The Crucible By Arthur Miller Essay

The Crucible was written by Arthur Miller. In the town of Salem, the people’s obsession of trying to provide justice only caused injustice against the accused. The law of Salem was guilty until proven innocent. Their government was also a theocracy, and their obsession with religion also caused the injustice.

A crucible refers to a harsh test, and in The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, each person is challenged in a severe test of his or her character or morals. Many more people fail than pass, but three notable characters stand out. Reverend John Hale, Elizabeth Proctor, and John Proctor all significantly change over the course of the play.

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.

In The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, justice and injustice is portrayed through the characters of John Proctor, Elizabeth Proctor and Abigail Williams. It is also shown through the minor characters of Mary Warren and Mercy Lewis, followers of Abigail Williams, and through Danforth and various townspeople.

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.

Imagine living in a society where you are guilty till proven innocent, instead of innocent til proven guilty. Due to the bias preference of the word of “God” in the story The Crucible By Arthur Miller, it is greatly implied that many of the casualties such as John and Elizabeth Proctor to name a couple was due to the restricted theology of church and state. In the Puritan New England town of Salem, Massachusetts, a group of girls goes dancing in the forest with a black slave named Tituba. While dancing, they are caught by the local minister, Reverend Parris. These girls are who create most of the controversy, as they lie to get through most circumstances. A specific individual is Abigail Williams, playing the victim for example as she blames Tituba in page 43 saying “She makes me drink blood!” leading to Tituba to being pulled to the side in page 44 and yelled at “you will confess yourself or I will take you out and whip you to death” making her give in, in order for him to spare her life. leading to further unjustifiable atrocities.

The Crucible, by author Arthur Miller, tells the story of a small but extremely religious puritan village in Massachusetts called Salem. The Crucible takes place in the year 1692, when superstitions regarding Lucifer, where the act of witchcraft were most feared. A group of girls from this small town claimed to be possessed by witches as an attempt to get out of trouble from being caught dancing around a fire in the woods. Unfortunately these stories of witches in Salem soon became known through all of Massachusetts, which immediately got the attention of the counsel. The significant use of conflicts these girls are put through and how they respond to them accentuates that it is human nature to act in a selfish manner when there is any sign

Events in history, along with those today, have shaped the way people live and act within a community. Authors often relate past events to their work to help the audience make connections to better understand what they are reading. The Crucible written by Arthur Miller relates back to the Salem Witch Trials in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. Miller does this in order to make the readers obtain a better knowledge of the events that shaped our country’s history. While teaching a lesson, literature can also provide a connection to a reader’s life. People can often easily make connections to the lyrics of a song, which makes them feel like the is about their life or choices. Some events and characters in The Crucible have the ability to relate to modern day musical selections in order to convey the entire meaning of the play.

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.

The Puritan religion dating back to the founding of America is now extinguished as a result of its undeniable flaws. The Puritans pursued their business in a very constrained and orderly way by adhering to their strict theocracy. Theocracy is a form of government that is influenced by religious authority; this is now deemed unconstitutional in America. A community run by Puritans, Salem, Massachusetts, became so far corrupted in 1692 that a heinous witch-hunt resulted. In response to these events, Arthur Miller wrote a play called The Crucible. Shaped by Miller’s experience of being tried before the congressional committee during the hunt for communists in the 1950s, his writing directly paralleled Salem’s witch-hunts to the McCarthy hearings. In his play, Abigail Williams was a seventeen year old girl who single-handedly provoked the search of witches to clear her own name after getting caught “practicing” witchcraft. Most of the people in Salem, along with the court, believed her nonsense because of the implicit issues within a perfectionist society. Abigail’s desperate acts of self-preservation became her avenue of devilish and sinful power. Abigail Williams is presented as an evil force in the play because she defies stringent Puritan commandments: “Thou shalt not commit adultery”, “Thou shalt not bear false witness” and “Thou shalt not kill.”

Many people would say that The Crucible by Arthur Miller is a tragedy. In this play the tragic events that happened in salem liked being accused for a witch and hung for it is connected to what happened in mccarthyism era. In this Joe Mccarthy accused politicians and higher power people of being communist. Those accused in both salem and the Mccarthy era were treated with harsh consequences and even death with no way to defend themselves.

Miller’s purpose for writing The Crucible was to identify the conspiracies in America’s government regarding the “Red Hunt.” Just like in Salem, the people who were considered bewitched were regular everyday people that were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Evidence and proof of being witched was completely absent but it was the people’s ambition to come out on top and people’s motives to save their own skin that got many innocent people convicted of witchcraft and thus hanged. Just as the innocent people in Salem were condemned of witchcraft and sentenced to death, so to were American people being condemned of being “communist” during the time of the Cold War in America. People who thought a certain way and who felt a certain way about something were often times under the suspicion of the government of having been communist. The intense rivalry between the two superpowers raised concerns in the United States that Communists and leftist sympathizers inside America might actively work as Soviet spies and pose a threat to U.S. security.(http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/red-scare)

A tragic event should bring fear and pity to the reader and the hero should be courageous and noble, hence when combined a tragic hero is presented. The protagonist, John Proctor, portrays a tragic hero in The Crucible. His hamartia of treachery caused great internal struggles, he displays hubris by challenging authority, and encountered catastrophe as the play went on.

In the crucible Arthur Miller he write about a group of girls who practiced witchcraft and how the girls denied it by blaming innocent people. Miller in some page he writes about Proctor’s shame for cheating on his wife. In this play, Miller uses tone, metaphor, and epiphany to develop his perspective, that sin brings shame and desperation removes pride.

Arthur Miller shows that this play is about the period in American history known as the Salem witch trials. Much has been made however, out of the historical moment in which Arthur Miller wrote the play the McCarthy era and it has been argued that The Crucible was Miller’s attempt to come into terms with and understand contemporary social dynamics. Deep in the forest the women are dancing around the fire while the bright moon light flashes down on them. Conflicts breaks down on the town,threw thoughts of salem witch trials.