The Crucible by Arthur Miller THE CRUCIBLE by Arthur Miller (1952) Top picture: E.G Marshall, Arthur Kennedy, and Beatrice Straight in the 1953 Broadway production. Bottom picture: Arthur Miller. In 1953, Arthur Miller's play "The Crucible" ran on Broadway at the Martin Beck. Despite being a box office success and acclaimed by critics and audiences alike, it was considered second-best to his prior "Death of a Salesman." As Brook Atkinson for the New York Times reported the day after the opening, "[T]he theme does not develop with the simple eloquence of 'Death of a Salesman.'" Although the events of the play are based on the events that took place in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692, Miller was liberal in his fictionalization of those events.

For example, many of the accusations of witchcraft in the play are driven by the affair between farmer, husband, and father John Proctor (Arthur Kennedy), and the Minister's teenage niece Abigail Williams (Madeleine Sherwood); however, in real life Williams was probably about eleven at the time of the accusations and Proctor was over sixty, which makes it most unlikely that there was ever any such relationship. Miller himself said, "The play is not reportage of any kind .... [n]obody can start to write a tragedy and hope to make it reportage .... what I was doing was writing a fictional story about an important theme." The "important theme" that Miller was writing about was clear to many observers in 1953 at the play's opening. It was written in response to Senator McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee's crusade against supposed communist sympathizers.

Despite the obvious political criticisms contained within the play, most critics felt that "The Crucible" was "a self contained play about a terrible period in American history." The Crucible (The Movie) Over twenty years after the opening of the play, the eighty-one-year-old Miller wrote the screenplay for the production of a movie version of "The Crucible." As was the play, the movie is a fictionalized version of the events of Salem in 1692. Additionally, the movie was been changed from the play in some minor respects. For example, the movie opens with a scene of the town girls sneaking into the woods and participating is a ritualistic dance with the slave woman Tituba--until they are all caught by the minister. In the play this scene was referred to, but not performed. Another change is that the Slave woman Tituba is portrayed as black, when she was actually an Indian. Although hailed by some, the movie was not as well received as was the play. One critic stated, "This filmic redux of Miller's theatrical parable is somewhat out of place on the modern landscape.

What was no doubt a powerful and emotive effort in the 1950s, when it was written as a scathing critique of Senator McCarthy's crusade against supposed communist sympathizers, falls flat in the '90s." Even the star-studded cast was not enough to save the film for some. "Winona Ryder and Daniel Day-Lewis star in this two-hour yelling match between good and evil. Not recommended for those with a low tolerance for '50s-style misogyny and moralistic posturing." Not all were so harsh. Another reviewer stated, "With a head on its shoulders and the rawest emotions in its craw, Miller's stage hit "The Crucible" has become a cinematic grabber for grown-ups (**** out of four)." For a complete list of the cast and clips from the 1996 film, see An Interpretation of Arthur Miller's 1953 Play "The Crucible" | Kibin An Interpretation of Arthur Miller's 1953 Play "The Crucible" Sign Up & Access Essays Already a member? Login here Pages: 3 This preview is partially blurred. Sign up to view the full document. Sign Up & Access Essays Already a member?

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Sign up to view the full document End of preview Upgrade to view the full document In 1953 Arthur Miller wrote his famous play The Crucible in response to a fear of Communism that had developed in the United States during that decade The Red Scare as it was later called by historians was led by Senator Joseph McCarthy whose paranoia of a communist takeover spread through the nation like a wildfire Men and women alike fell victim to McCarthys pointed finger and as a result of this hysteria were mostly deported from the country their careers and lives ruined Some argue today that McCarthys plan had been to use the fear of the American people to throw his enemies out of office and gain power himself Whatever McCarthys motives may have been Arthur Miller realized the senators ludicracy when he attempted to accuse the President himself to be Communist Miller and the rest of the American people drew the line and McCarthy was seen a fraud By the time the rest of the public had came to this realization Millers play was written The Crucible is a play in which Arthur Miller parallels events of the Salem witch trials of 1692 to the problems that were plaguing his own society The statement that most readers today bring out of the play is that history has a way of repeating

 itself Millers play was an extreme hit upon release and won a Tony award The play is so popular today that many teachers in secondary schools use it to base their lesson around when teaching their students about 1692 Salem and there are multimedia activities based on Salem through The Crucibles view Miller is often asked to speak at events where similar witch hunts occur acting as a sort of expert on the subject of Puritan Salem and acts of hysteriaThe question is why is Arthur Miller revered by so many as the man to ask regarding the Salem Witch trials when his play had many inaccuracies some very obvious Millers @Kibin is a lifesaver for my essay right now!!

- Sandra Slivka, student @ UC Berkeley Wow, this is the best essay help I've ever received! - Camvu Pham, student @ U of M If I'd known about @Kibin in college, I would have gotten much more sleep - Jen Soust, alumni @ UCLA Essay about Core 1 - The Crucible - 853 Words The Crucible Essay ...The Crucible The playwright, Arthur Miller, uses the character construction in the play to position the audience to accept the dominant reading of the play, which is the concern and dangers of religious fanaticism. The play, The Crucible, is set in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. It is based upon the actual events which led to the ‘Salem witch trials’, a series of hearings to determine which individuals were in fact practicing witchcraft. The play also conveys... 1361 Words | 4 Pages The Crucible Essay ...

Evaluation of a live performance draft – The Crucible by Arthur Miller York Theatre Royal – 10th May 2011 The Crucible, a 1953 play written by American playwright, Arthur Miller, was influenced by the Salem witch trials which occurred in colonial Massachusetts between 1692 and 1693. It is a dramatization of these trials where more than 200 people were accused of conjuring spirits and practising witchcraft and some were executed. Eventually, the colony admitted... 2335 Words | 6 Pages The Crucible Essay ...testimonies and lack of judicial intelligence, but hung, or in one case, pressed to death. The claims of witchery caused calamity throughout the village, neighbors turning on one another; friends accusing each other just to salvage their own lives. In The Crucible, Puritan way of life revolves around the church. If you announce your opinion, you must disagree with the church. If you disagree with the church, you disagree with God; and if you dare disagree with God, you my... 1677 Words | 5 Pages Essay on The Crucible ...only bad according to their religion?

And what if these ‘bad things’ really are understandable and rational but because of your biased religious surroundings are they considered bad? Arthur Miller’s The Crucible illustrates this concept vividly using the 1982 Salem Witch Trials. During The Crucible, people are accused of an act they did not commit and have to go against their religion and sin or face being hanged which leads to mass hysteria and paranoia. Even... 1219 Words | 3 Pages The Crucible Essay ...Essay for The Crucible * Compare the roles that Elizabeth Proctor and Abigail Williams play in The Crucible. In the play, The Crucible, there are a variety of characters that serve various purposes, a primary one being a representative of the people that were actually present during the Salem Witch Trials and The McCarthyism era. Albeit different people, many of the people presented in both of these times had similar roles to play in the grand... 1007 Words | 3 Pages The Crucible Essay ...College Prep English 1 10 November 2013 The Crucible The Red Scare inspired Arthur Miller to write The Crucible, which is one of the best societal mirrors ever made.

It portrays influential universal truths, one of many being that people often cave in to authority figures for fear of being socially isolated. Throughout the story this specific truth comes up frequently in many forms, from the lack of resistance to the trials to the actions of some... 1554 Words | 4 Pages The Crucible Essay ...Salem of Fear The Crucible is a play that explores ideas such as conflict, the importance of reputation and the relationship between fear and power. Arthur Miller uses this dramatic setting, symbolism and conflict between characters to show his audience and readers the similarities between the Salem witch hunts and the persecution of communists in his own time. This essay will show that the messages in The Crucible such as the harm that false accusations can... 1026 Words | 3 Pages Crucible Essay ...

Theories of the accusing girls in the crucible by ARTHUR MILLER by truc huynh professor: heidi kozlowski english 1b july 28, 2011 Truc Huynh Professor Heidi Kozlowski English 1B 29 July 2011 The Theories of the Accusing Girls in The Crucible The Crucible by Arthur Miller, which was first performed at Martin Beck Theater on January 22, 1953, is one of the excellent dramas in the 20th century. From the experiences, political and social... 2559 Words | 4 Pages Arthur Miller, Joseph McCarthy, and the Salem Witch Trials - Home Arthur Miller, Joseph McCarthy, and the Salem Witch Trials Arthur Miller The Crucible, in Summary: The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller and published in 1953, is a play set during the Salem witch trials. Many critics believe that this play was written with the intent to criticize the American anticommunist witch hunt of the 1950s, or the McCarthy era.

The majority of accusations of communism were brought on by Senator Joseph McCarthy, and he proceeded to host unfair trials against those accused (many of whom were innocent). Arthur Miller's play symbolically portrays the events of this era. Overall, the play tells the story of John Proctor, a real victim of the Salem witch trials who was altered within the play to fit the author's purpose. In the story, John Proctor's wife, Elizabeth Proctor, is accused of committing witchcraft and is sentenced to hang unless she will confess. This accusation has been brought about by Abigail Williams, with whom John had an affair before the start of the play. Jealous of Elizabeth and rejected by John, Abigail selfishly had condemned Elizabeth and several others with false claims against them. To defend his wife and friends, John Proctor speaks the truth in the Salem court with great fervor. Ultimately, his case is denied by the one-sided court led by Deputy Governor Danforth. When John is asked to confess, he struggles with the issue and eventually decides to die with like others who are already hanged. This decision is glorified in the story as an honest act against a dishonest, unfair, and hysterical society.

Such elements connect the message of The Crucible with the basic events of the McCarthy era. Both situations condemned the innocent with irrational accusations, emotionally reactive courts, and underlying corruption of the respective societies' leaders. Page Links: -The Salem Witch Trials: /the-salem-witch-trials.html -The McCarthy Era: /the-mccarthy-era.html -Arthur Miller, the Author: /arthur-miller.html Sources: Willhelm, Jeffrey D, et al. Literature: South Carolina Treasures: American Literature. Columbus, Ohio: McGraw- Hill Companies, 2010. Print Latham, Amanda, Oh, Joyce. “Senator Joseph McCarthy, McCarthyism, and the Witch Hunt.” Cold War Museum. n.p., n.d. Web. 15 Oct. 2012. Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. New York: The Viking Press, 1953. Print.

Site author: Nathan Stephenson Arthur Miller's The Crucible: Fact & Fiction, by Margo Burns Arthur Miller's The Crucible: by Margo Burns Revised: 10/30/15 I've been working with the materials of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 for so long as an academic historian, it's not surprising when people ask me if I've seen the play or film The Crucible, and what I think of it. Miller created works of art, inspired by actual events, for his own artistic/political intentions. First produced on Broadway on January 22, 1953, the play was partly a response to the panic caused by irrational fear of Communism during the Cold War which resulted in the hearings by the House Committee on Unamerican Activities. 1 In Miller's play and screenplay, however, it is a lovelorn teenager, spurned by the married man she loves, who fans a whole community into a blood-lust frenzy in revenge. This is simply not history. The real story is far more complex, dramatic, and interesting - and well worth exploring. Miller himself had some things to say about the relationship between his play and the actual historical event that are worth considering.

In the Saturday Review in 1953, Henry Hewes quotes Miller as stating, "A playwright has no debt of literalness to history. Right now I couldn't tell you which details were taken from the records verbatim and which were invented." I, on the other hand, can tell you, and that is the purpose of this essay. Whether this activity is worthwhile or not really depends on what one wants from the play or movie. I find that many people come across this unusual episode in American history through Miller's story, and if they want to start learning what "really" happened in 1692, they have a hard time distinguishing historical fact from literary fiction because Miller's play and characters are so vivid, and he used the names of real people who participated in the historical episode for his characters. Miller wrote a "Note on the Historical Accuracy of this Play" at the beginning of the Viking Critical Library edition: This play is not history in the sense in which the word is used by the academic historian.

Dramatic purposes have sometimes required many characters to be fused into one; the number of girls involved in the 'crying out' has been reduced; Abigail's age has been raised; while there were several judges of almost equal authority, I have symbolized them all in Hathorne and Danforth. However, I believe that the reader will discover here the essential nature of one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history. The fate of each character is exactly that of his historical model, and there is no one in the drama who did not play a similar - and in some cases exactly the same - role in history. As for the characters of the persons, little is known about most of them except what may be surmised from a few letters, the trial record, certain broadsides written at the time, and references to their conduct in sources of varying reliability. They may therefore be taken as creations of my own, drawn to the best of my ability in conformity with their known behavior, except as indicated in the commentary I have written for this text. (p. 2) Miller clings to simultaneous claims of creative license and exactitude about the behavior and fate of the real people whose names he used for his characters.

This is problematic for anyone who is beginning to take an interest in the historical episode, based on his powerful play. 2 In Miller's autobiography, Timebends: A Life, originally published in 1987, Miller recounts another impression he had during his research: One day, after several hours of reading at the Historical Society [...] I got up to leave and that was when I noticed hanging on a wall several framed etchings of the witchcraft trials, apparently made by an artist who must have witnessed them. In one of them, a shaft of sepulchral light shoots down from a window high up in a vaulted room, falling upon the head of a judge whose face is blanched white, his long white beard hanging to his waist, arms raised in defensive horror as beneath him the covey of afflicted girls screams and claws at invisible tormentors. Dark and almost indistinguishable figures huddle on the periphery of the picture, but a few men can be made out, bearded like the judge, and shrinking back in pious outrage.

Suddenly it became my memory of the dancing men in the synagogue on 114th Street as I had glimpsed them between my shielding fingers, the same chaos of bodily motion - in this picture, adults fleeing the sight of a supernatural event; in my memory, a happier but no less eerie circumstance - both scenes frighteningly attached to the long reins of God. I knew instantly what the connection was: the moral intensity of the Jews and the clan's defensiveness against pollution from outside the ranks. Yes, I understood Salem in that flash; it was suddenly my own inheritance. I might not yet be able to work a play's shape out of this roiling mass of stuff, but it belonged to me now, and I felt I could begin circling around the space where a structure of my own could conceivably rise. [p. 338] 3 There are no extant drawings by witnesses to the events in 1692. My best guess is that what Miller may have seen was a lithograph - popular framed wall art in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries - from a series produced in 1892 by George H. Walker & Co., drawn by Joseph E.

Baker (1837-1914) [See image to the right to compare with Miller's description.]. Although it is fine for artists to be inspired by whatever stimulates their creative sensibilities, Miller's descriptions of his own research, however credible they may come across and however vivid an imprint they may have left on him, are riddled with inaccuracies, and memories Miller claims to have had of the primary sources, are seriously flawed. When the movie was released 1996, Miller published an article in the New Yorker, discussing "Why I Wrote The Crucible", in which he describes, over four decades after writing the play, what he remembered of his process with the material. He began by stating that he had read Salem Witchcraft: "[I]t was not until I read a book published in 1867 - a two-volume, thousand-page study by Charles W.

Upham, who was then the mayor of Salem - that I knew I had to write about the period." It was in Upham's work that Miller encountered the description of a single gesture that inspired him: It was from a report written by the Reverend Samuel Parris, who was one of the chief instigators of the witch-hunt. "During the examination of Elizabeth Procter, Abigail Williams and Ann Putnam" - the two were 'afflicted' teen-age accusers, and Abigail was Parris's niece - "both made offer to strike at said Procter; but when Abigail's hand came near, it opened, whereas it was made up into a fist before, and came down exceeding lightly as it drew near to said Procter, and at length, with open and extended fingers, touched Procter's hood very lightly. Immediately Abigail cried out her fingers, her fingers, her fingers burned...." In this remarkably observed gesture of a troubled young girl, I believed, a play became possible. This is terrific stuff for a fertile, creative mind (see Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, No. 49, p.

174 for a transcription of the full primary source), and immediately Miller veered away from the historical record, imagining the backstory of this gesture: "Elizabeth Proctor had been the orphaned Abigail's mistress, and they had lived together in the same small house until Elizabeth fired the girl. By this time, I was sure, John Proctor had bedded Abigail, who had to be dismissed most likely to appease Elizabeth." That's fine fiction, as long as readers know that this was his creative mind at work not what really happened, but even in discussing his own work, Miller is often unable to tell what was historically true and what he had made up. In the introduction to his Collected Plays published in 1957 (republished in the Viking Critical Library edition, p. 164), Miller claimed that the story of Abigail Williams as a servant in the Procter house was historically accurate: I doubt I should ever have tempted agony by actually writing a play on the subject had I not come upon a single fact.

It was that Abigail Williams, the prime mover of the Salem hysteria, so far as the hysterical children were concerned, had a short time earlier been the house servant of the Proctors and now was crying out Elizabeth Proctor as a witch; but more - it was clear from the record that with entirely uncharacteristic fastidiousness she was refusing to include John Proctor, Elizabeth's husband, in her accusations despite the urgings of the prosecutors. This is also not historically accurate, beginning with Abigail never having been a maidservant in the Procter howusehold: that was Mary Warren. The real Abigail Williams did cry out against John Procter on April 4, on the same day Elizabeth Procter was formally accused, although he was not included on the arrest warrant issued on April 8. (See RSWH, Nos. 39, 46, 47 & 61). Miller continued to claim that it was a fact. "It was the fact that Abigail, their former servant, was their accuser, and her apparent desire to convict Elizabeth and save John, that made the play conceivable for me." (Viking Critical Library edition, p.

165) What Miller had to say about the line between his play and historical accuracy is as unreliable as the play itself is as history. Another example of this fictionalization of this research can be found in Miller's article "Are You Now Or Were You Ever?" , published in The Guardian/The Observer (on line), on Saturday, June 17, 2000. He wrote, "I can't recall if it was the provincial governor's nephew or son who, with a college friend, came from Boston to watch the strange proceedings. Both boys burst out laughing at some absurd testimony: they were promptly jailed, and faced possible hanging." As delightfully ironic as this sounds, again, it is simply fabricated, although whether by Miller himself or from some secondary source he may have read - he states in this article that he had read Marion Starkey's book,The Devil in Massachusetts (1949), for instance - but there is simply nothing even remotely like this mentioned in the primary sources. Miller is, of course, not alone in his misconceptions about the history of this episode. He was using it to make sense of his own life and times.

Popular understandings include many general inaccuracies - for instance, that the witches were burned to death. People condemned as witches in New England were not burned, but hanged, and in the aftermath of the events in Salem, it was generally agreed that none of them had actually been witches at all. Some modern versions also cast the story as having to do with intolerance of difference - a theme that was in the words of Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel at the dedication of the Tercentenary Memorial in Salem in August 1992, for instance - that the accused were people on the fringes that the community tacitly approved of casting out. In fact, most of the people who were accused, convicted, and executed by the court in Salem were remarkable by their very adherence to community norms, many were even fully covenanted members of the church. Such impressions that vary from the historical facts are more likely to come from pressing concerns of the time of the writer. Another current misconception about the events had its beginning in 1976, when Linnda P. Caporael, then a graduate student, published an article in Science magazine positing that the afflicted had suffered from hallucinations from eating moldy rye wheat - ergot poisoning.

The story was picked up and published on the front page of the New York Times on March 31, 1976, in the article "Salem Witch Hunts in 1692 Linked to LSD-Like Agent". The use and abuse of LSD was a major public concern at the time. The theory was refuted, point by point, by Nickolas P. Spanos and Jack Gottlieb seven months later in the very magazine Caporael had published her original article, demonstrating how Caporael's data was cherry-picked to support her conclusion. For instance, the kind of ergotism that produces hallucinations has other symptoms - gangrene fingers and digestive-tract distress - which would likely have been reported in 1692, but were not. Nevertheless the life of this theory continues in the popular imagination as a viable explanation of the events.

It was later backed up by Mary Matossian in 1982 in an article in American Scientist, "Ergot and the Salem witchcraft affair" (also covered by the New York Times, 8/29/1982), and in her 1989 book Poisons of the Past: Molds, Epidemics and History. Caporael herself re-appeared in 2001 on the subject, in a PBS special in the series Secrets of the Dead II: "Witches Curse", repeating her claims, unrefuted. Another biological theory, by Laurie Winn Carlson, published in 1999, suggested that the afflicted suffered from encephalitis lethargica, but this one also fails to hold up under the scrutiny of medical and Salem scholars alike. Additionally, even if these biological explanations could be the root of the accusers' "visions", they still do not go far to explain the credulity and legal response of the public and authorities. They do reflect a current perception that unacknowledged toxins in our daily environment can explain many medical issues. Lastly, Rev.

Parris' slave woman, Tituba, is persistently portrayed as having been of Black African descent or of mixed racial heritage, despite always being referred to in the primary sources as "an Indian woman". Upham created this presentation of Tituba, known to have been a slave from Barbadoes, after the Civil War, when most slaves from Barbadoes were, in fact, of Black African heritage. Had the real Tituba nearly two centuries earlier actually been African or Black or mulatto, she would have been so described. Contemporary descriptions of her also refer to her as a "Spanish Indian", placing her pre-Barbadoes origins somewhere in the Carolinas, Georgia or Florida. Historian Elaine Breslaw details how we know that Tituba was Amerindian, probably South American Arawak. (See my supplemental notes about Tituba .) Returning to Miller's tellings of the tale, I am always distracted by the wide variety of minor historical inaccuracies when I am exposed to his play or movie. Call me picky, but I'm not a dolt: I know about artistic license and Miller's freedom to use the material any way he choose to, so please don't bother lecturing me about it.

This page is part of a site about the history of 17th Century Colonial New England , not about literature, theater, or Arthur Miller, even though you may have landed smack dab in the middle of the site thanks to a search engine hit for information about Miller. Reasons why I began providing this list include, 1) actors contact me about making their portrayals of characters in the play "more accurate" - when that is impossible without drastically altering Miller's work because the characters in his play are simply not the real people who lived, even though they may share names and basic fates, 2) people who are watching the stage production or movie and who are inspired to learn more about the historical event, and 3) students are given assignments in their English classes to find out more about what really happened (American high school juniors in honors and AP classes seem to be the most frequent visitors).

I can be an ornery cuss when it comes to being asked the same English class homework questions that I've already said I don't care to answer because I am an historian, so before you even think of writing to ask me a question about the play, please read through my list of frequently-asked questions where I will give you what answers I have to offer to the most questions I am most commonly asked - be prepared: they may not be the answers you want. Here's my list of some of the historical inaccuracies in the play/screenplay: Abigail tells Betty, "Your Mama's dead and buried!", (Screenplay, Scene 21; play, Act 1, Scene 1). Betty Parris' mother was not dead and was very much alive in 1692. Elizabeth (Eldridge) Parris died four years after the witchcraft trials, on July 14, 1696, at the age of 48. Her gravestone is located in the Wadsworth Cemetery on Summer Street in Danvers, MA. Soon after the legal proceedings began, Betty was shuttled off to live in Salem Town with Stephen Sewall's family.

Stephen was the clerk of the Court, brother of Judge Samuel Sewall. The Parris family also included two other children -- an older brother, Thomas (b. 1681), and a younger sister, Susannah (b. 1687) -- not just Betty and her relative Abigail, who was probably born around 1681. Abigail Williams is often called Rev. Parris' "niece" but in fact there is no genealogical evidence to prove their familial relationship. She is sometimes in the original texts referred to as his "kinfolk" however. Miller admits in the introduction to the play that he boosted Abigail Williams' age to 17 even though the real girl was only 11, but he never mentions that John Proctor was 60 and Elizabeth, 41, was his third wife. Proctor was not a farmer but a tavern keeper. Living with them was their daughter aged 15, their son who was 17, and John's 33-year-old son from his first marriage. Everyone in the family was eventually accused of witchcraft.

Elizabeth Proctor was indeed pregnant, during the trial, and had a temporary stay of execution after conviction, which ultimately spared her life because it extended past the end of the period that the executions were taking place. There never was any wild dancing rite in the woods led by Tituba, and certainly Rev. Parris never stumbled upon them. One of the girls, and we don't know when, is described by Rev. John Hale several years after the trials, to had attempted to divine the occupations of her future husband with an egg in a glass -- crystal-ball style. Tituba and her husband, John Indian (absent in Miller's telling), were asked by a neighbor, Mary Sibley, to bake a special "witch cake," -- made of rye and the girls' urine, fed to a dog -- European white magic to ascertain who the witch was who was afflicting the girls. Supplemental Notes The first two girls to become afflicted were Betty Parris and Abigail Williams, and they had violent, physical fits, not a sleep that they could not wake from. Rev. Deodat Lawson's eye-witness account described Abigail trying to dig under chairs and attempting to run up the chimney.

One interpretation of this behavior is that she was experiencing PTSD, a symptoms of which can be repeating behavior from the original traumatic event. If this is so, Abigail could well have been in a household under attack from the Wakanabi in Maine - but since we have no information about where she came from before entering the Parris household, we just can't be sure. The Putnams' daughter was not named Ruth, but Ann, like her mother, probably changed by Miller so the audience wouldn't confuse the mother and the daughter. In reality, the mother was referred to as "Ann Putnam Senior" and the daughter as "Ann Putnam Junior." Ann/Ruth was not the only Putnam child out of eight to survive infancy. In 1692, the Putnams had six living children, Ann being the eldest, down to 1-year-old Timothy. Ann Putnam Sr. was pregnant during most of 1692. Ann Sr.'s sister, however, did lose a fair number of infants, though certainly not all, and by comparison, the Nurse family lost remarkably few for the time. Rev.

Parris claims to Giles Corey that he is a "graduate of Harvard" -- he did not in fact graduate from Harvard, although he had attended for a while and dropped out. The judges in The Crucible are Thomas Danforth, and John Hathorne in the play, with Samuel Sewall added for the screenplay. The full panel of magistrates for the special Court of Oyer and Terminer were in fact named by the new charter, which arrived in Massachusetts on May 14, 1692 were William Stoughton, John Richards, Nathaniel Saltonstall, Wait Winthrop, Bartholomew Gedney, Samuel Sewall, John Hathorne, Jonathan Corwin and Peter Sergeant. Five of these had to be present to form a presiding bench, and at least one of those five had to be Stoughton, Richards, or Gedney. Thomas Danforth, as Deputy Governor and a member of the Governor's Council, joined the magistrates on one occasion as the presiding magistrate in Salem for the preliminary examinations in mid-April of Sarah Cloyce, Elizabeth Procter and John Procter, but once the new charter arrived with Gov.

Phips in May, William Stoughton became the Lieutenant Governor and Chief Magistrate. The events portrayed here were the examinations of the accused in Salem Village from March to April, in the context of a special court of "Oyer and Terminer." These were not the actual trials, per se, which began later, in June 1692. The procedure was basically this: someone would bring a complaint to the authorities, and the authorities would decide if there was enough reason to send the sheriff or other law enforcement officer to arrest them. While this was happening, depositions -- statements people made on paper outside of court -- were taken and evidence gathered, typically against the accused. After evidence or charges were presented, and depositions sworn to before the court, the grand jury would decide whether to indict the person, and if so, on what charges. If indicted, the person's case would be heard by a petit jury, basically to "trial", something like we know it only much faster, to decide guilt or innocence. The proceedings were not like our current adversarial process - with prosecution versus defense, but inquisitional, with the prosecutor presenting the evidence to the jury.

Guilt in a case of witchcraft in 1692 came with a sentence of death by hanging, as per English law. Saltonstall was one of the original magistrates, but quit early on because of the reservations portrayed as attributed to Sewall's character in the play. Of the magistrates, only Sewall ever expressed public regret for his actions, asking in 1696 to have his minister, Rev. Samuel Willard, read a statement from the pulpit of this church to the congregation, accepting his share of "the blame and the shame" for what had happened. Rebecca Nurse was hanged on July 19, John Proctor on August 19, and Martha Corey on September 22 -- not all on the same day on the same gallows as Miller depicts it. And the only person executed who recited the Lord's Prayer on the gallows was Rev. George Burroughs -- which caused quite a stir since it was generally believed at the time that a witch could not say the Lord's Prayer without making a mistake. They also would not have been hanged while praying, since the condemned were always allowed their last words and prayers.

Reverend Hale would not have signed any "death warrants," as he claims to have signed 17 in the play. That was not for the clergy to do. Both existing death warrants are signed by William Stoughton. The elderly George Jacobs was not accused of sending his spirit in through the window to lie on the Putnam's daughter - in fact, it was usually quite the opposite case: women such as Bridget Bishop were accused of sending their spirits into men's bedrooms to lie on them. In that period, women were perceived as the lusty, sexual creatures whose allure men must guard against! The real John Procter (vs. the fictional John Proctor in the play) maintained his innocence throughout, however another accused man - whose wife was also accused - did confess, recant his confession, and was hanged: Samuel Wardwell of Andover.

When pressed to confirm the text of his confession, Wardwell refused, stating, "the above written confession was taken from his mouth, and that he had said it, but he said he belied himself." He also said, "He knew he should die for it, whether he owned it or not." (See Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, No.538, p. 577) The hysteria did not die out "as more and more people refused to save themselves by giving false confessions," as the epilogue of the movie states. The opposite was true: more and more people were giving false confessions and four women actually pled guilty to the charges. Some historians claim that this was because it became apparent that confession would save one from the noose, but there is evidence that the Court was planning to execute the confessors as well. What ended the trials was the intervention of Governor William Phips. Contrary to what Phips told the Crown in England, he was not off in Maine fighting the Indians in King William's War through that summer, since he attended governor's council meetings regularly that summer, which were also attended by the magistrates. But public opinion of the trials did take a turn.

There were over a hundred people still in custody when the general reprieve was given, but they were not released until they paid their prison fees. Neither did the tide turn when Rev. Hale's wife was accused by Abigail Williams, as the play claims (it was really a young woman named Mary Herrick), nor when the mother-in-law of Magistrate Jonathan Corwin was accused -- although the "afflicted" did start accusing a lot more people far and wide to the point of absurdity, including various people around in other Massachusetts towns whom they had never laid eyes on, including notable people such as the famous hero Capt. John Alden (who escaped after being arrested). Abigail Williams probably couldn't have laid her hands on £31 in money in Samuel Parris' house, to run away with John Proctor, when Parris' annual salary was contracted at £66, only a third of which was paid in money.

The rest was to be paid in what was called "country rate" = foodstuffs and other supplies, but even then, Parris had continual disputes with the parishioners about supplying him with much-needed firewood they owed him, primarily because the people who were in charge of collecting the minister's salary were ones who disapproved of deeding the parsonage to Parris as part of his compensation. Certain key people in the real events appear nowhere in Miller's play: John Indian, Rev. Nicholas Noyes, Sarah Cloyce, and most notably, Cotton Mather. Giles Corey was not executed for refusing to name a witness, as portrayed in the movie. The stage play is more accurate: he was accused of witchcraft, and refused to enter a plea, which held up the proceedings, since the law of the time required that the accused enter a plea and agree to be tried "before God and the country" (i.e. a jury). He was pressed to death with stones, but the method called peine forte et dure. When he was excommunicated, it was understood that his choice was tantamount to suicide. Corey likely realized that if he was tried at all, he would be executed anyway.

His land was was not an issue: he had already deeded his property to his children. (Interestingly, Miller wrote both the play and the screenplay... Who knows why he changed it to a less-accurate explanation for his punishment and execution?) The alleged "afflicted" comprised not just a group of a dozen teenage girls -- there were men and adult women who also claimed "affliction," including John Indian, Ann Putnam, Sr., and Sarah Bibber -- and there were more in Andover, where the total number of people accused was greater than any other town, including Salem Village. There's a tiny scene in the movie with a goat getting into someone's garden and tempers flaring -- the actual history is that three years before the witchcraft accusations, a neighbor's pigs got into the Nurse family's fields, and Rebecca Nurse went running into the field, yelling to her son to get a gun to help stop the pigs from rutted through their crops at him about it. Soon thereafter, however, the neighbor had an apparent stroke and died within a few months. This was seen as evidence in 1692 of Rebecca Nurse's witchcraft. At the end of Act II, Scene 2 in the play (p.

75), John Proctor states, ""You are pulling down heaven and raising up a whore." In the film (Scene 74. EXT DAY. WATER's EDGE, p. 79), John Proctor says this line, but follows it with, "I say God is dead!" This idea of the death of God dates from the 19th century work of German philosopher, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900). NOTE: All of the above can be verified through primary sources, which are not necessarily listed here only to avoid providing an easy on-line source of plagiarism -- not that your teacher couldn't spot a ringer like this one from a mile away. (Trust me: your teachers can usually tell when you are plagiarizing. If you think you are "getting away with it," it may just be a temporary thing while they figure out how to prove it or catch you at it. Do your own work.) Everything stated here can be corroborated with a little research of your own, and isn't that the point of most school assignments?

Start with the the searchable on-line edition of The Salem Witchcraft Papers , Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt , the books listed in my bibliography and various rare books available on-line . I encourage you to read these for yourself! Now I have a few questions, for anyone who is inclined to think about them or who needs an idea to start writing a paper: It may not matter if one's sole interest is in Miller work as literature or theater, but what happens when people only know history through creative works of art and not from primary sources and facts, letting someone else pick and choose between which facts to include and which to alter for their own artistic purposes and political arguments? What are the current-day implications of the racial misidentification of Tituba as "black" or "African" in many high school history books and Miller's play written in the 1950s, when all of the primary sources by the people who actually knew the real woman referred to her as "Indian"?

What would happen to Miller's story if Tituba were not portrayed as the well-worn American stereotype of a Black slave woman circa 1850 practicing voodoo, but as a Christianized Indian whose only use of magic was European white magic at the instruction of her English neighbors? Since there never was a spurned lover stirring things up in Salem Village and there is no evidence from the time that Tituba practiced Caribbean Black Magic, yet these trials and executions actually still took place, how can you explain why they occurred? As a result of reading Miller's play or seeing the movie, are you more interested in what actually happened in Salem in 1692, what actually happened during McCarthyism in the 1950's, what happens when an illicit teenage lover is spurned, or what effects infidelity has on a married couple? What is it about Miller's work that prompts your interest in that direction? Accusations of sexual-abuse against childcare providers are now sometimes referred to as "witch hunts" when the accusers are suspected of lying, as in Miller's play, yet children's advocates tell us that we must believe children's claims of abuse because it certainly -- horribly -- does occur.

How can the veracity of children's testimony be evaluated when children have been proven to be very impressionable and eager to give the answers that adults lead them to give? Why do teachers assign projects to their students to compare the events in the play to what really happened historically? What kind of conclusions do teachers expect their students to make about how to navigate between art and history when faced with the kind of information provided on this page? Notes 1. The play premiered before anti-Communist Senator Joseph McCarthy's actual participation started on Feb. 3, 1953. The House Committee on Unamerican Activities (HCUA), however, began their inquiries earlier than McCarthy's participataion. Elia Kazan's testimony before it -- which is assumed to have influenced Miller -- was on April 12th, 1952. Do not write to me asking about any specifics of the events in the 1950s: that's not my area of expertise. 2. You may also want to read Robin DeRosa's "History and the Whore: Arthur Miller's The Crucible", pp.

132-140 in The Making of Salem: The Witch Trials in History, Fiction and Tourism (2009). 3. It's worth reading the entire section, pp. 335-342, for the context of this quotation. Miller describes this memory slightly differently on pages 42-43 of the same book, so it's worth a comparison. Maybe I'll incorporate that one into this essay at some point. © 1997, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2011 Margo Burns This page was last updated 10/30/15 by Margo Burns, . Arthur Miller – The Crucible | Genius Album Bio 1 Contributor ? What is this? The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something. To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines . Loading...

The Crucible is a play by Arthur Miller made in 1953. The play dramatizes the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. The protagonist of the story is a farmer named John Proctor who tries to save his wife, who was falsely accused of witchcraft. A lot of characters in this play try to save their loved ones, but some people point fingers to others. Some characters accuse others for greedy reasons to get their land, while others were fearful of the mass hysteria. Ergot poisoning also affected the minds of young people and made the situation worse. It was during this time when many people were put on trial and many families were separated. There was great mistrust within the community during the one year it lasted. Arthur Miller later stated that the play was made to protest the McCarthy Era when people were accusing others of practicing Communism . The play was later made into a film in 1996. This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done. *The Crucible* is a play by Arthur Miller made in 1953. The play dramatizes the [Salem Witch Trials]( of 1692.

The protagonist of the story is a farmer named John Proctor who tries to save his wife, who was falsely accused of witchcraft. A lot of characters in this play try to save their loved ones, but some people point fingers to others. Some characters accuse others for greedy reasons to get their land, while others were fearful of the mass hysteria. [Ergot poisoning]( also affected the minds of young people and made the situation worse. It was during this time when many people were put on trial and many families were separated. There was great mistrust within the community during the one year it lasted. Arthur Miller [later stated]( that the play was made to protest the [McCarthy Era]( when people were accusing others of practicing [Communism]( The play was later made into [a film]( in 1996. A Brief History of the Salem Witch Trials | History | Smithsonian A Brief History of the Salem Witch Trials One town's strange journey from paranoia to pardon A girl is accused during the Salem Witch Trials (Bettmann / CORBIS) By Jess Blumberg smithsonian.com October 23, 2007 The Salem witch trials occurred in colonial Massachusetts between 1692 and 1693.

More than 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft—the Devil's magic—and 20 were executed. Eventually, the colony admitted the trials were a mistake and compensated the families of those convicted. Since then, the story of the trials has become synonymous with paranoia and injustice, and it continues to beguile the popular imagination more than 300 years later. Related Books A Murder in Salem Salem Struggling Several centuries ago, many practicing Christians, and those of other religions, had a strong belief that the Devil could give certain people known as witches the power to harm others in return for their loyalty. A "witchcraft craze" rippled through Europe from the 1300s to the end of the 1600s. Tens of thousands of supposed witches—mostly women—were executed. Though the Salem trials came on just as the European craze was winding down, local circumstances explain their onset. In 1689, English rulers William and Mary started a war with France in the American colonies.

Known as King William's War to colonists, it ravaged regions of upstate New York, Nova Scotia and Quebec, sending refugees into the county of Essex and, specifically, Salem Village in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. (Salem Village is present-day Danvers, Massachusetts; colonial Salem Town became what's now Salem.) The displaced people created a strain on Salem's resources. This aggravated the existing rivalry between families with ties to the wealth of the port of Salem and those who still depended on agriculture. Controversy also brewed over Reverend Samuel Parris, who became Salem Village's first ordained minister in 1689, and was disliked because of his rigid ways and greedy nature. The Puritan villagers believed all the quarreling was the work of the Devil. In January of 1692, Reverend Parris' daughter Elizabeth, age 9, and niece Abigail Williams, age 11, started having "fits." They screamed, threw things, uttered peculiar sounds and contorted themselves into strange positions, and a local doctor blamed the supernatural. Another girl, Ann Putnam, age 11, experienced similar episodes.

On February 29, under pressure from magistrates Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne, the girls blamed three women for afflicting them: Tituba, the Parris' Caribbean slave; Sarah Good, a homeless beggar; and Sarah Osborne, an elderly impoverished woman. The witch no. 1 is a lithograph representation, created by Joseph E. Baker, ca. 1837-1914, of the story of the witchcraft accusations, trials and executions that captured the imagination of writers and artists in the ensuing centuries. ( Wikimedia Commons ) Abigail William's testimony against George Jacobs, Jr., during the Salem witches trial, now retained by the Massachusetts Historical Society. ( Wikimedia Commons ) In this 1876 engraving Witchcraft at Salem Village, the central figure of the courtroom is usually identified as Mary Walcott. ( Wikimedia Commons ) This map of Salem Village is a reconstruction of how Salem looked in 1692 at the start of the witch trials as created in 1866 from historical records by Charles W. Upham ( Wikimedia Commons ) Examination of a witch by Tompkins H. Matteson, whose paintings are known for their historical, patriotic, and religious themes.

Dozens of people from Salem and other Massachusetts villages were brought in and put to varying levels of questioning. ( Wikimedia Commons ) "Petition for bail from accused witches" from the John Davis Batchelder Autograph Collection. ( Wikimedia Commons ) Witch Hill by Thomas Satterwhite. A young woman is led to her execution during the Salem witchcraft trials. ( Smithsonian Institute ) Witch Hunt All three women were brought before the local magistrates and interrogated for several days, starting on March 1, 1692. Osborne claimed innocence, as did Good. But Tituba confessed, "The Devil came to me and bid me serve him." She described elaborate images of black dogs, red cats, yellow birds and a "black man" who wanted her to sign his book. She admitted that she signed the book and said there were several other witches looking to destroy the Puritans. All three women were put in jail. With the seed of paranoia planted, a stream of accusations followed for the next few months. Charges against Martha Corey, a loyal member of the Church in Salem Village, greatly concerned the community; if she could be a witch, then anyone could.

Magistrates even questioned Sarah Good's 4-year-old daughter, Dorothy, and her timid answers were construed as a confession. The questioning got more serious in April when Deputy Governor Thomas Danforth and his assistants attended the hearings. Dozens of people from Salem and other Massachusetts villages were brought in for questioning. On May 27, 1692, Governor William Phipps ordered the establishment of a Special Court of Oyer (to hear) and Terminer (to decide) for Suffolk, Essex and Middlesex counties. The first case brought to the special court was Bridget Bishop, an older woman known for her gossipy habits and promiscuity. When asked if she committed witchcraft, Bishop responded, "I am as innocent as the child unborn." The defense must not have been convincing, because she was found guilty and, on June 10, became the first person hanged on what was later called Gallows Hill. Five days later, respected minister Cotton Mather wrote a letter imploring the court not to allow spectral evidence—testimony about dreams and visions. The court largely ignored this request and five people were sentenced and hanged in July, five more in August and eight in September.

On October 3, following in his son's footsteps, Increase Mather, then president of Harvard, denounced the use of spectral evidence: "It were better that ten suspected witches should escape than one innocent person be condemned." Governor Phipps, in response to Mather's plea and his own wife being questioned for witchcraft, prohibited further arrests, released many accused witches and dissolved the Court of Oyer and Terminer on October 29. Phipps replaced it with a Superior Court of Judicature, which disallowed spectral evidence and only condemned 3 out of 56 defendants. Phipps eventually pardoned all who were in prison on witchcraft charges by May 1693. But the damage had been done: 19 were hanged on Gallows Hill, a 71-year-old man was pressed to death with heavy stones, several people died in jail and nearly 200 people, overall, had been accused of practicing "the Devil's magic." Restoring Good Names Following the trials and executions, many involved, like judge Samuel Sewall, publicly confessed error and guilt.

On January 14, 1697, the General Court ordered a day of fasting and soul-searching for the tragedy of Salem. In 1702, the court declared the trials unlawful. And in 1711, the colony passed a bill restoring the rights and good names of those accused and granted £600 restitution to their heirs. However, it was not until 1957—more than 250 years later—that Massachusetts formally apologized for the events of 1692. In the 20th century, artists and scientists alike continued to be fascinated by the Salem witch trials. Playwright Arthur Miller resurrected the tale with his 1953 play The Crucible , using the trials as an allegory for the McCarthyism paranoia in the 1950s. Additionally, numerous hypotheses have been devised to explain the strange behavior that occurred in Salem in 1692. One of the most concrete studies, published in Science in 1976 by psychologist Linnda Caporael, blamed the abnormal habits of the accused on the fungus ergot, which can be found in rye, wheat and other cereal grasses.

Toxicologists say that eating ergot-contaminated foods can lead to muscle spasms, vomiting, delusions and hallucinations. Also, the fungus thrives in warm and damp climates—not too unlike the swampy meadows in Salem Village, where rye was the staple grain during the spring and summer months. In August 1992, to mark the 300th anniversary of the trials, Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel dedicated the Witch Trials Memorial in Salem. Also in Salem, the Peabody Essex Museum houses the original court documents, and the town's most-visited attraction, the Salem Witch Museum, attests to the public's enthrallment with the 1692 hysteria. Editor's note - October 27, 2011: Thanks to Professor Darin Hayton for pointing out an error in this article. While the exact number of supposed witches killed in Europe isn't known, the best estimate is closer to tens of thousands of victims, not hundreds of thousands. We have fixed the text to address this issue. Like this article?

The Crucible: Characters :: Essay on The Crucible Chetan Patel The Crucible, a play by Arthur Miller that was first produced in 1953, is based on the true story of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. Miller wrote the play to parallel the situations in the mid-twentieth century of Alger Hiss, Owen Latimore, Julius and Ethel Rosenburg, and Senator McCarthy, if only suggestively. (Warshow 116) Some characters in the play have specific agendas carried out by their accusations, and the fact that the play is based on historical truth makes it even more intriguing. The characters in this play are simple, common people. The accused are charged and convicted of a crime that is impossible to prove. The following witchcraft hysteria takes place in one of America's wholesome, theocratic towns, which makes the miscarriage of justice such a mystery even today. The reasons the villains select the people they do for condemnation are both simple and clear. All of the accusers have ulterior motives, such as revenge, greed, and covering up their own behavior. Many of the accusers have meddled in witchcraft themselves, and are therefore doubly to be distrusted.

(Warshow 116) The court convicts the victims on the most absurd testimony, and the reader has to wonder how the judges and the townspeople could let such a charade continue. The leading character of the play is John Proctor, a man who often serves as the only voice of reason in the play. He had an affair with Abigail Williams, who later charges his wife with witchcraft. Proctor is seemingly the only person who can see through the children's accusations. The reader sees him as one of the more "modern" figures in the trials because he is hardheaded, skeptical, and a voice of common sense. He thinks the girls can be cured of their "spells" with a good whipping. (Warshow 114) At the end of the play, Proctor has to make a choice. He can either confess to a crime he is innocent of to save himself from execution, or die proclaiming his innocence. He ends up choosing death because a false confession would mean implicating other accused people, including Rebecca Nurse.

(Rovere 2632) Proctor feels she is good and pure, unlike his adulterous self, and does not want to tarnish her good name and the names of his other innocent friends by implicating them. (Warshow 117) By choosing death, Proctor takes the high road and becomes a true tragic hero. The reader feels that his punishment is unjust (especially since the crime of witchcraft is imagined and unprovable.) Because the trials take place in a Christian, American town, the reader must then wonder if anything like this How to Cite this Page MLA Citation: could happen in his or her own time. This is particularly true of people who saw the play when it first came out, in the era of McCarthyism. Ann and Thomas Putnam are two instigators of the witchcraft hysteria in the play. Ann Putnam is the one who first plants the idea that Betty is bewitched. Her motivation for lying is obvious; she needs to cover up her own behavior. After all, she had sent her daughter to Tituba to conjure up the dead in order to find out what happened to her dead babies.

She can't have it said that she, a Christian woman, practices the pagan art with a slave from Barbados, or that her daughter's illness is her fault because she sent her to participate in the black art, so she blames others. (Warshow 113) Revenge is another motive of hers. Tituba's tricks led her to the conclusion that her babies were murdered while under the care of a midwife, Goody Osburn. Osburn is later accused of witchcraft. Ann Putnam's husband also influences her. (Rovere 2632) Thomas Putman had nominated his wife's brother-in-law, James Bayley, to be the minister of Salem. He was qualified and the people voted him in, but a faction stopped his acceptance. Thomas Putnam felt superior to most people in the village, and was angry that they rejected his choice for minister. He was also involved in a land dispute with Francis Nurse, whose wife Rebecca is accused of witchcraft. This is detailed in the movie Three Sovereigns for Sarah, which shows basically the same story as the play. Many people died because of Thomas Putnam's land hunger.

The Putnams, driven by their need for revenge and their greed, contributed to the huge travesty of justice that was the Salem Witch Trails. The motive of Abigail Williams is equally easy to decipher. Abigail is the ringleader of the group of girls who testify in court against those accused of witchcraft. She and John Proctor had an affair previously, when she worked as a servant in his home, and she obviously does not want it to be over. She says to him, "I know how you clutched my back behind your house and sweated like a stallion whenever I come near! Or did I dream that? It's she [Elizabeth] that put me out, you cannot pretend it were you. I saw your face when she put me out, and you loved me then and you do now!" (Miller 20) Elizabeth, Proctor's wife, had fired Abigail as their servant because she suspected the affair. Clearly, Abigail despises her. She tells Proctor, "She is blackening my name in the village! She is telling lies about me!

She is a cold, sniveling woman, and you bend to her!" (Miller 21) Abigail is obviously furious with Elizabeth because she feels Elizabeth has cut off her relationship with John and soiled her reputation in the village. Abigail uses the witchcraft mess to get back at Elizabeth. Of course, Elizabeth Proctor is charged with witchcraft. In 1692, the real historical Abigail Williams was about eleven years old. Why, then, does Arthur Miller decide to make her a young woman of eighteen or nineteen for this play? He does this in order to invent an adulterous relationship between Abigail and John Proctor. This relationship motivates her denunciation of John and Elizabeth Proctor. This offers an easily theatrical motive for one of his characters. (Warshow 114) It also makes Abigail seem like a cold, calculated adult. This is more like an element of twentieth century entertainment than of a theocracy in 1692, but Miller has to appeal to his audience to make the play popular in 1953.

The rest of the girls in the play, including Susanna Walcott, Mercy Lewis, Mary Warren, and Betty Parris, are all covering up for their own actions. Abigail herself admits that they were dancing in the woods, and Parris says they were naked. The girls had been asking the slave, Tituba, to conjure spells, and Parris finds out about it. He says, "And what shall I say to them? That my daughter and my niece I discovered dancing like heathen in the forest?" (Miller 7) And then, "My own household is discovered to be the very center of some obscene practice. Abominations are done in the forest--" (Miller 8) The children know that they are going to be punished for their behavior, and they make up the stories that they were bewitched to place the blame elsewhere. When greedy people like the Putnams start encouraging them, it becomes easier to lie and they begin to enjoy all the attention and power they hold. They are probably also afraid of Abigail. After a while, she makes it impossible for the other girls to retract their accusations. When Mary Warren tries to tell the truth, Abigail accuses her of witchcraft, too.

The girls find themselves stuck in a trap of their own making, and in the witchcraft game until the end. (Rovere 2632) Reverend Samuel Parris allows the witchcraft hysteria to go on because it helps him. At the beginning of the play he asks Abigail, "Do you understand that I have many enemies? There is a faction that is sworn to drive me from my pulpit. Do you understand that?" Everyone in the town did not receive Parris well, and he feels like he has "fought here three long years to bend these stiff-necked people" to him. (Miller 9) The witchcraft charade unites the people of the town to him. In this time of spiritual crisis, they look to their minister for guidance and support. Parris is now getting the following he never had before. It is for this selfish reason that he allows the witch hunt to continue, even though he knows it is not valid. (Warshow 117) The characters in The Crucible are interesting and easy to read. The victims of the witch trails are innocent, spiritual people who are wronged because of their accusers' greed, vengefulness, and need to cover up for their own actions.

The deep involvement of the accusers, especially Abigail, and the lengths they will go to in order to continue their charade make the play absorbing and haunting. Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. Toronto: Bantam, 1959. Rovere, Richard. "Arthur Miller's Conscience." 1957. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1987. Warshow, Robert. "The Liberal Conscience in "The Crucible." 1962. Ed. Robert W. Corrigan. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1969.

Question: Which 1953 play by Arthur Miller is based on the Salem witch trials?
Answer: THE CRUCIBLE