summary on the crucible
Context
E arly in the year 1692, in the small Massachusetts village of Salem, a
collection of girls fell ill, falling victim to hallucinations and seizures. In
extremely religious Puritan New England, frightening or surprising occurrences
were often attributed to the devil or his cohorts. The unfathomable sickness
spurred fears of witchcraft, and it was not long before the girls, and then
many other residents of Salem, began to accuse other villagers of consorting
with devils and casting spells. Old grudges and jealousies spilled out into the
open, fueling the atmosphere of hysteria. The Massachusetts government and
judicial system, heavily influenced by religion, rolled into action. Within a
few weeks, dozens of people were in jail on charges of witchcraft. By the time
the fever had run its course, in late August 1692, nineteen people (and two dogs) had been
convicted and hanged for witchcraft.
More than two centuries later, Arthur Miller was born in New York
City on October17, 1915. His career as a playwright began while he was a student at the
University of Michigan. Several of his early works won prizes, and during his
senior year, the Federal Theatre Project in Detroit performed one of his works.
He produced his first great success, All My Sons, in 1947. Two years later, in1949, Miller wrote Death of a Salesman, which won the Pulitzer Prize and transformed Miller into a
national sensation. Many critics described Death of a Salesman as the first great American tragedy, and Miller gained an
associated eminence as a man who understood the deep essence of the United
States.
Drawing on research on the witch trials he had conducted while an
undergraduate, Miller composed The Crucible in the early 1950s. Miller wrote the play during the brief
ascendancy of Senator Joseph McCarthy, a demagogue whose vitriolic
anti-Communism proved the spark needed to propel the United States into a
dramatic and fractious anti-Communist fervor during these first tense years of
the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Led by McCarthy, special congressional
committees conducted highly controversial investigations intended to root out
Communist sympathizers in the United States. As with the alleged witches of
Salem, suspected Communists were encouraged to confess and to identify other
Red sympathizers as means of escaping punishment. The policy resulted in a
whirlwind of accusations. As people began to realize that they might be
condemned as Communists regardless of their innocence, many “cooperated,”
attempting to save themselves through false confessions, creating the image
that the United States was overrun with Communists and perpetuating the
hysteria. The liberal entertainment industry, in which Miller worked, was one
of the chief targets of these “witch hunts,” as their opponents termed them.
Some cooperated; others, like Miller, refused to give in to questioning. Those
who were revealed, falsely or legitimately, as Communists, and those who
refused to incriminate their friends, saw their careers suffer, as they were
blacklisted from potential jobs for many years afterward.
At the time of its first performance, in January of 1953, critics and cast alike perceived The Crucible as a direct attack on
McCarthyism (the policy of sniffing out Communists). Its comparatively short
run, compared with those of Miller’s other works, was blamed on anti-Communist
fervor. When Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were accused of spying for the Soviets
and executed, the cast and audience of Miller’s play observed a moment of
silence. Still, there are difficulties with interpreting The Crucible as a strict allegorical
treatment of 1950s McCarthyism. For one thing, there were, as far as one can tell,
no actual witches or devil-worshipers in Salem. However, there were certainly
Communists in 1950s America, and many of those who were lionized as victims of
McCarthyism at the time, such as the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss (a former State
Department official), were later found to have been in the pay of the Soviet
Union. Miller’s Communist friends, then, were often less innocent than the
victims of the Salem witch trials, like the stalwart Rebecca Nurse or the
tragic John Proctor.
If Miller took unknowing liberties with the facts of his own era,
he also played fast and loose with the historical record. The general outline
of events in The Crucible corresponds to what happened in Salem of 1692, but Miller’s characters are often composites.
Furthermore, his central plot device—the affair between Abigail Williams and
John Proctor—has no grounding in fact (Proctor was over sixty at the time of
the trials, while Abigail was only eleven). Thus, Miller’s decision to set
sexual jealousy at the root of the hysteria constitutes a dramatic contrivance.
In an odd way, then, The Crucible is best read outside its
historical context—not as a perfect allegory for anti-Communism, or as a
faithful account of the Salem trials, but as a powerful and timeless depiction
of how intolerance and hysteria can intersect and tear a community apart. In John
Proctor, Miller gives the reader a marvelous tragic hero for any time—a flawed
figure who finds his moral center just as everything is falling to pieces
around him
I n
the Puritan New England town of Salem, Massachusetts, a group of girls goes dancing in the
forest with a black slave named Tituba. While dancing, they are caught by the
local minister, Reverend Parris. One of the girls, Parris’s daughter Betty,
falls into a coma-like state. A crowd gathers in the Parris home while rumors
of witchcraft fill the town. Having sent for Reverend Hale, an expert on
witchcraft, Parris questions Abigail Williams, the girls’ ringleader, about the
events that took place in the forest. Abigail, who is Parris’s niece and ward,
admits to doing nothing beyond “dancing.”
While Parris tries to calm the crowd that has gathered in his home, Abigail
talks to some of the other girls, telling them not to admit to anything. John
Proctor, a local farmer, then enters and talks to Abigail alone. Unbeknownst to
anyone else in the town, while working in Proctor’s home the previous year she
engaged in an affair with him, which led to her being fired by his wife,
Elizabeth. Abigail still desires Proctor, but he fends her off and tells her to
end her foolishness with the girls.
Betty wakes up and begins screaming. Much of the crowd rushes
upstairs and gathers in her bedroom, arguing over whether she is bewitched. A
separate argument between Proctor, Parris, the argumentative Giles Corey, and
the wealthy Thomas Putnam soon ensues. This dispute centers on money and land
deeds, and it suggests that deep fault lines run through the Salem community.
As the men argue, Reverend Hale arrives and examines Betty, while Proctor
departs. Hale quizzes Abigail about the girls’ activities in the forest, grows
suspicious of her behavior, and demands to speak to Tituba. After Parris and
Hale interrogate her for a brief time, Tituba confesses to communing with the
devil, and she hysterically accuses various townsfolk of consorting with the
devil. Suddenly, Abigail joins her, confessing to having seen the devil
conspiring and cavorting with other townspeople. Betty joins them in naming
witches, and the crowd is thrown into an uproar.
A week later, alone in their farmhouse outside of town, John and
Elizabeth Proctor discuss the ongoing trials and the escalating number of
townsfolk who have been accused of being witches. Elizabeth urges her husband
to denounce Abigail as a fraud; he refuses, and she becomes jealous, accusing
him of still harboring feelings for her. Mary Warren, their servant and one of
Abigail’s circle, returns from Salem with news that Elizabeth has been accused
of witchcraft but the court did not pursue the accusation. Mary is sent up to
bed, and John and Elizabeth continue their argument, only to be interrupted by
a visit from Reverend Hale. While they discuss matters, Giles Corey and Francis
Nurse come to the Proctor home with news that their wives have been arrested.
Officers of the court suddenly arrive and arrest Elizabeth. After they have
taken her, Proctor browbeats Mary, insisting that she must go to Salem and
expose Abigail and the other girls as frauds.
The next day, Proctor brings Mary to court and tells Judge
Danforth that she will testify that the girls are lying. Danforth is suspicious
of Proctor’s motives and tells Proctor, truthfully, that Elizabeth is pregnant
and will be spared for a time. Proctor persists in his charge, convincing
Danforth to allow Mary to testify. Mary tells the court that the girls are
lying. When the girls are brought in, they turn the tables by accusing Mary of
bewitching them. Furious, Proctor confesses his affair with Abigail and accuses
her of being motivated by jealousy of his wife. To test Proctor’s claim,
Danforth summons Elizabeth and asks her if Proctor has been unfaithful to her.
Despite her natural honesty, she lies to protect Proctor’s honor, and Danforth
denounces Proctor as a liar. Meanwhile, Abigail and the girls again pretend
that Mary is bewitching them, and Mary breaks down and accuses Proctor of being
a witch. Proctor rages against her and against the court. He is arrested, and
Hale quits the proceedings.
The summer passes and autumn arrives. The witch trials have caused
unrest in neighboring towns, and Danforth grows nervous. Abigail has run away,
taking all of Parris’s money with her. Hale, who has lost faith in the court,
begs the accused witches to confess falsely in order to save their lives, but
they refuse. Danforth, however, has an idea: he asks Elizabeth to talk John
into confessing, and she agrees. Conflicted, but desiring to live, John agrees
to confess, and the officers of the court rejoice. But he refuses to
incriminate anyone else, and when the court insists that the confession must be
made public, Proctor grows angry, tears it up, and retracts his admission of
guilt. Despite Hale’s desperate pleas, Proctor goes to the gallows with the
others, and the witch trials reach their awful conclusion.
John Proctor - A
local farmer who lives just outside town; Elizabeth Proctor’s husband. A stern,
harsh-tongued man, John hates hypocrisy. Nevertheless, he has a hidden sin—his
affair with Abigail Williams—that proves his downfall. When the hysteria
begins, he hesitates to expose Abigail as a fraud because he worries that his
secret will be revealed and his good name ruined.
John
Proctor
In a sense, The
Crucible has the
structure of a classical tragedy, with John Proctor as the play’s tragic hero.
Honest, upright, and blunt-spoken, Proctor is a good man, but one with a
secret, fatal flaw. His lust for Abigail Williams led to their affair (which
occurs before the play begins), and created Abigail’s jealousy of his wife,
Elizabeth, which sets the entire witch hysteria in motion. Once the trials
begin, Proctor realizes that he can stop Abigail’s rampage through Salem but
only if he confesses to his adultery. Such an admission would ruin his good
name, and Proctor is, above all, a proud man who places great emphasis on his
reputation. He eventually makes an attempt, through Mary Warren’s testimony, to
name Abigail as a fraud without revealing the crucial information. When this
attempt fails, he finally bursts out with a confession, calling Abigail a
“whore” and proclaiming his guilt publicly. Only then does he realize that it
is too late, that matters have gone too far, and that not even the truth can
break the powerful frenzy that he has allowed Abigail to whip up. Proctor’s
confession succeeds only in leading to his arrest and conviction as a witch, and though he lambastes the
court and its proceedings, he is also aware of his terrible role in allowing
this fervor to grow unchecked.
Proctor redeems himself and provides a final denunciation of the witch trials
in his final act. Offered the opportunity to make a public confession of his
guilt and live, he almost succumbs, even signing a written confession. His
immense pride and fear of public opinion compelled him to withhold his adultery
from the court, but by the end of the play he is more concerned with his
personal integrity than his public reputation. He still wants to save his name,
but for personal and religious, rather than public, reasons. Proctor’s refusal
to provide a false confession is a true religious and personal stand. Such a
confession would dishonor his fellow prisoners, who are brave enough to die as
testimony to the truth. Perhaps more relevantly, a false admission would also
dishonor him, staining not just his public reputation, but also his soul. By
refusing to give up his personal integrity Proctor implicitly proclaims his
conviction that such integrity will bring him to heaven. He goes to the gallows
redeemed for his earlier sins. As Elizabeth says to end the play, responding to
Hale’s plea that she convince Proctor to publicly confess: “He have his
goodness now. God forbid I take it from him!”
Abigail Williams
Of the
major characters, Abigail is the least complex. She is clearly the villain of
the play, more so than Parris or Danforth: she tells lies, manipulates her
friends and the entire town, and eventually sends nineteen innocent people to
their deaths. Throughout the hysteria, Abigail’s motivations never seem more
complex than simple jealousy and a desire to have revenge on Elizabeth Proctor.
The language of the play is almost biblical, and Abigail seems like a biblical
character—a Jezebel figure, driven only by sexual desire and a lust for power.
Nevertheless, it is worth pointing out a few background details that, though
they don’t mitigate Abigail’s guilt, make her actions more understandable.
Abigail is
an orphan and an unmarried girl; she thus occupies a low rung on the Puritan
Salem social ladder (the only people below her are the slaves, like Tituba, and
social outcasts). For young girls in Salem, the minister and the other male
adults are God’s earthly representatives, their authority derived from on high.
The trials, then, in which the girls are allowed to act as though they have a
direct connection to God, empower the previously powerless Abigail. Once
shunned and scorned by the respectable townsfolk who had heard rumors of her
affair with John Proctor, Abigail now finds that she has clout, and she takes
full advantage of it. A mere accusation from one of Abigail’s troop is enough
to incarcerate and convict even the most well-respected inhabitant of Salem.
Whereas others once reproached her for her adultery, she now has the
opportunity to accuse them of the worst sin of all: devil-worship.
Reverend Hale
John Hale,
the intellectual, naïve witch-hunter, enters the play in Act I when Parris
summons him to examine his daughter, Betty. In an extended commentary on Hale
in Act I, Miller describes him as “a tight-skinned, eager-eyed intellectual.
This is a beloved errand for him; on being called here to ascertain witchcraft
he has felt the pride of the specialist whose unique knowledge has at last been
publicly called for.” Hale enters in a flurry of activity, carrying large books
and projecting an air of great knowledge. In the early going, he is the force
behind the witch trials, probing for confessions and encouraging people to
testify. Over the course of the play, however, he experiences a transformation,
one more remarkable than that of any other character. Listening to John Proctor
and Mary Warren, he becomes convinced that they, not Abigail, are telling the
truth. In the climactic scene in the court in Act III, he throws his lot in
with those opposing the witch trials. In tragic fashion, his about-face comes
too late—the trials are no longer in his hands but rather in those of Danforth
and the theocracy, which has no interest in seeing its proceedings exposed as a
sham.
The
failure of his attempts to turn the tide renders the once-confident Hale a
broken man. As his belief in witchcraft falters, so does his faith in the law.
In Act IV, it is he who counsels the accused witches to lie, to confess their
supposed sins in order to save their own lives. In his change of heart and
subsequent despair, Hale gains the audience’s sympathy but not its respect,
since he lacks the moral fiber of Rebecca Nurse or, as it turns out, John
Proctor. Although Hale recognizes the evil of the witch trials, his response is
not defiance but surrender. He insists that survival is the highest good, even
if it means accommodating oneself to injustice—something that the truly heroic
characters can never accept.
Elizabeth Proctor - John Proctor’s wife. Elizabeth fired Abigail when
she discovered that her husband was having an affair with Abigail. Elizabeth is
supremely virtuous, but often cold.
Reverend Parris -
The minister of Salem’s church. Reverend Parris is a paranoid, power-hungry,
yet oddly self-pitying figure. Many of the townsfolk, especially John Proctor,
dislike him, and Parris is very concerned with building his position in the
community.
Rebecca Nurse -
Francis Nurse’s wife. Rebecca is a wise, sensible, and upright woman, held in
tremendous regard by most of the Salem community. However, she falls victim to
the hysteria when the Putnams accuse her of witchcraft and she refuses to
confess.
Francis Nurse -
A wealthy, influential man in Salem. Nurse is well respected by most people in
Salem, but is an enemy of Thomas Putnam and his wife.
Judge Danforth -
The deputy governor of Massachusetts and the presiding judge at the witch
trials. Honest and scrupu-lous, at least in his own mind, Danforth is convinced
that he is doing right in rooting out witchcraft.
Giles Corey -
An elderly but feisty farmer in Salem, famous for his tendency to file
lawsuits. Giles’s wife, Martha, is accused of witchcraft, and he himself is
eventually held in contempt of court and pressed to death with large stones.
Thomas Putnam -
A wealthy, influential citizen of Salem, Putnam holds a grudge against Francis
Nurse for preventing Putnam’s brother-in-law from being elected to the office
of minister. He uses the witch trials to increase his own wealth by accusing
people of witchcraft and then buying up their land.
Ann Putnam -
Thomas Putnam’s wife. Ann Putnam has given birth to eight children, but only
Ruth Putnam survived. The other seven died before they were a day old, and Ann
is convinced that they were murdered by supernatural means.
Ruth Putnam -
The Putnams’ lone surviving child out of eight. Like Betty Parris, Ruth falls
into a strange stupor after Reverend Parris catches her and the other girls
dancing in the woods at night.
Tituba - Reverend
Parris’s black slave from Barbados. Tituba agrees to perform voodoo at
Abigail’s request.
Mary Warren -
The servant in the Proctor household and a member of Abigail’s group of girls.
She is a timid girl, easily influenced by those around her, who tried
unsuccessfully to expose the hoax and ultimately recanted her confession.
Betty Parris -
Reverend Parris’s ten-year-old daughter. Betty falls into a strange stupor
after Parris catches her and the other girls dancing in the forest with Tituba.
Her illness and that of Ruth Putnam fuel the first rumors of witchcraft.
Martha Corey -
Giles Corey’s third wife. Martha’s reading habits lead to her arrest and
conviction for witchcraft.
Ezekiel Cheever -
A man from Salem who acts as clerk of the court during the witch trials. He is
upright and determined to do his duty for justice.
Judge Hathorne -
A judge who presides, along with Danforth, over the witch trials.
Herrick - The
marshal of Salem.
Mercy Lewis -
One of the girls in Abigail’s group.
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a
literary work.
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.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices
that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
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.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to
represent abstract ideas or concepts.
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 in1950s 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.
