How do the witch
trials empower individuals who were previously powerless?
Discuss the role
that grudges and personal rivalries play in the witch trial hysteria.
Motifs:
Reputation
- Reputation
is tremendously important in theocratic Salem, where public and private moralities are
one and the same. In an environment where reputation plays such an important
role, the fear of guilt by association becomes particularly pernicious. Focused
on maintaining public reputation, the townsfolk of Salem must fear that the sins of their friends
and associates will taint their names. Various characters base their actions on
the desire to protect their respective reputations. As the play begins, Parris
fears that Abigail's increasingly questionable actions,
and the hints of witchcraft surrounding his daughter's coma, will threaten his
reputation and force him from the pulpit. Meanwhile, the protagonist, John
Proctor, also seeks to keep his good name from being tarnished. Early in the
play, he has a chance to put a stop to the girls' accusations, but his desire
to preserve his reputation keeps him from testifying against Abigail. At the
end of the play, however, Proctor's desire to keep his good name leads him to
make the heroic choice not to make a false confession and to go to his
death without signing his name to an untrue statement. "I have given you
my soul; leave me my name!" he cries to Danforth
in Act IV. By refusing to relinquish his name, he redeems himself for his
earlier failure and dies with integrity.
Accusations,
Confessions, and Legal Proceedings - The
witch trials are central to the action of The Crucible, and dramatic
accusations and confessions fill the play even beyond the confines of the
courtroom. In the first act, even before the hysteria begins, we see Parris
accuse Abigail of dishonoring him, and he then makes a series of accusations
against his parishioners. Giles Corey and Proctor respond in kind, and Putnam
soon joins in, creating a chorus of indictments even before Hale arrives. The
entire witch trial system thrives on accusations, the only way that witches can
be identified, and confessions, which provide the proof of the justice of the
court proceedings. Proctor attempts to break this cycle with a confession of
his own, when he admits to the affair with Abigail, but this confession is
trumped by the accusation of witchcraft against him, which in turn demands a
confession. Proctor's courageous decision, at the close of the play, to die
rather than confess to a sin that he did not commit, finally breaks the cycle.
The court collapses shortly afterward, undone by the refusal of its victims to
propagate lies.
Is John Proctor a
tragic hero? Is the Crucible a tragedy? How does it fit into the genre?
Tragedy open question from 2003.
Proctor,
the play's tragic hero, has the conscience of an honest man, but he also has a
secret flaw–his past affair with Abigail. Her sexual jealousy, accentuated by
Proctor's termination of their affair, provides the spark for the witch trials;
Proctor thus bears some responsibility for what occurs. He feels that the only
way to stop Abigail and the girls from their lies is to confess his adultery.
He refrains for a long time from confessing his sin, however, for the sake of
his own good name and his wife's honor. Eventually, though, Proctor's attempts
to reveal Abigail as a fraud without revealing the crucial information about
their affair fail, and he makes a public confession of his sin. But by the time
he comes clean, it is too late to stop the craze from running its course, and
Proctor himself is arrested and accused of being a witch. At this point,
Proctor faces a new dilemma and wrestles with his conscience over whether to
save himself from the gallows with a confession to a sin that he did not commit. The judges and Hale
almost convince him to do so, but in the end, he cannot bring himself to sign
his confession. Such an action would dishonor his fellow prisoners, who are
steadfastly refusing to make false confessions; more important, he realizes
that his own soul, his honor, and his honesty are worth more than a cowardly
escape from the gallows. He dies and, in doing so, feels that he has finally
purged his guilt for his failure to stop the trials when he had the chance. As
his wife says, "he have his goodness now."
The
choice John Proctor must make is between saving either himself or
society. His failure to do good initially allows
events to get out of hand and
eventually forces him into a position where he must make a choice. Reverend
Hale, while not subject to the same moral quandary as Proctor, also suffers a
crisis of consciousness for his failure to strive hard enough to stop the
proceedings of the court. In contrast to them both are Rebecca Nurse and
Elizabeth Proctor, whose moral and emotional steadfastness represents
society at its best.
Miller
suggests that in such times good can only triumph through a sacrifice
upon the altar of society, that the crisis might only be able to be rectified
by
the death of those who struggle to uphold society's values. The death of John
Proctor, though it might seem a tragic waste, is necessary, both for his own
personal redemption and that of his society. The sacrifice of Proctor, Rebecca
Nurse, Giles Corey and others, recalls the sacrifice of Christ for the sake of
humankind. In the end, The Crucible focuses on a historical event to drive
home issues that essentially characterize all societies at all times, which
makes the play both universal and enduring.
Compare the roles
that Elizabeth Proctor and Abigail Williams play in The Crucible.
Elizabeth as
heroine, grounds him, brings him to good, moral, educates him, passive in
the background, I cannot judge you
Abigail as creator of disorder, his hamartia, active and powerful, no qualms about
misusing her power, revenge
Proctor is too proud, needs to learn
reason—taught from both E and A, by example. They are the pulls of good
and evil. Ultimate decision: honest like Elizabeth or lie
like Abigail? Save himself or save his
community?
Discuss the changes that Reverend
Hale undergoes in the course of the play.
Why titled The Crucible?
A crucible is a vessel in which
metal is heated to a high temperature and
melted for the purposes of casting. It can also refer, metaphorically, to a
time
in history when great political, social, and cultural changes are in force,
where society is seemingly being melted down and recast into a new mold.
The word is also remarkably similar to crucifixion, which Miller certainly
intended in choosing it as the title of his play. The picture of a man and a
society bubbling in a crucible and the crucifixion of Christ interweave to
form the main themes of the play: the problem of making the right moral
choice and the necessity of sacrifice as a means of redemption. Both these
themes, of course, take place in the context of the larger struggle of good
versus evil.
The
Puritans: The first permanent settlement of the New England
area by
Europeans began with the famous landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth
in
1620. Salem was founded in 1626
and was first settled by Puritans in 1628,
under the leadership of John Endecott. In 1629,
the Massachusetts Bay
Company was chartered, and Puritan settlers began arriving in the New
World in large groups. Puritan society was theocratic, and
government was
subsumed under the authority of the church, which played a huge role in
daily life.
The Puritans were Protestant extremists who had left the Old
World to escape
religious persecution. They saw themselves as God's people, chosen to
establish a "New Jerusalem" in what they perceived as the wilds
of America.
The Puritans believed that God was the supreme authority and that humans
were innately depraved because of the original sin of Adam and Eve in Eden. In their view, most humans
were predestined by God to be damned;
only a chosen, elect few would go to heaven. No one could know whether he
was chosen to be saved, however, and no amount of good works could save
someone if he or she had been predestined for hell.
The Puritans brought with them from Europe a strong
belief in witchcraft and
the power of the Devil. To them, America,
with its large expanses of virgin
land and unfamiliar and seemingly savage native peoples, was a natural
home
for Satan. Indeed, in the early years of settlement, when the dangers of
starvation, cold, and Indian attack were very real, the land seemed very
dark
and frightening. By the end of the century, however, the New
England area had been heavily settled, but old fears remained.
With their tight-knit society, strong work ethic, religious intolerance,
and
stern rule, the Puritans were for a while the dominant social and
political
group in colonial New England. Their inflexible
theocracy, while suited to
the era of settlement, made it difficult for them to deal with the
pressures of a
changing and growing society. In 1684, the Massachusetts Bay Colony's
charter was revoked, and in 1689, the requirement that one be a member of
the church in order to vote was removed. By 1692, the time of the events
of
The Crucible, the power of the Puritans had significantly weakened.
Miller saw the witch trials as a manifestation of a society making one
last
gasp at asserting the dominance of a crumbling order. In his view, this
attempt was an ironic failure, for the trials horrified the people of Massachusetts and New
England and eventually led to the final break-up of
the "power of theocracy" there. Although Miller says in his note
preceding
the play that The Crucible is "not history," he has done a
careful job of
adhering to the historical record and has not misrepresented either major
events or actions of the characters. Of course, all dialogue and
interpretations
of the characters' motives for their actions are
Miller's alone. In this regard,
the play can be understood as his attempt to understand what might have
happened and why.
In writing The Crucible, Miller
made use of Chadwick Hansen's book, Witchcraft
at Salem, for his historical source material. According to Hansen,
witchcraft was actually practiced in Massachusetts
in three forms: using a
charm or spell to bring good luck to oneself (white magic); using a charm
or
spell to harm to others (black magic); and entering into a pact with the
Devil
to gain services in exchange for certain favors. In comparison to the
witchcraft that was originally practiced in several parts of the world,
however, the seriousness of it in Massachusetts
was not nearly as deep nor
devilish as it was made out to be.
McCarthyism:
While Miller wrote The Crucible to explore the motivations
and circumstances behind the Salem
witch trials, he also wanted to highlight
the story of the "Red Scare" of the forties and fifties, which
reached its peak
under the frenzied leadership of Senator Joseph McCarthy. In 1950,
McCarthy, then a relatively unknown Senator from Wisconsin,
gained instant
fame when he claimed that there were many avowed Communists in the
American government. America
at that time was in the midst of the "cold
war" with Russia,
and McCarthy's charges galvanized the nation and led to a
climate of fear and hysteria. McCarthy offered no proof of his charges,
and
often accused his critics of being Communists themselves by the mere fact
of
their criticism.
McCarthy was eventually discredited by the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings,
during which a national television audience saw his viciousness and heard
his
lies. During the hearings, he failed to prove his claims of Communist
infiltration of the Army. As a result, he was condemned by the Senate that
same year, but the damage had been done.
The atmosphere in America
during McCarthy's peak of power was such that
Miller could not write directly about McCarthyism. If he had blatantly
criticized the McCarthy era or the Senator behind the hysteria, he would
certainly have been charged as a Communist. Instead, he wrote about the
17th century Salem witch
trials and trusted that his audience would see the
parallelism between the two similar periods of hysteria. The play's first
production in 1953 was not well-received for most critics judged it only
as a
thinly disguised, politically motivated allegory of McCarthyism. A second,
off-Broadway production a year later was a success, however, and from then
on, the play has continued to gain fame and acclaim.
The
Witch Trials and McCarthyism - There is little symbolism within The
Crucible, but, in its entirety, the play can be seen as symbolic of the
paranoia about communism that pervaded America in the 1950s. Several parallels exist
between the House Un-American Activities Committee's rooting out of suspected
communists during this time and the seventeenth-century witch-hunt that Miller
depicts in The Crucible, including the narrow-mindedness, excessive zeal
and disregard for the individuals that characterize the government's effort to
stamp out a perceived social ill. Further, as with the
alleged witches of Salem, suspected Communists
were encouraged to confess their crimes and to "name names,"
identifying others sympathetic to their radical cause. Some have criticized Miller for
oversimplifying matters, in that while there were (as far as we know) no actual
witches in Salem, there were certainly Communists in
1950s America. However, one can argue that Miller's
concern in The Crucible is not with whether the accused actually are
witches, but rather with the unwillingness of the court officials to believe
that they are not. In light of McCarthyist excesses,
which wronged many innocents, this parallel was felt strongly in Miller's own
time.
Miller's
political activities in the 1950's led him to be called before the House
Un-American Activities Committee in 1956. Like Proctor, the protagonist of
The Crucible, he refused to testify against his friends and associates. He
was
convicted of contempt, but this ruling was later overturned on appeal.
After
the investigation, Miller continued to be politically active.