The Crucible (1953) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Summary edit see section history

Characters/People edit see section history

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• Abigail Williams: Add a description of this character.
• Danforth
• Arthur Miller
• Parris
• Hale
• Mary Warren
• Giles Corey: one of my favorite character's in the whole book. one of the true hero's and is a machine
• Elizabeth
• John Proctor: Married to Elizabeth Proctor, accused of being a witch by Mary Waren.
• Betty
• Hathorne
• Herrick
• Rebecca
• Joan
• Rev. John Hale: The Reverend from Beverly come to visit to investigate the happenings in Salem. Very experienced in the supernatural.
• Sarah Good
• Ruth
• Abby
• Rev. Samuel Parris: Father of Betty Paris, the parish's Reverend, and was disliked by many.
• Rebecca Nurse: An elderly lady, revered and despised.
• Elizabeth Proctor: John Proctor's wife. Hated by Abigail Williams because of being kicked out by her after finding out John's affair with Abigail.
• George Herrick: Herrick was the Marshal of Salem and in the play is responsible for bringing the defendants before the court. He is a symnmmpathetic character, advising Deputy Governor Danforth of Proctor's good character and becoming friendly with the accused witches that he guards. Some productions name the character John Willard, a reference to constable John Willard who came to disbelieve the allegations and refused to make any further arrests. He himself was then arrested, charged with witchcraft and hanged.
• John Proctor: A man in his 30's who commits adultery but will admit it to save his wife. he is very courageous, bold, and a good man overall, but makes a decision in the end that alters many lives.
• Thomas Putnam: Thomas Putnam lives in Salem village and owns a bit of land close to Giles Corey. Giles accuses him of trying to steal it, and says that Putnam got his daughter to accuse Giles' wife of witchcraft. This possibility is strongly supported by the play, and thus Putnam is one of the play's true villains.
• Martha Corey: Wife of Giles Corey.
• Francis Nurse: Husband of Rebecca Nurse.
• Judge John Hathorne: Secondary judge.
• Tituba: The servant lady of the Parris household. she is from Barbadios

Quotes edit see section history

• “Abby, I may think of you softly from time to time. But I will cut off my hand before I'll ever reach for you again.”

  John Proctor

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• The witch-hunt was a perverse manifestation of the panic which set in among all classes when the balance began to turn toward greater individual freedom.

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• for good purposes, even high purposes, the people of Salem developed a theocracy, a combine of state and religious power whose function was to keep the community together, and to prevent any kind of disunity that might open it to destruction by material or ideological enemies.

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• Their creed forbade anything resembling a theater or “vain enjoyment.” They did not celebrate Christmas, and a holiday from work meant only that they must concentrate even more upon prayer.

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• This predilection for minding other people’s business was time-honored among the people of Salem, and it undoubtedly created many of the suspicions which were to feed the coming madness.

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• It is as impossible for most men to conceive of a morality without sin as of an earth without “sky.”

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• He is a sinner, a sinner not only against the moral fashion of the time, but against his own vision of decent conduct. These people had no ritual for the washing away of sins. It is another trait we inherited from them, and it has helped to discipline us as well as to breed hypocrisy among us. Proctor, respected and even feared in Salem, has come to regard himself as a kind of fraud. But no hint of this has yet appeared on the surface, and as he enters from the crowded parlor below it is a man in his prime we see, with a quiet confidence and an unexpressed, hidden force.

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• The Salem tragedy, which is about to begin in these pages, developed from a paradox.

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• The question is not the reality of witches but the power of authority to define the nature of the real, and the desire, on the part of individuals and the state, to identify those whose purging will relieve a sense of anxiety and guilt.

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• Our opposites are always robed in sexual sin, and it is from this unconscious conviction that demonology gains both its attractive sensuality and its capacity to infuriate and frighten.

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• And here is the root of a theme that connects virtually all of Miller’s plays: betrayal, of the self no less than of others.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Salem: Massachusetts town and primary setting of the story.
• Putnam
• New York
• Barbados
• Andover
• Massachusetts
• Europe

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

• Intolerance: The Crucible is set in a theocratic society, in which the church and the state are one, and the religion is a strict, austere form of Protestantism known as Puritanism. Because of the theocratic nature of the society, moral laws and state laws are one and the same: sin and the status of an individual’s soul are matters of public concern. There is no room for deviation from social norms, since any individual whose private life doesn’t conform to the established moral laws represents a threat not only to the public good but also to the rule of God and true religion. In Salem, everything and everyone belongs to either God or the devil; dissent is not merely unlawful, it is associated with satanic activity. This dichotomy functions as the underlying logic behind the witch trials. As Danforth says in Act III, “a person is either with this court or he must be counted against it.” The witch trials are the ultimate expression of intolerance (and hanging witches is the ultimate means of restoring the community’s purity); the trials brand all social deviants with the taint of devil-worship and thus necessitate their elimination from the community.
• Hysteria: Another critical theme in The Crucible is the role that hysteria can play in tearing apart a community. Hysteria supplants logic and enables people to believe that their neighbors, whom they have always considered upstanding people, are committing absurd and unbelievable crimes—communing with the devil, killing babies, and so on. In The Crucible, the townsfolk accept and become active in the hysterical climate not only out of genuine religious piety but also because it gives them a chance to express repressed sentiments and to act on long-held grudges. The most obvious case is Abigail, who uses the situation to accuse Elizabeth Proctor of witchcraft and have her sent to jail. But others thrive on the hysteria as well: Reverend Parris strengthens his position within the village, albeit temporarily, by making scapegoats of people like Proctor who question his authority. The wealthy, ambitious Thomas Putnam gains revenge on Francis Nurse by getting Rebecca, Francis’s virtuous wife, convicted of the supernatural murders of Ann Putnam’s babies. In the end, hysteria can thrive only because people benefit from it. It suspends the rules of daily life and allows the acting out of every dark desire and hateful urge under the cover of righteousness.
• Reputation: Reputation is tremendously important in theocratic Salem, where public and private moralities are one and the same. In an environment where reputation plays such an important role, the fear of guilt by association becomes particularly pernicious. Focused on maintaining public reputation, the townsfolk of Salem must fear that the sins of their friends and associates will taint their names. Various characters base their actions on the desire to protect their respective reputations. As the play begins, Parris fears that Abigail’s increasingly questionable actions, and the hints of witchcraft surrounding his daughter’s coma, will threaten his reputation and force him from the pulpit. Meanwhile, the protagonist, John Proctor, also seeks to keep his good name from being tarnished. Early in the play, he has a chance to put a stop to the girls’ accusations, but his desire to preserve his reputation keeps him from testifying against Abigail. At the end of the play, however, Proctor’s desire to keep his good name leads him to make the heroic choice not to make a false confession and to go to his death without signing his name to an untrue statement. “I have given you my soul; leave me my name!” he cries to Danforth in Act IV. By refusing to relinquish his name, he redeems himself for his earlier failure and dies with integrity.
• Empowerment: The witch trials empower several characters in the play who are previously marginalized in Salem society. In general, women occupy the lowest rung of male-dominated Salem and have few options in life. They work as servants for townsmen until they are old enough to be married off and have children of their own. In addition to being thus restricted, Abigail is also slave to John Proctor’s sexual whims—he strips away her innocence when he commits adultery with her, and he arouses her spiteful jealousy when he terminates their affair. Because the Puritans’ greatest fear is the defiance of God, Abigail’s accusations of witchcraft and devil-worship immediately command the attention of the court. By aligning herself, in the eyes of others, with God’s will, she gains power over society, as do the other girls in her pack, and her word becomes virtually unassailable, as do theirs. Tituba, whose status is lower than that of anyone else in the play by virtue of the fact that she is black, manages similarly to deflect blame from herself by accusing others.
• Accusations, Confessions, and Legal Proceedings: The witch trials are central to the action of The Crucible, and dramatic accusations and confessions fill the play even beyond the confines of the courtroom. In the first act, even before the hysteria begins, we see Parris accuse Abigail of dishonoring him, and he then makes a series of accusations against his parishioners. Giles Corey and Proctor respond in kind, and Putnam soon joins in, creating a chorus of indictments even before Hale arrives. The entire witch trial system thrives on accusations, the only way that witches can be identified, and confessions, which provide the proof of the justice of the court proceedings. Proctor attempts to break this cycle with a confession of his own, when he admits to the affair with Abigail, but this confession is trumped by the accusation of witchcraft against him, which in turn demands a confession. Proctor’s courageous decision, at the close of the play, to die rather than confess to a sin that he did not commit, finally breaks the cycle. The court collapses shortly afterward, undone by the refusal of its victims to propagate lies.
• The Witch Trials and McCarthyism: There is little symbolism within The Crucible, but, in its entirety, the play can be seen as symbolic of the paranoia about communism that pervaded America in the 1950s. Several parallels exist between the House Un-American Activities Committee’s rooting out of suspected communists during this time and the seventeenth-century witch-hunt that Miller depicts in The Crucible, including the narrow-mindedness, excessive zeal, and disregard for the individuals that characterize the government’s effort to stamp out a perceived social ill. Further, as with the alleged witches of Salem, suspected Communists were encouraged to confess their crimes and to “name names,” identifying others sympathetic to their radical cause. Some have criticized Miller for oversimplifying matters, in that while there were (as far as we know) no actual witches in Salem, there were certainly Communists in 1950s America. However, one can argue that Miller’s concern in The Crucible is not with whether the accused actually are witches, but rather with the unwillingness of the court officials to believe that they are not. In light of McCarthyist excesses, which wronged many innocents, this parallel was felt strongly in Miller’s own time.
• Dignity: A man tries to figure out what is right from and along the way tries to confront the evils of the salem witch trials

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Arthur Miller (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Tony Award (1953: Best Play)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 812.52

Notes for Parents edit see section history

The play is mainly for Young Adults and Adults because any others younger than this age would be very confused

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Authors, A-Z › ( M ) › Miller, Arthur
• Books › Literature & Fiction › World Literature › United States › Classics
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Drama › United States
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Classics
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Classics

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• Secondary Solutions: Common Core and NCTE/IRA Standards-Aligned Literature Guide for teaching The Crucible

Movie Connections edit see section history

• The Crucible (IMDb)

More Books Like This edit see section history

Books with Additional Background Information edit see section history