THE CRUCIBLE
In 1952, Arthur Miller published The Crucible, a dramatization of the events of the Salem witch trials. However, it does not fall prey to the common misconception that the trials were simply a case of mass hysteria or superstition. Rather, the play highlights the social causes behind the deaths of the Salem ‘witches,’ finding drama within the conflicts among individuals and between the individual and society, within the consequences of extreme individualism and isolation.
The play begins like so: Betty and her 17-year old cousin, Abigail, along with several friends, are found dancing in the forest by Betty’s father (Abigail’s uncle, who acts as a guardian to the orphan), Reverend Parris. The next day, Betty is inexplicably bedridden. …show more content…
Those accused were asked to confess and name names of other Communists in order to escape sanctions. This time would come to be known as ‘the Red Scare.’ Miller found inspiration from these events: “I heard lines being spoken by American prosecutors which I vaguely remembered from reading about the witchcraft in 1692. At first it was simply unbelievable, but I went back into history and there it was” (Bigsby 2009: 411). On the night that Miller planned to go into Salem the next day to research historical records of the trials, he was phoned by his friend and coworker Eli Kazan. The next day Kazan revealed that he would go before McCarthy’s committee and name names, which Miller saw at an selfish attempt at personal immunity in exchange for the betrayal of friendship; that afternoon Miller left Kazan’s house for Salem, planning to write a play that would condemn Kazan and the many actions of his peers (Bigsby 2009: …show more content…
At the heart of this conflict lies what Weber identifies as “the unprecedented loneliness of the individual.” Every man was left to himself in Salem, thus, paranoia and anxiety related to one’s state of grace arose, forcing individual against individual. Similarly, during Miller’s time, those who took up the doctrine of McCarthyism found themselves pitted against one another, anxiously searching out any hint of Communism in their peers in an effort to save themselves. With these historical events laid next to one another and linked, we can then find a pattern, one which Miller himself articulates: “The tragedy of The Crucible [and therefore the events of both 1692 and 1952]...is the everlasting conflict between people so fanatically wedded to this orthodoxy that they could not cope with the evidence of their senses” (Bigsby 2009: 443). Thus, their fanaticism drove them to extreme individualism, and their paranoia constructed history--paranoia that could easily strike again, should we repeat this
In 1952, Arthur Miller published The Crucible, a dramatization of the events of the Salem witch trials. However, it does not fall prey to the common misconception that the trials were simply a case of mass hysteria or superstition. Rather, the play highlights the social causes behind the deaths of the Salem ‘witches,’ finding drama within the conflicts among individuals and between the individual and society, within the consequences of extreme individualism and isolation.
The play begins like so: Betty and her 17-year old cousin, Abigail, along with several friends, are found dancing in the forest by Betty’s father (Abigail’s uncle, who acts as a guardian to the orphan), Reverend Parris. The next day, Betty is inexplicably bedridden. …show more content…
Those accused were asked to confess and name names of other Communists in order to escape sanctions. This time would come to be known as ‘the Red Scare.’ Miller found inspiration from these events: “I heard lines being spoken by American prosecutors which I vaguely remembered from reading about the witchcraft in 1692. At first it was simply unbelievable, but I went back into history and there it was” (Bigsby 2009: 411). On the night that Miller planned to go into Salem the next day to research historical records of the trials, he was phoned by his friend and coworker Eli Kazan. The next day Kazan revealed that he would go before McCarthy’s committee and name names, which Miller saw at an selfish attempt at personal immunity in exchange for the betrayal of friendship; that afternoon Miller left Kazan’s house for Salem, planning to write a play that would condemn Kazan and the many actions of his peers (Bigsby 2009: …show more content…
At the heart of this conflict lies what Weber identifies as “the unprecedented loneliness of the individual.” Every man was left to himself in Salem, thus, paranoia and anxiety related to one’s state of grace arose, forcing individual against individual. Similarly, during Miller’s time, those who took up the doctrine of McCarthyism found themselves pitted against one another, anxiously searching out any hint of Communism in their peers in an effort to save themselves. With these historical events laid next to one another and linked, we can then find a pattern, one which Miller himself articulates: “The tragedy of The Crucible [and therefore the events of both 1692 and 1952]...is the everlasting conflict between people so fanatically wedded to this orthodoxy that they could not cope with the evidence of their senses” (Bigsby 2009: 443). Thus, their fanaticism drove them to extreme individualism, and their paranoia constructed history--paranoia that could easily strike again, should we repeat this