“This is a sharp time, now, a precise time - we live no longer in the dusky afternoon when evil mixed itself with good and befuddled the world.” The Crucible is set in the extremely religious and strict Puritan settlement known as Salem. In this settlement, many were said to be witches, and those who were had to deal with the repercussions. Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible to parallel the hysteria and governmental actions of the Salem Witch trials with the Red Scare that was occurring in America at the time.
At the beginning of the book, Abigail and Betty began accusing multiple others in the town of being witches, “I saw Goody Hawkins with the Devil, I saw Goody Bibber with the Devil.” (Miller 48). The people of Salem believed anyone could be a witch. As panic began to spread amongst the townspeople, more and more people were being accused of witchcraft. If one’s name was mentioned, they were
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The court is seen as the highest peak of justice in the government, and no one was to dare question this. The only people who had the power to question the court was the court itself and no one else, “Do you take it upon yourself to determine what this court shall believe and what it shall set aside? ”(Miller 85). Disagreement with the word of the court in any way was not permitted, “You must understand, sir, that a person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between.”(Miller 94). This matter was seemingly black and white to those in the court, but not necessarily to those who were not apart of the court. Arthur Miller wrote this play in order to evade accusations of believing in communism while still being able to express his views society, as well as the government at the time. He did not want to risk having the government investigate and question him for his views, so he wrote about a similar time in