The Crucible (Penguin Classics) | Arthur Miller

The Crucible (Penguin Classics) | Arthur Miller | Guilty until proven innocent?

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The Crucible (Peng...

	The Crucible (Penguin Classics) Arthur Miller Penguin Classics, 2003 - 176 pages average customer review:based on 48 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Frightening Possibilities

As usual, Arthur Miller was in rare form when he wrote "The Crucilble." Although on the surface it is about the Salem Witch Trials, Miller's true inspiration came from the Red Scare that plagued Hollywood in the middle of the twentieth century (and included his pal Elia Kazan). The fact that Miller wove factual history with the hysteria of his day makes "The Crucible" all the more chilling.

Throughout the course of the play, a collection of teenage girls 'confess' to having seen various women and men of the town of Salem with the devil. This hysteria sweeps over the town as even the authorities fall under the sway of these lying young girls. Caught in the middle of these hysteronics is the Proctor family - John and Elizabeth, who have struggled in the past, but are trying to rebuild their marriage. They are rent apart when Elizabeth is suspected of being a witch. John hopes to clear his wife's name, but only manages to make matters worse for both of them.

The hysteria experienced in Salem is chilling in the fact that these sorts of witch hunts occur today, in all different areas of society. "The Crucible" shows how easily people can be swayed, with the barest of evidence, to believe something that is false. Miller's play is extremely well-written and informative, and almost too frighteningly real.

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Guilty until proven innocent?

Arthur Miller just passed away but left us a legacy from which we can interpret economic and political realities. In this play, a group of women are charged with witchcraft. In order to save their own skins, a few of the young female denizens of Salem denounce others as participants, asserting accusations of spiritual assaults etc... The interesting point here is that we assume that one is guilty until proven innocent. In 17th century Salem, one is guilty until proven innocent. This is both a critique of the fallacies of our perceptions concerning our government and the nature of Christianity. After the fall we are all guilty in a way.

I will skip the communist interpretations as it has been performed ad nauseum. We are entering another witch hunt for terrorists and their allies; either you are with the terrorists or with us. There is a subtext of patriotism that informs guilt. While we are not to the point that we were in the fifties, I don't think we are that far off. Another interesting point, Tituba is characterized as the ringleader. She is from the Carribean and I would presume black. Substitute Arab and it begins to look very plausible. The play works on many levels and is not only a critique of McCarthyism, it is also a critique of our misperceptions and the way in which we perceive.

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Mass hysteria, chaos, paranoia and manipulation 101

What is really unfortunate to the mesmerizing Arthur Miller's play"The Crucible" is that is was written after his "Death of a Salesman". Hadn't the play writer written "Death...", "The Crucible" would certainly be regarded as his unique masterpiece -- however, I believe the honor must be shared-- which is not that bad for readers and audiences.

Performed for the first time in 1953, "The Crucible" is loosely based on the famous Salem witchcraft trials that happened in 1962. Miller used the actual even as an inspiration to create a fable that resonated in his time's politics -- which was called the witch hunting. The play was written in response to Senator McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee's crusade against supposed communist sympathizers. Despite the changes, as Miller states in a prose prologue to the play, his objective is to "the reader will discover (...) the essential nature of one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history".

At the end of the play, one can be sure that the writer achieved his aim. "The Crucible" paints with the right paints a portray of mass hysteria, paranoia, chaos and manipulation. What's more, it achieves a higher level when it manages to deal with the 50s politics -- which happened to be touched by mass hysteria, chaos and manipulation as well.

As a whole, the symbolism in the play is the paranoia about communism that pervaded the United States in the 1950s. with his text, Miller managed to bring up several parallels between the House Un-American Activities Committee's rooting out of suspected communists during this time and the seventeenth-century witch-hunt. In both cases, the narrow-mindedness and the excess of zeal ended up blinding people. Like in Salem, the communists were encouraged to name names and confess their `crimes'.

In "The Crucible", Miller's concern is not to with the fact that the accused are witches or not -- but rather with the unwillingness of the court to believe they are not. In this case, in the McCarthyism era, so full of excess, many innocents were condemned, and this parallel is what resonates from Miller's words even more than 50 years later.

Miller vaguely based his characters in the actual ones, but in his prologue, as a disclaimer, he alleges that he was forced to make many changes. Abigail's age for instance was raised, the judges were symbolized by only two etc. But, as he explains, this is not a historical work.

One of the most impressive points in the play is the theocratic society --where church and state are one, and the only allowed form of religion in Salem is the Puritanism. The witch trials represent the expression of intolerance --while the hanging is the means of restoring the purity of the community. On the other hand, hysteria plays the role of tearing this society apart. It supplants logic and people start to believe that people they have always known are not what they believed to be. Abigail is the character that has an important role triggering this hysteria, since she wants to marry John Proctor, and for that must get rid of his wife. Others simply use her device --while others fall into her trap. In the end, the community is into pieces.

As one of the characters says that was `a strange time'. So was when Miller wrote his play -- and so is today. That is why Miller's "The Crucible" is such a timeless piece. Reading this play --opposed to watching it performed -- is an enhancing experience. Many of the writer's digressions are not in the stage -- that's why reading this book is a complementary homework for those who have already seen it performed or in the 1996 movie version.

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A must read!

This play is set during the time of the Salem witch trails in Salem, Massachusetts. Abigail is the leader of a group of young girls who start accusing other people in the town of being witches. Even though there was no real proof any of these people were witches, they were arrested, tried, and found guilty. The ones that confessed were allowed to live, but the ones that refused to confess were hung.

When Abigail accuses Elizabeth Proctor of witchcraft, her husband, John, goes to the judge and tells him that Abigail accused Elizabeth of this crime because Elizabeth had discovered that he and Abigail were having an affair. The judge has Elizabeth brought to the courthouse, and he asks her if her husband had been unfaithful. She doesn't know John has admitted to this, and she lies in order to protect him. Then John is accused of being a witch and he is arrested.

John agrees to confess so that he can live, but he refuses to accuse anyone else of being a witch. But when they ask him to sign a public confession, which they plan to hang in the church, he refuses and retracts his confession.

I first read this book over 20 years ago in high school and recently re-read it. This was one of the few 'classics' that I was able to fully appreciate when I read it as a teen-ager.

The story is fascinating, even more so because it's based on real historical events and people, although some facts were changed. For example: In reality, Abigail was 11 and John was 60 (in the play their ages were 17 and 40) and they never had an affair.

The Crucible is a story of injustice resulting from mass hysteria. It's also about courage and honor. It took a great deal of courage for these people to die rather than to tell a lie so that they could live.

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Review for PRmalato

Arthur Miller's most famous of works, The Crucible comes through in ways few plays do. Miller's powerful language portray the chaos and fear of the time in spotless fashion, as the accusations of witchcraft get passed around like a basket of buns at a Thanksgiving table. It's almost as if Miller lived through one of the more perplexing eras in American history. This classic piece of American literature is a must read for any High School student.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, page 8, 9, 10

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