Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible is based on events that transpired in the late 1600’s in the town of Massachusetts, yet its themes still hold universal significance today. The potential for society and humankind more generally, to oppress individuals can easily be seen when observing the highly rigid theocratic regime in The Crucible. In following the events of the play and actions of key protagonist John Proctor, the dangers that such an oppressive rule poses to both society and the individual
The Crucible Author 's Purpose In the town of Salem in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a mass of hysteria broke out. It all started in the spring of 1692, when a group of adolescent girls claimed the works of black magic within the village. This ultimately led to a “series of investigations and prosecutions that caused 19 convicted ‘witches’ to be hanged and many other suspects to be imprisoned” (Salem witch trials 1). Sparked by interest over such a series of tragic event, Arthur Miller produced an
In The Crucible, by Arthur Miller was based on the Salem, witch trials when the people of the town where accusing each other of witchcraft and those held for questioning would stand trial had a choice to be valor. In Miller’s portrayal of the ghastly, sickening inquiry of witchcraft many people in the 1690’s were people of the township were maintaining guard for their beliefs; while others of the community of Salem were cowards who took the easy out of the accusations they were on trial. The townspeople
use of fear seeps into the literature of the times, especially when the content of the work has a basis in real events from the past. Fear is an effective motivator as evidenced by the characters in Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible. The most common use of fear in The Crucible is to manipulate the weaker minded people into serving someone else’s best interests. Abigail, who is clearly a master of this craft, uses this tactic to intimidate Betty and the other girls into joining her web of lies when
Mass hysteria is a phenomenon that transmits collective illusions of threats through a population in society as a result of rumors and fear. In a play called The Crucible by Arthur Miller, mass hysteria breaks out in Salem when children start acting weird and accusing people of being witches. There are multiple scenes and characters throughout the play that show how hysteria was affecting the town and the people in it. If accused, a person will be hung unless they confess to be being a witch, and
Importance of Being Earnest were among some of these plays from this semester. However, one of my personal favorites is The Crucible. I was able to uncover many themes from this play such as secret sin, lies and deceit, and religion. The Crucible stood out to me from the rest of the plays. I was able to relate to it on a greater scale than the others, and the story behind the Crucible interested me very much. Also I notice a theme of secret sin. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this play as well as watching
In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, the people of Salem, Massachusetts experience several “bizarre supernatural events” that really highlight these characters’ morality. A morality play is a kind of drama with personified abstract qualities as the main characters and presenting a lesson about good conduct and character. The Crucible dramatizes good and evil to give rationale of these characters’ true intentions. The “good” characters in the play are portrayed as Reverend Hale, Elizabeth, Mr. Parris
In the Crucible written by Arthur Miller, he essentially talks about “courage, weakness, and truth.” Arthur Miller gives multiple scenarios when different characters have their time to shine and take the reader's attention. They’re multiple examples to prove this statement. For example would be when Thomas Putman stated, “he felt that his own name and the honor of his family had been smirched by the village, and he meant to right matters however he could.” In this specific quote he is very courageous
The play The Crucible was written in the 1950s. It was a play and drama with the author Arthur Miller. In the play there are many characters that change throughout the entire play. Three characters that have the most dramatic change are John proctor, Reverend Hale and Elizabeth Proctor. This drama has made these characters loose trust in almost everything and everyone. There was so much anger and confusion throughout the town. Each character changes in a different way than the other but they all
As defined, a crucible is a container where metals or other substances are heated to a very high temperature or even melted. In these small canisters, extremely violent reactions take place. A crucible isn’t solely an object necessary for chemical reactions, but is highly symbolic. Arthur Miller, author of the play The Crucible, used this as a metaphor of mass hysteria during the Salem Witch Trials. Through this, Miller connected the Puritan trials to The Red Scare, a span of time in which Communist