Review: The Crucible by Arthur Miller

Part I:  Critical Lens that can be used to discuss the play:

Socrates (before his execution)
'Aquit me or not, but whatever you do, know that I shall never alter my ways even though I have to die many times'.
Voltaire
'Liberty of thought is the life of the soul'.
Max Beerbohm (Essayist)
'The nonconformist conscience makes cowards of us all'.
Shakespeare (Hamlet)
'This above all: to thine own self be true and it must follow as the night the day thou can'st not then be false to any man'.
Martin Luther 'It is neither safe nor prudent to do aught-against'.
Shakespeare (Hamlet)
'Whither 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?....'
John Stuart Mill (Philosopher).
'If all mankind minus one were of one mind and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing the one person than he if he had the power would be justified in silencing mankind. We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle in false opinion; and if we were sure stifling it would still be evil.
John Milton (Poet) 'Give me the liberty to know, to utter and to argue freely according to conscience above all liberties.

Part II: About the Play
Setting: The play takes place in a small town in seventeenth century Massachusetts, during the Salem Witch Trials
Background Information:
The play occurs during the seventeenth and eighteenth century Salem Witch trials and involves the Puritan beliefs and religion. They were very religious. They felt that people could form compacts with the devil. The devil would do actions for them in this life and then when they died he would have their souls. They believed in witches and felt that they could cast spells on people. The Puritans believed that there were certain signs of a witch.
There is a feud between the Putnam and the Nurse families. They are both wealthy land owners and the Nurses are very respected in town. These families each supported a different minister. The Nurses supported Reverend Parris.
The Proctors preferred to worship in their own house. They felt that the church under Reverend Parris was becoming too materialistic and drifted away from the purpose of the church. Rebecca Nurse was the midwife to the Putnams, she aided the delivery of the babies. Mrs Putnam had eight children, seven of which died, and the Putnams felt that Mrs Nurse had put a curse on the children when they died.
Major Characters:

• Francis Nurse: He was the head of the Nurse family and was a respected man in town. He tried to stop the trials by aiding John Proctor.
• Rebecca Nurse:She is a very kind women who is the midwife to the Putnam's. They feel she is a witch because seven out of eight of their children died at birth.
• Reverend Parris: He is the local Minister. He discovers the girls dancing. He is mainly responsible for the witch trials. He is a materialistic man, places gold candlesticks in the church.
• Betty Parris: She is Reverend Parris' daughter, is caught dancing and pretends to see spirits.
• Tituba: She is Parris' Negro slave who teaches the girls about spirits.
• Abigail Williams: She is the niece of Parris and a very emotionally strong person. She scares people into doing what she wants them to do. She leads the girls in the accusations. She accuses Elizabeth Proctor because she( Abigail) had an affair with John Proctor and feels he still has feelings for her. Without Elizabeth in the picture she feels they can have a relationship together.
• The Putnams: Attributed the death of seven of their children to Rebecca Nurse . They are wealthy land owners, holds many grudges in the town.
• Mary Warren: She works for the Proctor's. She gives the poppet to Mrs. Proctor, which leads to her accusation of being a witch. She was going to testify against the girls but then in the end she accuses John of being a witch.
• John Proctor: He opposes the expenditures of Reverend Parris in the church. He is well-known and respected in the town. He had an affair with Abigail, but after Elizabeth is accused by her, he no longer has feelings for her and realizes how many feelings he has for her.
• Elizabeth Proctor: She discovers that John is having an affair, but forgives him. She is incapable of lying.
• Reverend John Hale: He is the minister who is called in to investigate the witch trials. At first he believes them, but later he returns to the town to try and stop the trials.
• Deputy Governor Danforth: He is the judge at the witch trials. He is dedicated to removing all witches. He rules by the law and will not allow exceptions or anyone to try to undermine his court.

Plot summary: Abigail and the girls are dancing in the woods They conjure up spirits while dancing naked and they are discovered by Reverend Parris. This leads to the accusations of the girls as witches. Then to escape punishment they accuse other women of the town of being witches. This leads to trials of these women with the girls as the jury.
John Proctor is having an affair with Abigail. Elizabeth Proctor knows of the affair. Abigail then accuses Elizabeth Proctor of being a witch. A doll is found in the Proctor's house and this is overwhelming evidence that she is a witch.
Deputy Governor Danforth is the judge. He believes the girls are telling the truth. Meanwhile they are accusing the women whom they do not like. Reverend Hale is called in as an expert witness. He at first believes they are witches, but then he denies it and tries to help the accused.
Proctor gets Mary Warren to testify against the girls. When Mary Warren enters the court room, Abigail and the other girls start to scream that she is sending her spirit upon them. Mary then afraid, accuses John Proctor of sending his spirit out upon her.
John is now accused of being in league with the devil. He discusses the possibility of lying in order to save his life. Danforth wants him to sign a confession. This way it will show the townspeople that the witch trials are valid. John does not want to sign the confession because he doesn't want to incriminate his friends. He is then put to death, but retains his good name and pride.
Themes:

• Pride - John does not want to sign the confession because he would loose his pride and good name.
• Revenge - The girls and the accusers were naming people whom they did not like and wanted to harm them.
• Fear - Fear of the devil allowed the witch trials to go on.
• Conflict of authority - Danforth felt the law should be followed exactly, and that anyone who opposed the trials was trying to undermine him and his authority and the church.
• Puritan Ethics - They believed lying and adultery were horrible sins.
• Self interest - They were looking out for their own lives and took whatever actions necessary to save themselves.
• Honesty- Elizabeth was "not able to tell a lie".

  More themes:

  • "What a man should do in the face of evil".
  • Individual freedom versus Social order.
  • The Human Bond
  • Need for Integrity.
  • Human cruelty in the name of righteousness
  • Godliness vs. Worldliness
  • Ignorance vs. Wisdom
  • Order vs. Individual Freedom

Part III: Key issues discussed in the play The Crucible:

Fear, self interest: Shows what happens when emotions control your logic and thinking. Hysteria will occur. Shows how people will accuse others in order to save themselves. This leads to a wild finger pointing. Also when you were accused of being a witch, in order to save yourself you could accuse other women. People in the town allowed their fear of witches and the devil to interfere with their rational thinking.
Puritan Ethics: The church was very important in their daily life. The Puritans were very religious. They were scared of modern things destroying the old church. They believed in the devil and that you could make pacts with him. It was a horrible sin to lie.
Integrity: John had to deal with the fact that he had an affair with Abigail and broke the trust between Elizabeth and him. He sinned, and the people of the town would have condemned him, if they knew.
Morals: Honesty: Elizabeth cannot tell a lie says John Proctor, but she will lie to protect John. In some cases you have to lie. Hale agrees with this. He says "God damns a liar less than he that throws his life away for pride."
Applications: The McCarthy trials. This story relates to these trials. During the 1950's Senator Joseph Mc Carthy accused many American leaders of being communists. This lead to many unfounded accusations that people were communists. Some people believed him because they were fearful of communism and he played on their fears. McCarthy was, in effect, conducting "witch hunts". If you opposed the Salem Witch trials you were accused of being a witch. If you opposed the Mc Carthy investigations you were accused of being a communist.

Part IV: Literary Terms
Allegory-Allegory- A story in which people, things, and happenings have another meaning, as in a fable or parable- the underlying meaning may be moral, religious, political, or satire Many critics have referred to The Crucible as a political allegory.
Allusion-reference to a historical or fictional character, place, event, or to another work that the writer assumes the reader will recognize
Audience-people reading the story
Carpe Diem-seize the day
Censorship-suppressing or deleting portions of plays or other written works
Character-person in a literary work
Climax-crisis or turning point in the play
Conflict-struggle between opposing forces
Drama-literary work written in dialogue to be performed by actors
Genre-type of literary work
History Play-play centered on historical events
Mood-prevailing attitude in a literary work
Paradox: A statement or event contrary to what one might expect. The events of Salem are good examples of paradox since what one might have expected from God-fearing people such as the Puritans is quite contrary to what s/he actually experinces in the play.
Setting-time and place of the action
Irony is an implied discrepancy between what is said and what is meant. Three kinds of irony:

• verbal irony is when an author says one thing and means something else.
• dramatic irony is when an audience perceives something that a character in the literature does not know.
•  irony of situation is a discrepency between the expected result and actual results.

Literary Elements Review: Tragedy

What is Social Drama?
A social drama is more or less directly social and political in orientation. This does not mean it is blatantly didactic or does not concern itself with the more subtle and personal aspects of human relationships. It simply focuses on man in his social and political context. Arthur Miller attempts to found his art on themes centering around what he has called "the right way of living".

What is a tragedy and the meaning of the "crucible"?

- Tragedy: A serious play with an unhappy ending brought about by the characters or central characters impelled by fate (ancient drama) or moral weakness, psychological maladjustment, or social pressure.

- Crucible: The word crucible has many meanings. Its literal definition is a container that resists heat or the hollow at the bottom of an ore furnace. However, its connotations include melting pot, in the symbolic sense, and bearing of a cross (crux, crusis, + ferre)

• And yet nevertheless the idea of nobility is inseparable from the idea of tragedy which cannot exist without it. Its action is usually calamitous, because it is only in calamity that the human spirit has the opportunity to reveal itself triumphant over the outward universe which fails to conquer it.
• Tragedy is essentially an expression of despair, but of the triumph over despair and of confidence in the value of human life.
• The Crucible - The essence of drama is conflict. This play abounds in conflicts which tend to arise from human failings. These human failings result in a lack of responsibility to oneself and to one's society.
  Tragedy - a consequence of a man's total compulsion to evaluate himself justly, his destruction in the attempt posits a wrong or an evil in his environment. And this is precisely the morality of tragedy and its lesson.
  Tragedy enlightens - and it must, in that it points the heroic finger at the enemy of man's freedom. The trust for freedom is the quality in tragedy which exalts.

Part V: Miller’s Message
Why Miller wrote the play - I wished for a way to write a play that ... would show that the sin of public terror is it divests man of conscience, of himself. I had known of the Salem witch hunt for many years before "McCarthyism" had arrived and it had always remained in inexplicable darkness to me. When I looked into it now, however, it was with the contemporary situation at my back, particularly the mystery of the handing over of conscience which seemed to me the central and informing fact of the time. The central impulse for writing was not the social, but the interior psychological question ... of that guilt residing in Salem which the hysteria merely unleashed, but did not create. Consequently, the structure reflects that understanding, and it centers in John, Elizabeth, and Abigail. Miller had the following to say when asked who the people were at the Communist meetings.

"When I say this I want you to understand that I am not protecting the Communists or the Communist party. I am trying to and will protect my sense of myself. I could not use the name of another person and bring trouble on him. I take responsibility for everything I have done but I cannot take responsibility for another human being". "Nobody wants to be a hero... but in every man there is something he cannot give up and still remain himself - a core, an identity, a thing that is summed up for him by the sound of his own name on his own ears. If he gives that up, he becomes a different man, not himself.

Miller says:
"In Salem these people regarded themselves as holders of a light. If this light were extinguished, they believed, the world would end. When you have ideology which feels itself so pure, it implies an extreme view of the world. Because they are white, opposition is completely black".

In the actual Salem trials, Mary Warren (Abigail in The Crucible) convicted Elizabeth, not John. This showed Miller that it was the first of a succession of mordant proofs that the great "issues" which the hysteria was allegedly about were covers for petty ambitions, hard-headed political drives, and the fantasies of very small and vengeful minds.

In Proctor's drama, three fundamentals of tragedy are fulfilled.
First, through a torturous process of self-examination an individual arrives at a new realization of himself and his relationship to the world at large.
Secondly, the individual discovers in the necessity of making a decision in the face of insurmountable odds.
Thirdly, although the movement toward self-recognition leads to destruction, an affirmation of life is ultimately propounded
One of the most important influences on Miller's way of writing is to say why a man doesn't simply walk away and say to hell with it, the moment when a man differentiates himself from every other man.

The assumption behind Miller's plays is that life has meaning. Idea is important to Miller.