The Crucible

Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. Viking Press, 1953.

Arthur Miller was born on October 17, 1915, in New York City. Miller works in a warehouse after graduating from high school, and when he saved enough money, he began attending the University of Michigan. When WWII began, Arthur returned to New York and got to work writing his plays. Miller's masterpiece, Death of a Salesman, received the Pulitzer Prize, 1949. One of the many plays he wrote was The Crucible (1953) based on the Salem witch trials of 1692. Arthur Miller died in 2005; he was one of the best playwrights ever known.

The play takes place in 1692, in a small town in Massachusetts (Salem). A group of girls in the village go dancing in the forest with a black slave named Tituba, and Reverend Parris catches them. Afterwards in order to cover up what happened, Abigail comes up with a plan to target other people in the town that would be easy to make sound guilty of doing witch craft and other things that were considered evil. Elizabeth Proctor urges her husband, John Proctor, to denounce Abigail as a fraud; he refuses, and she becomes jealous, accusing him of still harboring feelings for her. Then, Elizabeth is accused of witch craft. From there on, many people of the town are accused and convicted of witch craft. At the end of the play, John Proctor and another take the fall for the girls' crime and the story ends.

Since The Crucible is a play, it is mostly dialogue of the characters/actors, and the story is told in the present tense. The main characters are, John Proctor, whom is shown as the play's tragic hero, Abigail Williams, whom is the play's villain, Reverend John Hale, whom loses faith in the court and tries to get everyone to confess, Elizabeth Proctor; John Proctor's wife, and Reverend Parris, minister of Salem's church. The minor characters of the story are the girls that danced in the forest; Mercy Lewis, Betty Paris, Mary Warren and Ruth Putnam, Rebecca nurse, whom is accused of witch craft, Francis Nurse; Rebecca's husband, Judge Danforth, the judge of the Salem court, and Tituba, Reverend Parris's black slave from Barbados.

There isn't one theme for The Crucible, there are many. One is hysteria, which tore apart the small town. In the story religion was a must, you had to practice religion, and sin was a public matter, which brings about the theme of intolerance. Focused