Arthur Miller, winner of many literary and dramatic awards, is an incredibly influential force in American drama. His plays deal with issues common to every society. He makes the audience face fault, weakness, and ignorance; subjects we would typical hide from. At the same time he emphasizes strength, human spirit, and familial love. Alice Griffin believes that Miller’s plays are important internationally. He belongs to an international theater rather than a regional theater (Heilman 170).
His plays are staged and studied by students to understand American life in Russia, Poland, Iceland, Brazil, Italy, France, Germany, Czech Republic, and China to name a few (Griffin). Miller’s works thrived in England. The University of East Angelia named its center the Arthur Miller Centre (Griffin 1). They can relate to the sense f identity, honor, recognition, and familial love (Griffin Preface). In a production in Beijing, Miller explained to a Chinese actor playing Biff the son’s feelings of guilt and “painfully requited” love for his father, the actor understood as it is v y Chinese (Morath 79).
The phenomenon of Death of a Salesman has been the same all over the world. Audiences all have a sense of their life story of their father, uncle, or brother (Griffin 35). In real life Miller had an Uncle Manny who had two sons ho were in competition with Miller and his brother. Manny ended his own life because he failed at business. Miller’s personal history is demonstrated in his sensitive and passionate writing in Death of a Salesman (Griffin 41). The Crucible (1952) was originally intended to be called Those Familiar Spirits, referring to a spirit that a witch presumably sends out to torment her victims.
However, the well area at the bottom of a blast furnace is known as the crucible, it is when the molten steels collects being entirely broken down due to immense heat. Miller thought that this was a precise metaphor for what happened in Salem. Crucible also means a harsh trial or examination. John Proctor’s integrity was surely investigated. He chose to die instead of confessing to being evil. According to Raymond Williams, The Crucible is a powerfully successful dramatization of the notorious witch trials of Salem.
It is technically less interesting than its previous ones because it is bed on a historical event which is explicit enough to solve, the difficult dramatic problems which Miller had originally set himself. Miller brilliantly expresses a particular crisis “the modern witch hunt” in his own society, but it is not often, in our own world, that the issues and statements so clearly emerge in a naturally dramatic form (13). Miller used the Salem Witch Trials of the 17th century, to make an indirect, but assertive comment upon McCarthyism in American life (Richard Watt, Jr. 536).
In 1953, when the play was produced, the United States was in social and political turmoil. Joseph McCarthy a Senator from Wisconsin and the play in comparison were both significantly politically infamous. The Senator was responsible for the investigations to find communists in the State Department, Hollywood, and the U. S. Army. These investigations created fear and suspicion within our society. McCarthy was eventually found guilty of misusing his authority (Watts vii). Before being found guilty, Senator McCarthy accused the Democratic administration of sheltering and helping Communists in the American government.
It was a fearful time similar to that in Salem. The United States government called McCarthy’s activities witch-hunts. In The Crucible, Miller mentions that McCarthy accuses individuals of being Communist if they opposed him. Any government official who criticized his hearings was soon found to be defending himself against the charge of being involved in a Communist conspiracy. Miller compared McCarthy to the Salem judges in a broad sense (Cliffnotes 52). In 1953 The Crucible was attacked as a comparison to the current Senate “witch hunts.
Critics said it was not a good play at that time, however, later it was found to be superior. The House Un-American Activities Committee summoned Miller to a hearing. Miller refused to name others as communist sympathizers. He also said that he would only take responsibility for himself and not others. Miller was fined and given a thirty-day spended jail sentence because he spoke out like John Proctor in The Crucible (Griffin 7). During the McCarthyism period witnesses refused to answer questions and when they did they were scorned (Bentley 302).
Thousands of people who refused to answer questions and confess were executed during the seventeenth century. Authorities believed that “believing in witches was extensive in America and Europe” (Cliffnotes 44 – 45). Eric Bentley provides us with information that “Arthur Miller had tried to apotheosize this heroic refusal to speak in dramatic literature (The Crucible). In real life, unhappily, such refusal was rendered suspect and ambiguous by its whole background in the life and hates of the Communist Party” (302).
Cushing Scott states that, “Miller has argued for (the) historical truth (of the play), pointed to its contemporary parallels, and defined its Tran historical subject as a social process that includes, but also transcends, the Salem witchcraft trials a the anticommunist investigations of the 1950’s” (128). However, Miller was interested in the witch trials before he opposed McCarthyism however. He decided to write the play telling about the fear and hysteria McCarthyism caused. His play makes clear the facts from the past that sinners and guilty people were mistaken for witches in Salem (Bu*censored* 128 -129).
Elsom writes that Arthur Miller wrote about witch-hunting in Salem but it was really an indirect commentary on Joe McCarthy and the congressional sub-committees investigating un-American activities. (140) Joe McCarthy probably thought of Arthur Miller as a “dangerous communist subversive,” but in Europe he was regarded to be agreeably “left wing” (Elsom 139). After a few years McCarthy had died and the committees were dissolved. The Crucible was included in schools as a modern classic.
A political journalist might have summed up Arthur Miller’s achievement like this: he had helped to rally the moderates against the forces of extreme right-wing reaction” (Elsom 140). Guilt… was directly responsible for the ‘social compliance’ which resulted in McCarthy’s reign of terror in the 1950’s: ‘Social compliance’… is the result of the sense of guilt which individuals strive to conceal by complying… It was a guilt, in this historic sense, resulting from their awareness that they were not as Rightist as people were suppose to be (Bu*censored* 133).
The Crucible made a statement for the subject of the free man’s fight against emotional terrorism to put him down. Arthur Miller was completely involved with the social and moral problems of American society and inevitably made an impact on the world. The danger from Russian subversion was a more obvious danger than the witch hunts of innocent people in 17th century Massachusetts (Watts viii). The comparison in 1953 was harmful to Arthur Miller and his drama. The similarities of the two eras dealing with freedom of judgment against barbaric control remains an issue today.
Witch-hunting and the evil Salem trials in The Crucible was a work of social dramatic art making a statement of evil intolerance for global history (Watts viii). Miller wrote The Crucible to prevent history from repeating itself. Miller does not use an ordinary plot in The Crucible. “… tension inheres in episodic conflicts rather than in an over-all advancing action. The sense of an evolving general situation, so well achieved by tight structure in The Crucible… is largely gone” (Heilman 151).
Heilman states that Miller, turned to more vigorous characters who cause suffering rather than uncomprehendingly suffer, he portrayed an vil rooted in human nature overwhelming the community, he made advances toward complexity of motive, and he began to discover inner division (160). In Salem, Massachusetts, a black slave woman and twelve teenage girls were caught dancing around a bubbling cauldron in the woods, despite the fact that dancing was not allowed by the Puritans. The Puritan government ruled the church in 1692 and religion believed that women who dance with the Devil are witches.
Fearing being hanged the girls blamed each other. Everyone in the town panicked and began accusing everyone else of witchcraft. The Puritans believed that the Devil was continually enticing man. If a person sinned they had to confess it, regret it, a perform some act of penance. To avoid being hanged many people in The Crucible confessed to sins they did not commit. Fearing that she would be damned forever Rebecca Nurse refused to confess. Adultery was one of the worst sins someone could commit. The Puritans also thought that anything pleasant was the work of the Devil, therefore, they were a serious and fearful group.
It was an atrocious sin for children to even dance, so to avoid punishment they would pretend to be under the spell of the Devil. The Puritans believed that a person became a witch by entering into an agreement with the Devil. They further believed that the Devil or one of his witches could take over the body of an innocent person (Cliffnotes 44 – 47). It is a complex story because Miller makes it easier because he starts each new act telling us of the dreadful possibilities and ending each act with the possibilities happening.
Miller uses a repetitive style of questions and answers forming the rhythm of the play. The story is told in John Proctor’s perspective (Barron’s Booknotes 7 – 8). The Crucible has a narrator, a voice not a character, that tells us about the characters and the action and helps us to understand the moral implications. The director of the l958 off-Broadway revival for The Crucible drew the consequences of the revised text and introduced ‘a narrator,’ called The Reader, to set the scenes and give the historical background of the play.
The introduction of a ‘narrator’ element in The Crucible is closely related to Miller’s attempts to have a separate voice present the author’s view of the ‘generalized significance’ of the ‘action’ in the later play (Overland 57). The Crucible has a “series of non-dramatic interpolated passages in the first act, where the playwright takes on the roles of historian, novelist and literary critic, often all at once, speaking himself ex cathedra rather than through his character ex ena” are concerned with motivation. “Psychological, religious and socioeconomic explanations of the trials are given…
Miller has also been seen to depart from the second of his basic principles of playwriting in introducing narrative and expository passages into The Crucible” (Overland 57 – 60). Overland writes that Miller tends to confuse the characters with the real people with the same names from the seventeenth century, such as Parris, Putnam, Rebecca, and Francis Nurse (60). “Conflict between a man’s raw deeds and his conception of himself,” poses as the struggle for John Proctor to attain high standards. To understand the character Proctor it is important to realize his sense of guilt, which is made clear to us by Elizabeth’s remarks and his behavior.
Individual tragedy to John Proctor is the backbone of the play. The first Puritans struggled to survive. John Proctor and John Hale went against the order of the Puritan society in The Crucible. Reverend Hale declares that the Devil can delude God so he can certainly fool humans. (Cliffnotes, 43). During the witch trials there would be no halfway point it was either black or white. If guilty you were to be hanged. You had to remain obedient. Rebecca Nurse symbolizes a wise woman who knew her place, the place of the church and the dangers of witchcraft.
The danger could be brought forth at any time within the play. The confrontations within the play were brought together in precise detail but the powerful were bro t to a lower level throughout the play. You could not be fearful or you would be among the guilty. Ezekiel Cheever arrested Elizabeth Proctor, even though he was on her side, because he had no other choice. Abigail Williams was described by Rebecca “the very brick and mortar of the church. ” All hell broke loose due to the evil of Abigail Williams, seeking revenge on the Proctors when John stopped the affair.
Miller writes as though he belittles his characters and condemns them as he sees fit to unt down all dwellers of the Salem society. The irony was that the purist of the citizens hunted down the innocent people and plagued them with crimes, when they themselves were now a part of the crime of the hunt. Hale was the first to come to the re ity to oppose the view of the court proceedings and terminate his position in the court. It was better to hang innocent people than to admit to a wrong doing. Old Goodey Osborne was found guilty of witchcraft because she could not remember the commandments (Cliffnotes 43).
Hale later in the play realizes that this is wrong and tries to convince Proctor to flee for his life which leads to the most dramatic scene of confrontation. John Proctor is caught in the tangled web he has woven between his wife, friends, and himself and the entire Salem community. Proctor did not want to be a part of the trials and was forced to make important decisions. He was also accused of being a witch. His destiny relies on his choices. He becomes a rebel against the church and now he must sign a confession. John Hale tries to convince Proctor’s wife to get him to sign. Elizabeth replies with “I think that be the Devils argument.
Which means John Proctor knows inside himself what he will do and no one else will change his mind. John Proctor mulled this over and over and he finally came to a decision. A once weak man now had the authority to make a commitment to mankind. He has chosen to die an honest man. “He have his goodness now. God forbid I take it from him. ” Charity and justice are major features of human relationships, both public and private. “These issues, therefore, not only frame the play, but specifically define the relationship between John and Elizabeth Proctor, and they largely determine the course of their tragedy” (Bu*censored* 135).
We recognize our own victory over evil from our Puritan past because of the struggles for justice in characters like John Proctor. The Crucible practically has all of the qualifications of a successful tragedy as Miller imagines them to be. “Yet it cannot be said to reach ‘those heights where the breath fails’ because it lacks something far more important to drama: that sense of vividly and fully imagined character that made of Willy Loman a kind of modern Everyman” states Clinton W. Trowbridge (44). It is apparent that Danforth and Hathorne are a threat to freedom.
Proctor is not a threat to freedom because he does not have the power or authority. The Puritans became dangerous and powerful in the new world. Also powerful is the richest man in Sa m, Thomas Putnam. He gets land by having his daughter accuse others of witchcraft. Indeed, the apparent difference between Proctor and the Puritans serves only to stress how corrupting power can become in the hands of a certain kind of person, the Puritan American who is obsessed by his own guilt and driven by the desire to determine sanctity in himself and in others, and to make it conform to the visible human being (Bu*censored* 131).
It is ironic that Proctor is a victim of what he opposes. As well as John Proctor adding to his own disaster, the Reverend John Hale finds that in trying to solve a horror he creates a horror. “He could be a tragic hero, but his role is minor: through him, then, the play has a ‘tragic accent’ ” (Heilman 324 – 325). Arthur Miller was not satisfied with the original version of The Crucible so he added additional data. Overland reports that Miller added a scene to explain Abigail’s behavior even though it was not needed (57).
Miller does not accomplish artistic death in The Crucible “because of his inability to project seventeenth century sensibilities and thus to sympathize with them. ” The play, according to many critics, “is not seriously historical and, therefore, not seriously literary or political. This play seems to fail to reach the social, historical, and moral depth of a great work of art, because it cannot imaginatively conjure the world that it pretends to describe” (Levin 127). The Crucible, some critics say, is a controversial and a modern virtuous play.
Miller has created a community disturbance too far-reaching to result from an evil plot of a simple villain according to Heilman (144 – 145). “The Crucible is an argument in favor of moral flexibility. The fundamental flaws in the nature of the Puritan elders and by extension of the McCarthyites, as Miller sees it, is precisely their extreme tendency toward moral absolutism” (Bu*censored* 129). wants to abolish these factors. Critics say that there is a balanced cast of sinners and non-sinners who deserve our sympathy.
Despite the continuing serious crimes by judges Danforth and Hathorne, there is a moral education in the characters Hale and Parris. Goody Nurse and Giles Corey symbolize “unabated moral sanity and good will” (Bu*censored* 130). John Proctor is a basic hero who opposes evil. He was, however, indiscreet with Abigail Williams, this of course is only a fabrication by Miller. Millers plays constantly stress the value of the nuclear family, the ties of loyalty between husband and wife, and their protectiveness towards their children. Marriage can be destroyed… soured by nagging sexual guilt (as the The Crucible),… nevertheless remains an emotional stronghold, the instinctive centre of people’s lives, without which society itself falls in anarchy and self-destruction (Elsom 140 – 141).
Proctor does in some ways represent an enemy to the community because he does not like the representative of the church. He doesn’t go to church regularly and did not take his sons to be baptized. Moral judgments are made by the good people and Salem’ leaders. “The courts condemn the “witches,” to be sure, and this act is the most flagrant example of over-zealous righteousness in the play” (Bu*censored* 130). The town is unmerciful in its destruction of witchcraft.
