The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller, is based in Salem, Massachusetts and starts off with a dramatic love triangle between a man, his wife, and a girl that the man has an affair with. The man leaves the woman and the woman gets her friends to turn against his wife and wish death upon her, this begins a witch hunt. Soon, his wife gets suspected of witchcraft and she is accused and tried of witchcraft, and her husband tries to help but only seems to make matters worse. This is an example of the complications people underwent during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 and throughout the book the reader is also displayed to the issues of communism, McCarthyism, and the holocaust.
Arthur Miller is considered one of the major dramatists of the 20th
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The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 started from the English colonists who were mostly Puritans meaning they were very religious and believed in the supernatural and that the devil granted certain people with the powers to harm others, particularly to destroy christian communities. There had been smallpox outbreaks, a colonial war between Britain and France, a new charter, and other conflicts happening in the England colony and all of these events increased the colonists belief in witchcraft. Mostly older women were the ones who were convicted in court for being accused of witchcraft by anyone; neighbors, strangers, even some daughters would testify against their own mothers. The witch trials lasted from June to September in 1692, the governor released the convicted people from prison and declared the trials to be unlawful. They then created a law that spectral evidence was no longer allowed to be used in court(Salem). Nowadays, the majority people no longer believe in witchcraft and think it’s crazy to look back at and can’t even relate to how people would believe in such, but back then it was a huge issue that led to several deaths, years lost in prison, and even tore families