THE CRUCIBLE
Arthur Millers play ‘The Crucible was first produced in 1953 and has been widely performed due to its universal theme, depicting an individuals stand for what he believes to be morally right against the threats of an immoral society. The Crucible is an in depth study into the mass hysteria which led to the 1692 Salem Witchcraft Trials concentrating on the fate of some of the key figures caught up in the persecution it powerfully depicts people and principles under pressure and the issues and motivations involved. Due to the fact that it was devised in the middle of the McCarthy political witch-hunt, even though the play was a success, it was regarded firstly as a political parable and not how Miller saw it as having a much more philosophical meaning.
When Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible in 1953 he was hoping that the audience would ask whether or not the play rises issues which are relevant in their own time and place. The fact that at the time the McCarthy ‘political’ witch-hunts were occurring at this time heightened the interest in The Crucible and even ensured Miller was a Communist sympathiser.
The main character in the play John Proctor is much more physically strong than mentally, a guilt-ridden man attempting to mend his damaged marriage and get on with his life. Arthur Miller describes Proctor as ‘not only a sinner against the mortality of the time, he sins against his own decency. Instead of a virtuous man exerting his virtue, he is a troubled soul who discovers to his surprise that he had virtue’.
The real Proctor was described as a person of decided character and manly spirit. He was hardworking, honest and bold in word and deed. Miller attempted to mould his version of Proctor around the original and in my opinion was successful.
Even before the panic when there are accusations of witchcraft in The Crucible, Miller is able to create an atmosphere of enmity and mistrust through, Proctor’s mistrust of Parris, his dislike of the greedy Putman, Corey’s willingness to sue his neighbours and the hidden knowledge of Proctor’s adultery. When confronted by Reverend Parris about their actions in the forbidden woodland, the fear of the young girls and the malicious and devious mind of Abigail Williams create a story of witchcraft, which escalates out of control until the girls begin accusing many local people (who in the beginning seemed to be outcasts) of witchcraft.
As the seriousness of the accusations become apparent and the community as a whole become involved the girls realise that they are left only with the option to continue their accusations against the people. Abigail decides to use this as an opportunity to settle her own personal rivalries with a vicious streak of terror with the occurrence of Elizabeth Proctor being accused of witchcraft. This being due to the fact that it was Abigail whom Proctor was having the affair, while she was an employee within the Proctor household.
Until this moment Proctor is not directly involved with the outcry of witchcraft by Abigail, which he sceptically dismissed as childish early on in the play. Now he is faced with the crucial choice, whether or not to come forward and disgrace himself and his name by professing to all what had occurred between Abigail and him, therefore accepting his foolish and sinful actions or lives with the fact that it was his fault that he got his wife in this situation. When John decides to admit to his sins, he plans to release the truth using one of the girls involved. He is able to convince Mary Warren an accuser to come forward with the truth, that a scheming Abigail had devised the entire hysteria. When summoned to the court, Proctor bravely opens his soul to the people of Salem hoping that the knowledge of Abigail’s motive in accusing Elizabeth would disregard her value within the trials and therefore end the charade. When Abigail denies this charge it comes down to Elizabeth to settle the debate. Unfortunately for the Proctors’ Elizabeth in attempt to save her husbands name denies any knowledge of the affair, unintentionally sealing Johns’ fate. Mary Warren then buckles under the pressure returning to the side of the girls in accusing John of ‘casting his spirit out to hurt them’.
John Proctor is now faced with the ultimate moral question. Should he deny all accusations of witchcraft like many who have gone before him, with the knowledge that admittance would be a sin ‘God damns all liars. Even though Proctor would be gaining another chance at a life with Elizabeth and their family, he would be giving up his dignity which means so much to him. Or should he take the proper religious path in standing firm in the face of such evils ‘you are pulling down heaven and raising up a whore’. In the beginning John decides to admit to the accusations believing that he is unable to ‘mount the gibbet like a saint. I am not that man’.
He believes that due to the prior sins he is unable to receive the same escape as a woman of such goodness as Rebecca Nurse. It isn’t until he has to sigh his actual name away that John realises that it is this which he cannot do ‘because it is my name! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!’
Its with this that Proctor tears up the confession, sealing his fate to hang with the others. John is now a broken man. Though he believes what he is doing is not in order to declare himself as a saintly figure, but to keep a shred of dignity within his soul and saving it from becoming another pawn manipulation by the heartless Danforth. ‘Hang them over the town! Who weeps for these weeps for corruption’. 3
The effect of the ending is neither totally uplifting nor depressing. Its realistic because no matter how limited the victory of Proctor it is regarded as a victory for human spirit won by shear determination.
CONCLUSION
Arthur Miller explains during the period when was writing The Crucible, it was not only the rise of “McCarthyism” that moved him, but the weird and mysterious outcomes. ‘It was the fact that a political, objective, knowledgeable campaign from the far right was capable of creating not only a terror, but a new subjective reality, a veritable mystique which was gradually assuming even a holy resonance’. 4
Miller conveys his astonishment as he watched men whom he had known for many years; pass him by without even a nod. With the realisation that these men’s terror had been knowingly planned and consciously engineered.
The most distinctive connection between McCarthyism and The Crucible for me was when Arthur Miller revealed how he knew of a man who had been summoned to the office of a network executive, to explain how he had no left connections. Despite the current attacks upon him, it was explained to him that this was precisely the trouble; in other words that he had no confession to make, and so he was fired from his job.
Also there is the fact that to gain support, both McCarthy and Abby fed on worries of the general populace. Both of them had gone from a no body, someone with little control over anyone but themselves, to someone who could control anyone they pleased. Like Abigail in "The Crucible," McCarthy’s grapple of the situation soon crumbled leaving him dishonoured.
APPENDIX
- THE ISSUES, POLITICS, AND DEBATE: 1950 – 1952, PAGE 99, MICHAEL O’BRIEN, MCCARTHY AND MCCARTHYISM IN WISCONSIN
- THE CRUCIBLE, ARTHUR MILLER
- MILLER, PLAYS: ONE, INTRODUCTION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
THE CRUCIBLE, ARTHUR MILLER, HEINEMANN PLAYS
MILLER, PLAYS: ONE, 1989 METHUEN DRAMA
MCCARTHY AND MCCARTYISM IN WISCONSIN, MICHAEL O’BRIEN, UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI PRESS COLUMDIA & LONDON 1980
