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Summary of the Crucible by Arthur Miller
Analysis of the film The Crucible by Arthur Miller
Direct parallels between Arthur Millers life and the crucible
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Recommended: Summary of the Crucible by Arthur Miller
While reading three articles about the play called "The Crucible" I noticed many interesting facts. Many questions as well came to mind. The main question was “What was the Arthur purpose for writing The Crucible”? Well let’s start of by saying Arthur Miller was a extremely American play writing. Miller born in 1915, but where was his childhood? He grew up in New York with a Jewish family. Arthur Millers’ play went on Broadway at the Martin Beck. This occurred in the year of 1953. The play was called The Crucible. Was The Crucible even one of his best places? Well it was yet one of his best second plays. What were the events of the play of Miller had done? The event of the play had to do with the events that took place in Salem. What happened in Salem was a witch craft trial. Most unfavorable people felt as though the play was a play about a terrible period in the American history. According to that I asked myself was he trying to send a message out using events about Salem? Miller himself said, " The play is not is not a reportage of any kind nobody can start to write a tragedy and hope to make it reportage what I was doing was writing a fictional story of an important theme". What did he mean about this? That his play had to do with a self experience and a very important theme that should of been known to a lot of people. However “Miller had been drawn to the story in Salem for quite some time, and was adamant that his play was not a direct attack to McCarthy." That answered my question a little. It made me think why will he say it wasn't towards McCarthy? Was it because many people thought that it was or seemed like it was? According to all that he actually wrote The Crucible as a respond to Senator McCarthy and the house ... ... middle of paper ... ...nd consciously”. Finally The Crucible was a tale of betrayal, scandal, deception and hysteria. Works Cited Decter, Midge. "The witches of Arthur Miller." CrucibleVol. 103. (1997): p54-56. Humanities Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. 12 Dec 2013. . Lavanture, Douglas. "Watch & Listen." Steppenwolf. Steppenwolf Theatre Company, n.d. Web. 12 Dec 2013. . Simmons, Jerold. "Arthur Miller and "The Crucible"."Journal of American History Vol. 85.issue 3 (1998): p1193-1193. Humanities Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. 12 Dec 2013. .
Another association between McCarthyism and the play is that after Miller wrote The Crucible, he was called to answer some questions about the names of person who had been seen in the meetings of Communist Party. (Burns). However, he refused to do it. This is very similar to the fourth act of the play when Proctor is asked who the devil when he saw him and he do not said any names of his friends. He just reveals his sins.
Arthur Miller wrote "The Crucible" in an attempt to create moral awareness for society. He did so by making a few small changes to the history and creating parallels in the play with racism, human tendencies, and H.U.A.C. 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.
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.
Buddha once said, “Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” Buddha states that the truth is one of the things that cannot be overlooked as the truth is eventually revealed, and the truth might end up having bad effects. Buddha’s quote is significantly true in the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller which discusses the Joseph McCarthy era. Miller shows that McCarthy manipulated and abused his power and fame, leading to his downfall. In The Crucible, Miller uses parallelism between Judge Danforth and Joseph McCarthy to accentuate the horrific, unlawful, and untrustworthy complications that they brought to the United States in the 1690's and the 1950's.
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.
regards to his play, The Crucible. His audience is evident in the text as he states, "The Crucible was an act of desperation" (Miller). Miller answers the question many readers possess, why write a play like The Crucible at all? His reasons include desperation to show the fear and terror individuals lived in at the times the play takes place and the time the allusion to the play's story takes place. This answer to one of the many questions readers possess shows Miller's intention to answer some of the more pressing questions that left readers curious or baffled. Miller's article explains his intentions
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.
It's shocking how people die for no reason. It was happening in Salem in 1692 for the witch trials. Rebecca Nurse was a woman with good reputation, and because of spectral evidence she was sentenced with death. The only way to escape from death was to accept that she was a witch. This is still happening now. Osama Bin Laden was the reason for 7000 people's death in New York. We have to look at the society of Salem and pity them because of the repressions that made order and freedom imbalanced, as we are going to be pitied some day.
Arthur Miller wrote plays as a way of showing people the real picture of what life was really like during the Great Depression and after World War II. Before the Great Depression many Americans were living in a significant time period, the Roaring Twenties. People had radios, automobiles, and movies with sounds. Then it all suddenly came to an end with the Stock Market Crash, leading to the Great Depression. During the Great Depression, Americans faced poverty, and had no income because jobs weren’t available. Throughout his life Miller influenced many people with his plays, and his contributions to this day because people want to read and understand what was truly happening in past history. For example, “The Crucible” is a play about the Salem Witch Trials, giving a good understanding of the basics that went on in this time period. Another example of Miller’s influential work is “The Death of a Sales Man”, which is his way of showing what life was like when people were struggling financially during the Stock Market Crash. Overall, Arthur Miller is one of the leading American playwrights of the twentieth century.
On the face of the play (“The Crucible”) it seems to be simply about the mass hysteria which led to the 1692 Salem Witchcraft trials, which talks about a handful of issues which are somewhat remote to a modern audience, who in turn find it relatively intricate to relate to such happenings. But as you study the play in more detail you realise that Miller not only stresses issues which were easy to relate to in the time in which it was set, but has also given the play a modern touch by stressing the rivalry between Abigail Williams and Elizabeth Proctor. Consequently Miller adds to the dramatic feel of the play by adding a series of modern touches and historic statements which makes the play not only relate to the happenings of witchcraft but also explore the crime of adultery, which makes the play more about the personal guilt of John Proctor. The play furthermore creates the “Crucible” in such a way as to illustrate how people react to mass hysteria, created by a person or group of people desiring fame (in this case Abigail because she is the main leader of all the happenings that go on in the performance), as people di...
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.
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 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.
Parallels between Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, and his article Why I wrote the Crucible, can easily support Miller’s reasons for writing this classic play. Miller’s purpose in writing both the play and the article was to emphasize the similarities between the 1692 witch hunt and the 1950’s Red Scare. Miller simply wanted to convey the message of fear over reason, express himself in a new language of old English, to warn of mass hysteria, and most importantly compare his life in the 1950’s to the irrational trial in 1692. Miller’s reasons are numerous, and while they are all stated flat out in his article, they are also clearly stated and understood in the play.