy person; however, it doesn't seem to satisfy his ambition. After the town terribly rejected Putnam's brother-in-law, Bayley, Putnam's bitterness has increased. Finally his prodigious involvement in the relentless accusations places him in the center of the spot light, making him a salient character in both the play and the indignant period of the American history.
Through time it can be seen that the world’s history has a nature of repeating its self. Author Miller, was aware of this as he experienced a repitition of history of society’s flawed government. In the text The Crucible, the writer, Author Miller has identified and illustrated the problems society faced during the 1950’s setting by drawing parallels with the setting of the 1962 Salem witch hunt. This setting helps readers to understand the characters of John Proctor and Giles Corey.
The Crucible, takes place in the small Puritan village called Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. The witchcraft trials grew out of the moral system of the Puritans. This split the town into two, those who were considered witches and those who wanted good.
The play The Crucible by Arthur Miller focuses on the frenzy that occurred in the Massachusetts town of Salem in the year 1692. It shows the interactions between the characters and how their varying personalities affected the dynamics of the trials. One of these characters is Giles Corey, an eighty-three year old farmer who is the scapegoat for many of the bad occurrences in the town. The primary reason for this is that he is uneducated and had a fiery personality which led to many confrontations with others. Although Giles Corey’s personality antagonized him with the townsfolk, this same stubbornness is what makes Giles one of the heroes of The Crucible.
Parris: "Aye, a dress. And I thought I saw – someone naked running through the trees.” The play, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller had very many themes in it. Some of these themes stood out more then others. These themes would be hysteria, reputation, and hypocrisy. These themes were present throughout the entire play, from the beginning till the end. When you think of a Puritan religion you may think of a very good, morally perfect society. This wasn’t the case in Salem, Massachusetts. It was actually the opposite in the play, there was lying, cheating, stealing and just about everything else you wouldn’t want in your society.
Persecution has been a round for sometime and can be traced historically from the time of Jesus to the present time. Early Christians were persecuted for their faith in the hands of the Jews. Many Christians have been persecuted in history for their allegiance to Christ and forced to denounce Christ and others have been persecuted for failing to follow the laws of the land. The act of persecution is on the basis of religion, gender, race, differing beliefs and sex orientation. Persecution is a cruel and inhumane act that should not be supported since people are tortured to death. In the crucible, people were persecuted because of alleged witchcraft.
Many years ago, the culture and atmosphere was amazingly different. The expectations of people and communities are extremely high. During the Puritan times, many laws and regulations existed pertaining to government, religion, and witchcraft. In the play, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, the one word that best describes the Puritan beliefs and the community structure is strict.
The crucible, written by Arthur Miller, is about the Salem witch trials and how people react to hysteria created from the fear of witches. In the play, after hysteria breaks out, the Salem government starts persecute and hang people it believes are witches. This prompts people to start to accusing people of witchcraft. Some people who accuse others of committing witchcraft are Abigail Williams and Thomas Putnam. They do not accuse people of witchcraft to stop witchcraft, but for personal gain or to hurt others. Thomas Putnam, one of the many characters who takes advantage of the witch trials, is able to use the fear of witches to bend the court to his will. Hysteria causes people to believe claims that are clearly false. This allows Putnam to persecute his enemies. He and many other are able to get away with this because hysteria driven persecutions are not run like regular courts and the fact that witchcraft is an invisible crime allows evidence to be made up. The theme of The Crucible is when any persecution is driven by fear and people can and will manipulate the system so they can gain and hurt another.
Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible, has often been described as a tragedy by both critics and the playwright himself. This categorization can be easily justified when looking at the traditional elements of a literary tragedy and how they manifest in the play. According to Aristotle, a tragedy involves the fall of a noble protagonist due to a combination of fate, hubris, and the manipulation of external forces. In The Crucible, the protagonist, John Proctor, fits this description perfectly, making the play indeed a tragedy.