Personally, I do not like plays at all, and I still do not; however, I do like the plot and ideas behind the Crucible. I was met with mixed feelings about this book because there are many good and bad things about this piece.
The fact that this was a play does hold some significance in my not liking the Crucible. Plays require much more energy to visualize and see. I often found myself reading out loud every line trying to figure out what was happening. Also, without text, there is nothing to praise about Arthur Miller's skill in writing. Although there is a character that serves the narrator function in this piece, I like reading character actions in sentences rather than in quotation marks. The book also lacks a sense of imagery. Being a play, Miller gives a few sentences to provide a brief location or background. Descriptions are straightforward and just bland.
The storyline itself is great. Arthur Miller skillfully criticizes the paranoia that results from unwarranted superstition. I just love the complexity of the plot, with people accusing each other through petty bitterness and hatred. The Crucible illustrates a society with no emotional control. I also found some of the irony humorous, chuckling at the mention of having the minister's daughter be accused a witch. I loved the poignant ending that taught me an important value of being truthful. The plot had substance, but I think that it would have been better as a novel.The Crucible will be sufficient for a quick afternoon read, but nothing more than that.

The Crucible is a great book. Since it is a play, the book is relatively short. I believe that most readers can finish this book peacefully in an afternoon. The plot revolves around the historic events of the Salem Witch Hunt and how one person can start it all. This character, by the name of Abigail, is fiery and very cruel. The way she treats the people around her is astounding and reprimandable. I spent most of the time, trying to express my anger over her actions to John Proctor. The historic base of this novel provides a sense of interest to readers and the plot is quite rudimentary but exciting. It is exciting because of the hysteria and complicated values that run through this play. Though I am instructed not to spoil...I will not discuss the plot but rather the tone of the play in question. Because it is a play, the voice is perhaps unique to every individual reader. You have to read out the lines to live out the plot and characters. Overall, this book astounded me because it provided a ficticious swing over history and really sparked my anger over Abigail. Arthur Miller does a fantastic job doing this.

This was written to honestly give my opinions over this play.

This book is truly a quick read, because it's really not long, and plays tend to be a quick read. I like the format, because it brings out each individual character, and puts each one on the spot, so I can easily delineate each character's tone as they conversed.
Described as a timeless classic, The Crucible provides everlasting insights that are not just clichéd themes, but perceptive recurring themes that are demonstrated through mankind's idiosyncrasies. This book unearths essential themes that will stay in the history of mankind, due to its significance and accuracy towards human flaws. The fact that humans would selfishly perform acts of self interest at the expense of others in the midst of fear and hysteria has been repeated throughout history and will continue to be one of many human's shortcomings.
I liked how the book reflects what happened in reality. Mainly referring to the Salem witch trials and the Red Scare, The Crucible asserts that opportunistic people, who perform self-interest, immoral acts that saves their lives at the expense of others' is essentially wrong and selfish. Much like Abigail, many people from Salem have intentionally accused the innocence for witchcraft to sway the attention and blame, when in actuality, they are blameworthy.
At the peak of the Red Scare, many people, in hopes of being vindicated for wrongdoing, attacked innocent reputation, pretending to serve the community by finding the menaces, who in this case are the communists, of society, while, ironically, the accuser is actually the culprit. Because everyone was afraid of communists, some used that notion to their advantage to lock people, who had done wrong to them, a tactic that is wrong and immoral.
Since I have read Othello, I noticed a parallel between it and this book. That humans would selfishly perform acts of self interest at the expense of others in the midst of fear and hysteria is a theme, around which The Crucible revolves; this very theme parallels to that of Othello by Shakespeare, because both Abigail and Iago perform culpable actions just to find a scapegoat, who is supposed absorbs all the blame.
In The Crucible, Abigail understands her options, and the only way to sway all the attention that is imposed on her originally is to find a scapegoat, who eventually becomes John Proctor, who upholds a reputation and refuses to reveal his scandalous relationship with Abigail. Because Abigail is accused of witchcraft, the only way to survive is to use Proctor as a scapegoat, because she is certain that he will not refute that accusation, unless he unveils his adultery, which he avoids to keep his reputation clean. Abigail's opportunistic nature essentially saves her, but ultimately kills Proctor.
I did not really like the characters per say, but I really was intrigued by the fact that people do blame other people just so they could be vindicated. I look around myself, and I do see this as a universal theme.

This book is first and foremost a test of morals.
Is it ok to kill other people if the evidence against them is not sound?
Is it ok to kill them at all?
How do you decide who will live and who will die?

These are the questions that make up the majority of this book.

The Crucible is set during the time of the Salem witch trials in Massachusetts in 1692. During that time, many women were hung under the assumption that they had dealings with the devil and had practiced witchcraft. In The Crucible, Arthur Miller depicts the constant struggle between the Lord and Satan. This universal theme is also seen in Steinbeck's East of Eden with a struggle between good and evil.

This has an allusion to the biblical story of the War in Heaven between Lucifer and God in order to steal God's throne. This biblical allusion summarizes the entire play in one sentence. People believed that women could be possessed by the devil and ordered to do witchcraft. If the women did this, they were turning their backs on God, as Lucifer did. After the war in heaven, Lucifer lost and was banished to Hell where his name became Satan. The people of Salem, Massachusetts believed that it was Satan, the devil, which inhabited women's souls. The play also symbolizes a struggle between good and evil, as does the war in heaven. The war was a struggle between God, good, and Lucifer, evil. Also, the characters in the play have to constantly decide whether they will be on Satan's side or on God's.


Put your own moral sense to test here.
Let you be the judge of who should live or die and see if you could do it.

As everything in society comes tumbling to the ground, who will be the people that are still sane and who will be the ones that betray their so called "loved ones"?

Arthur Miller's masterful play explores the consequences of greed, envy, vengeance, extremism, and hypocrisy run amok. It is set in Salem during the infamous witch trials, but could easily translate to other times in history (Robespierre's reign of terror during the French revolution, McCarthy's Communist hearings, etc.). Miller shows how the witch trials took flight and gathered speed and power until they nearly consumed the whole of Salem. He also shows how the officials in charge refused to hear evidence contrary to their purpose so as not to lose face publicly by standing down. Through the story of John and Elizabeth Proctor, a couple caught in the center of the firestorm, the tragedy of the trials is made abundantly clear. In a futile attempt to save his wife from the machinations of Abigail Williams (the young girl Proctor had had an affair with, and who kicks off the accusations with her friends to get Elizabeth Proctor out of the way so that she can be with John), Proctor fights the system by challenging the court to see the motives behind the accusations. His attempts to bring reason into madness are met with the insistence that if he is not with them, he is against them (which should sound eerily familiar to anyone with a television set). After Proctor himself has been accused of colluding with the Devil and sentenced to death the officials in charge become determined to use him to validate their holy terror. If Proctor, a popular and well-liked man in town, were to lie and give them a confession that he had conspired with Satan it would legitimize all of the hangings that went on in the public eye. Giving a false confession would save Proctor from hanging and allow him to live to see the birth of the child Elizabeth is carrying -- but can he go through with it? Miller's multilayered play is a classic for the ages -- a truly timeless work of drama that is every bit as relevant today as it was when it was first produced in 1953 (at the height of the McCarthy hearings), and which will most likely prove relevant in another fifty years as well. That is a sad statement for humanity, but a credit to Miller for his perceptive eye and his courage to capture it so eloquently. Perhaps with the example set forth in "The Crucible" we can learn from the past, and not be doomed to repeat it.