1. What is Arthur Miller trying to communicate about the human condition in The Crucible? Address each of his themes with respect to the following topics. ● Infidelity & Jealousy This could lead to many being ridiculed and, to an extreme level, get them killed ● Self-respect and Reputation. People who lose everything, will still want their name, without their name, they have almost nothing to lose.
Arthur Miller based his piece entitled “the Crucible” on the Terror Campaign that was led by the United States to demonize USSR and other Countries who are exercising communism during the Cold war. Religion affects every part of life, but it is the religion where there are constrictions that leads to the difficulty of managing emotions such as rage, jealousy, or resentment that had led to interpersonal arguments and grudges over property, religious offices, and sexual behaviour that have generated to rise underneath the theocratic surface. These had caused a great pressure that was combined with fear about supernatural forces, resulted to a mania of the witch trials. 250 years ago, things like this has been happening for years, The Crucible was just a manifestation of McCarthyism during the Cold War. It gives us the emphasis of looking back in the past so that we will know the mistakes that had been occurring due to the misjudgement of authorities and to ensure that it does not happen again..
Hannah Doherty Mrs. Jones American Lit. and Comp. 10, November 2015 One Word, Three Meanings In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, there is clear evidence as to why he named the story, The Crucible. John Proctor battles conflicts between himself and others and stands up for what he believes in, Abigail Williams’ is motivated to keep the truth hidden so she is not punished, and Elizabeth Proctor is torn on what the best thing to do is.
Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible in 1953, as a response to McCarthyism, which is, in general, accusing people of crimes with little to no proof. It ran rampant through the United States during the Second Red Scare through the early 1950s (exactly when Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible). In The Crucible, Miller juxtaposes the leaders, who rationally think for themselves, and the followers, who believe what everybody else believes, through irony, imagery, and denotation. The Crucible is riddled with irony, and Arthur Miller utilizes situational and dramatic irony to show the difference between followers and leaders.
Throughout the novel, If Beale Street Could Talk, written by James Baldwin, there is a common theme of corruption of the police and the racism against African-Americans in the criminal justice system. The main character Fonny, is accused multiple times of crimes he did not commit and because of this, his fate cannot be determined and he slowly loses hope for himself. The way that Baldwin writes this novel shows how much African-Americans suffered even after the civil rights movements in America. Fonny is wrongfully arrested and charged with rape as a result of the corruption of the police. For example, he was not even in the same area as where the rape was supposedly committed and when they did the police lineup he was the only African-American, which proves that there was
The Crucible metaphor also shines bright when Judge Danforth says to Proctor,‘We burn a hot fire here; it melts down all concealment’. The court scenes always portrayed a feeling of fear, tension and conflicts between the hands that wield power. Proctor later speaks out one of his most rageful dialogues ‘A fire, a fire is burning! I hear the boot of Lucifer, I see his filthy face! …. And we will burn, we will burn together!’Here Miller makes one of the most important connection between the play’s title The Crucible and the society that he wishes to portray.
The dynamic of a test including oneself is an apparent theme within The Crucible. Characters throughout the play show their inner turmoil in a prominent or a subtle way. On the other hand, another definition of a crucible is a bowl, which items placed within the bowl and are grounded up and purified. The interactions with the characters can mean that they are testing themselves in this life since they believe in the afterlife, and in the process are putting an effort to be pure to their Christian faith. A character that relates to this ideology is none other than John Proctor; at the beginning of the play, it is revealed that he had an affair with Abigail.
One Choice Can Change Lives Who knew one seemingly innocent lie could cause 19 deaths and pit an entire town against itself? That’s exactly what happens in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Authors often use similar plot devices, and their favorite one is having their characters face a test. In a small town called Salem in early America, something terrible is happening.
Therefore, we know that Arthur Miller used the accusations and punishments in the play, to symbolize the Red Scare. During the Red Scare, there were many accusations, people, punishments, and trials. Arthur Miller, author of The Crucible, wrote this play as an allegory to demonstrate what happened back in the 1950’s with the spread of Communism. Arthur Miller wanted to talk about the Red Scare and used the Salem Witch Trials to explain what happened through an allegory.
The Crucible, published in 1953 by Arthur Miller is a very popular book written about the 1692 Salem Witch Trials. While most people use the book to study the Witch Trials, with closer examination it is easy to conclude that it is a direct allegory to the Red Scare and the McCarthy era of 1950s America. An allegory is an extended metaphor in which the characters or objects in the story represent an outside meaning. The Crucible is an allegory to the Red Scare and the McCarthy era drastically by its plot, characters, and the flow and outcome of the court trials. To begin with, The Crucible is an allegory because the plot of the book closely resembles the events that occurred during the Red Scare.
Shawn Jande Ms. Clancy American Literature B3 15 November 2015 The Crucible Analytical Essay Imagine, being accused of a crime you didn’t commit by your neighbors and friends out of jealousy, and desire. This is what many people in the town of Salem had to go through during the time of the Salem Witch Trials. People's motives such as: gaining and maintaining power, and aspirations for what other people had caused them to make irrational, and atrocious decisions. In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, desire and power drive characters to create chaos in the community.
As said in the documents I read, the theme is "the fundamental and often universal idea of a literary artwork". One major theme that I have learned throughout this play is Intolerance. The society set in The Crucible is theocratic. That means that the church and the state are one.
In “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller there are many characters and in turn many relationships between characters. Some of these relationships have a positive connotation and the characters bond over their motivations while others are the opposite. This meaning that some relationships that develop throughout the novel are because the characters have mutual transgressions, or violations of moral code. A prime example of a relationship that was created over a mutual transgression would be the relationship between Abigail Williams and John Proctor. Abigail is a seventeen year old female who was once a servant for the Proctor family and she is also the niece of Reverend Parris.
In Arthur Miller 's play The Crucible, false accusations and fear are used to imprison and kill many people accused of being witches. In this way, The Crucible stands as an allegory for McCarthy 's communist hunt, during which many people were also killed and imprisoned due to accusations of communism. By comparing McCarthyism to the Salem Witch Trials, Miller is able to communicate that people should not conform to societal trends because these trends may be misleading and cause innocent people to get hurt. Many characters in The Crucible serve as allegories to McCarthy 's communist hunt, specifically Abigail Williams, Giles Corey, and Betty Parris.
According to the Freudian model of the psyche, psychoanalysis is a systematic structure of theories concerning the relation of the conscious mind and the unconscious mind by examining psychological process such as impulses, anxieties and internal conflicts. This model consists of three subcategories; the id, the ego, and the super-ego, all of which are evident in Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible. The id focuses on a person’s desires without any correlation to the conscience, much like that of Abigail William’s lust for John Proctor. The ego identifies the part of a person’s personality responsible for dealing with reality, such as John coming to the realization that he must remain an upright and honest man. The super-ego represents a repository of socially
