Allusions In The Crucible

The Danger of Suspicion

In The Crucible, Arthur Miller tells the story of a town that is completely out of control. People accuse each other of witchcraft, even though no are witches in Salem. Several things led to the mass panic. A major factor is, that the people in the town of Salem had a deep distrust for each other. They were jealous and always suspected that the other people were trying to take things that were not theirs. The witch hunt could only escalate as it did because the people of Salem did not trust each other in the beginning and it just kept on getting worse because they made false accusations.

If we talk about an unstable community, we of course have to talk about its people. No one is innocent, many of them are not trustworthy. Two characters in the play take it to an extreme. One of them is Reverend Parris, the minister. The people in Salem do not like him a whole

One of them is allusions. Allusions are an essential part of the play. It is actually based on the true story of the witch-hunt of Salem, but also refers to the McCarthyism that was an issue around the time when Miller wrote The Crucible. In both cases mistrust did a lot of damage and hurt many people because they had suspicions that often could not be confirmed. “This predilection for minding other people’s business was time-honored among the people in Salem, and it undoubtedly created many of the suspicions which were to feed the upcoming madness.” (Miller, p. 1217), Miller describes the situation in Salem. Another literary device used in the play is imagery. Most of the settings are very dark to make the reader feel how unwelcoming and gloomy it was. Miller describes the courtroom like this: “The room is solemn, even forbidding” (Miller, p. 1249). Imagery is important because Arthur Miller wants the reader to feel the dark atmosphere in Salem at the