“The Crucible” is a 1953 play by the author Arthur Miller. The play is a dramatized and partially fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Province of Massachusetts Bay during 1692 and 1693. Miller wrote the play as an allegory of McCarthyism, when the U.S. government blacklisted accused communists. Arthur Miller was questioned by the “House of Representatives' Committee on Un-American Activities” in 1956 and convicted of "contempt of Congress" for refusing to identify others present at meetings he had attended.
One of the themes used in “The Crucible” is the use of fear/paranoia. Throughout the story, from the beginning, when Betty Parris is “bewitched”, this story shows a concept of irrational fear. For example, the conversation between Rev. Parris and Abigail when Abigail admits: “Uncle, we did dance; let you tell them I confessed it – and I’ll be whipped if I must be” (Miller 10) shows a huge amount of fear because Abigail, who is the reverend’s niece, admits to dancing, naked, in the forest allows for all of the people to open their imaginations to suspect that
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This started when Dr. Bennell went to visit Jimmy with his grandmother because Jimmy said that “his mother wasn’t there”. Dr. Bennell responded with giving Jimmy some pills and telling his grandmother to stay with her. The second time this started was when Wilma told Dr. Bennell that her Uncle (Jim) wasn’t “himself” because “he didn’t have that special look in his eyes” while he was talking to her. The third time Dr. Bennell started discovering something was when Dr. Bennell went with Betty to Betty’s friend’s house and they found Betty’s friend’s husband’s doppelganger on the pool table. The time that Dr. Bennell actually believed that something was wrong was when Betty’s father was “working” in their cellar and Dr. Bennell discovered Betty’s father’s doppelganger in the cellar near a small