...The Scarlet Letter and The Crucible are two literary classics that portray excellence in expounding the importance of life. Both written works encompass striking similarities in aspects such as the setting, plot, and major conflicts. However, The Scarlet Letter and The Crucible bare conspicuous differences such as in The Scarlet Letter solid evidence for the crime of adultery is distinctly manifested while in The Crucible the court possesses no tangible evidence for the crime of witchcraft. In addition, The Scarlet Letter is a novel while The Crucible is a play. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Crucible by Arthur Miller have pronounced similitude, such as the common conflicts, and the setting, and also bare an impactful distinction between the resolutions of the two written works and the characters. The major conflict in...
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...the Crucible because of his experiences during the Red Scare of which many people were being accused of being communist. The Crucible is about trials for people who allegedly practiced witchcraft in the late 1600’s in Salem, Massachusetts. Herbert Lawrence Block was a cartoonist during the Red Scare period and was also impacted by the Red Scare. His cartoons had a similar theme as The Crucible. The Red Scare affected many people through false accusations; we see this in Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible. Many of the characters in the Crucible were falsely accused of witchcraft. People would accuse others without having any actual evidence, by using what they called spectral evidence. “I saw Sarah Good with the Devil, I saw Goody Osborn with the devil, and I saw Bridget Bishop with the devil “(Miller 89). These were examples of accusations in which innocent people were implicated of witchcraft. The people that were accusing did not understand the harm they put on others until they were accused themselves and could not do anything to prevent it. Herb Block’s cartoon “It’s okay… We’re hunting Communists” was a cartoon for the Red Scare showing the harm the House Committee inflicted by hurting innocent people just for finding possible communists. In the cartoon Herb Block shows the reckless driver running over innocent people. This was similar to Salem because many innocent people such as Rebecca Nurse lost their life because they were falsely accused of witchcraft. Accusing...
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...The Crucible This essay will discuss, explain and evaluate the main ideas, themes and interpretations of Arthur Miller’s, The Crucible. It will also explain and evaluate the language Arthur Miller uses and how it contributed to the overall success of the play. The Crucible is set in 1692 in the puritan town of Salem, Massachusetts, a theocratic society, where the laws of the land are laid down by the church. The main idea running throughout the play can be viewed as a direct comparison to McCarthyism which was happening in 1950’s America, in which members of the general public including public figures such as Arthur Miller were brought in and questioned over connections to communism. This can be seen as a direct comparison to people being brought into the Salem courts regarding connections with witchcraft. It was not until Miller saw this comparison that he then felt compelled to write The Crucible as he now felt he could get into the minds of those going through similar circumstances back in the Salem witch trials. Hysteria was the main cause of nineteen deaths in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, and countless ruined reputations on account of Joe McCarthy. Hysteria does not just appear out of nowhere though. There are driving forces such as revenge and abuse of power that bring about the irrational fear that can take over society. These are the issues expressed in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. The Crucible is paralleled directly to the Salem Witch Trials and indirectly...
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...Trials”, “Witchcraft”, “Puritan Beliefs and the Salem Witchcraft Trials”, but most importantly in Arthur Miller’s play, “The Crucible”. “The Crucible” deals with women and young girls in 17th Century Salem, MA. These women were being accused of practicing witchcraft and dealing with the devil. The gender and class tensions along with Puritan world views combined to create this hysteria that led to these women going to trial, found guilty, and sentenced to public hanging. The Indian Wars were not the main focus in “The Crucible” because it was also meant to be a commentary on the McCarthy trials in the 1950s during the Cold War. Gender tensions contributed to to the accusations of the 1692 Salem Witch Trials, as demonstrated in the film “The Crucible”. One example of this was the scene in (“The Crucible”) where the girls ask Tituba to help them get a husband with casting spells. There were many fears among the adolescent girls and that...
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...The Crucible by Arthur Miller is a play written about the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts. The story shows how people were accused of witchcraft through the corrupt society and killed for their supposed crimes. The time that Arthur Miller lived was filled with fear of communist infiltration into the government and accusations of people who were thought to be communists. Through his use of the Salem witch trials in The Crucible, Arthur Miller effectively illustrates the lives ruined from accusations during the Red Scare, showing the irrational way of dealing with paranoia and mob mentality leading to these accusations. The paranoia growing in people’s minds led to accusations during both the Red Scare and Salem witch trials. In the 1950s communism seemed like America’s greatest fear. The thought of communists infiltrating the American government was terrifying to Americans. With such fear of something comes paranoia of it. Because of this situation,...
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...Miller's The Crucible, Self-Preservation is very common in the town of Salem. Self-Preservation is when a person protects themselves or someone else, whether it be by telling the truth or a lie. In the town of Salem many people use Self-Preservation to protect themselves from the consequences of performing witchcraft. However, others may use Self-Preservation to protect their reputation or image in society, such as Reverend Parris. He himself started, what is called a chain of self-preservation when he reported Abigail Williams and the girls performing witchcraft. This led to Abigail having to use self-preservation to protect herself from the consequences of witchcraft which later on led Elizabeth Proctor to protect herself and her...
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...Lindsey Sibille Ms. Gonzales AP English III, 1 16 October 2015 The Crucible Book Card Assignment Authorial Background Arthur Miller is the award-winning playwright of The Crucible along with many other famous plays such as Death Of a Salesman and All My Sons. Born in Manhattan in 1915, Miller experienced the pressing and devastating times of the Great Depression and both World Wars. His first two plays were The Man Who Had All the Luck and All My Sons, with the latter being performed on Broadway in 1949. His next play, Death of A Salesman, received a Tony award, the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, and the Pulitzer prize. These awards allowed him to rise to fame and helped his career skyrocket. Despite his successful playwriting...
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...You may be asking yourself what does fear mean?? There a lot of manys for FEAR. The word fear mean something that can get you in trouble or you in dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat. Inside of you can feel that something bad will happen because of that fear you have inside of you. In the Crucible there are a lot of examples of fear that have been shown. To began, In the crucible there a lot of fear. From all the lies people start saying and then they end up believing the lies they have told. Like John Proctor one of the character from the crucible show fear. Proctor have been in a secret romance with Abigail Williams and he is scared that people with find out. If people start to find out then his reputation will get ruined, and...
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...may have died because of violent actions, but some are killed because of a much more frightening reason: A corrupt court system. Courts are put in place to protect us, and when their justice has rotted from the inside, it leads to chaotic and brutal societies. One of these societies, Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, is described in the play, “The Crucible.” Written in the McCarthy era, this play highlights the injustices during the Red Scare in America. As history continues to unfold, more links can be drawn between the message of “The Crucible” and today’s discrimination. The allegorical qualities of Arthur Miller’s, “The Crucible,” relate strongly to McCarthyism, but still have relevant connections to...
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...it. The Crucible and Swing Kids share many commonalities that make them examples of mass hysteria. The Crucible is a dramatization of the Salem witch trials and they show a number of teenage and preteen girls feeling (or at least claiming they feel) as though they are being cursed by witches, so they seek to root them out. In Swing Kids, we follow a group of boys who like to dance to swing music, something outlawed by the Nazis; two of the boys join Hitler’s Youth and start to believe Nazi propaganda, at least to a degree; by the end of the movie, one of these boys ends up so firmly against the Nazis that he gets sent to a prison camp, while the other...
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...The play The Crucible By Arthur Miller is an example of false accusation by everyone being accused of something during their time of life. Arthur Miller connects himself with John Proctor through accusation and how all fingers are pointed to people from one In the little town Salem Massachusetts, 1692, the theme Witchcraft was brought upon a lot of people, from accusation. Everyone being framed of Witchcraft had either the choice to admit to it, or to be hanged, because Witchcraft was not allowed in Salem at the time. Witchcraft had turned many people against other and showed the true colors of them. Through John Proctor’s response to Witchcraft of Abigail, Arthur Miller conveys his beliefs about false accusation of his wife. Arthur Miller’s...
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...Repetition, Regression, and Variation Throughout history, the same events are repeated as groups of people deal with problems in their society. Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, was written when McCarthyism, which involved the persecution of suspected communists, was at a high. The play explores the seemingly timeless parallels of panicked groups hoping to protect themself and their own between the Salem Witch Trials and the McCarthy Era trials that are still applicable today as the fight on terror advances. Notwithstanding the likeness between the three, anomalies appear that show growth or even regression in a culture do remain. Events such as unfair stereotyping, magnified paranoia, and targeting ideas through accusing people,...
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...possibly the littlest thing? Think about it. In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, Abigail Williams is the most despicable character because she obtains a power by starting to accuse innocent people of witchcraft, was involved in lechery with John Proctor, and ran away with her uncle’s money that she stole from a safe. To begin with, Abigail Williams may just be a young woman, but she is capable of many things. For instance, her and Mercy Lewis ran away with Reverend Parris’s money. They ran away, because they wanted to avoid getting accused for any sort of witchcraft, especially after what happened in the forest. In act four, Parris states to Danforth,”...my strongbox is broken into” (4.207*208), the only person who knew where his strongbox was Abigail, since she lived with him. This shows one of the many things that Abigail is capable of. In addition, Parris knew what Abigail was capable of and what she had on the...
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...jennifer lux 12/8/15 The Crucible analysis “We consume our tomorrows fretting about our yesterday”- Persius. There have been moments in history where people were too consumed in fear that they broke many of their morals and due to powerful situations people behaved differently than their normal self. A play called the Crucible was written in 1953 by Author Miller to portray the unfairness at that time due to people being accused of witches with little to no evidence and then hanged. This event was called the Salem witch trials, which took place in the province of Massachusetts Bay. This play is an allegory to the McCarthy Hearings that took place from 1950 to 1956. The McCarthy hearings occurred in 1947; President Truman ordered background checks of every civilian in service to the government due to a fear of people within the United States being a communist spy. The fear of communism intensified when a high ranked official Alger Hiss was convicted of being a communist spy. Senator Joseph McCarthy stepped in and convinced/alarm people within the U.S that there were Communist and Communist sympathizers that would try to overthrow the government. As a result, he formed a special Congressional committee to investigate Americans who were suspected of Communist activities and this movement was named McCarthyism. The Crucible is a play that is universal and enduring because it uses allegory and archetypes to teach readers...
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...does. Due to a perhaps pompous position of power, his attitude and demeanor come across as very stubborn. Nearing the end of the play, his mindset that any wrongdoing is punishable becomes applicable to him, and he is unwilling to consider the possibility he might have made a grave mistake. Almost ironically however, the real-life Thomas Danforth is much the opposite. Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible to criticize the McCarthy hearings and the hysteria surrounding them and he used the Salem witch trails to do so; as he saw many parallels between the two. To do this, Miller portrays Thomas Danforth, who, in real life, did not even sit on the Court of Oyer and Terminer,(Linder 1) (A group dedicated to the prosecution to those accused witches) is a bitter, scrupulous, controlling old man set on keeping order, or, what he believes to be order. The McCarthy hearings were quite harsh and Miller needed a reciprocated leadership shown in the Crucible. (Lorcher 1) To do this, Miller bent the more level headed, genuine Thomas Danforth and transformed him into the domineering Judge we know in the crucible. While the McCarthy era and witch trails follow each other closely, they are not a perfect mesh. To add onto this, the parallels Miller draws are his and they are not made to be completely historically accurate as they are literary parallels and not historical. Both Danforth’s...
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