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The Crucible

            In the book The Crucible there is a struggle within to have one have a sense of belonging to society. They want to be loved by that society no matter how much they may seem that they don't belong. But they do want to show that to everyone, everyone that may not think that. John Proctor is a good example of a struggle to find a place in society. He's the type of person that wants to plow his fields on the good days even if the good day is only on Sunday of that week. His struggle to make a living with his crops gets him into trouble with the very religious Puritan community of Salem Massachusetts. If John Proctor has a fault its that he's to honest when he thinks your wrong about something he will make you know about it. John Proctor only got involved with this whole witch trial because of a girl by the name of Abigail Williams. If it wasn't for her falling in love with John then he wouldn't be put on trial for anything. Abigail got him involved with the witch trials because John wanted to go back to his wife and he didn't want Abigail in his life at all. After Abigail came into his life he started not believing in himself. He was struggling in life and with this family life. He tries to ignore the events in Salem but when Mary Warren announces that she is an official of the court and that Elizabeth Proctor has been mentioned. Proctor still wants to dismiss the hearings but his wife uses his guilt about adultery to extract a promise that he will expose Abigail as a fraud. As a result of being involved with the witch trials he finds himself accused of being a witch. After being tried and condemned to death, John refuses to confess. But he doesn't want to die because of some witches that are just making lies. So he signs the paper that is going to be nailed to the church door saying he has committed sins. He asks himself "God in heaven, what is John Proctor, what is John Proctor." He is asking if John Proctor is considered honest or a liar.


Essays Related to The Crucible

1. Crucible

... 1953, critics and cast alike perceived The Crucible as a direct attack on McCarthyism. This perception was caused by a number of factors, the main two being Millers public disapproval of McCarthyism and the parallels between the Salem Witch trials of The Crucible and the McCarthy hearings of Miller's time. He wrote The Crucible in an attempt to enlighten the public about the unjust persecution of "Communists" during the 1950s. By doing so, his goal ... was to reduce the unreasonable paranoia and fear of communists that was ... ...

  • Word Count: 981
  • Approx Pages: 4
  • Grade Level: Undergraduate

2. Meaning Of "crucible" In The Crusible

... The title of the play being The Crucible, the term "crucible" is never actually mentioned. The word crucible, in simplest terms, means "a trial." Although the play is based around a series of court-trials, Miller chose it as the title to mean a severe test, as of patience or belief; a trial within oneself. Many of the characters in The Crucible face difficult decisions, or crucibles, piecing together the story. The first crucible ... to take place is concerning John Proctor, the protagonist of the play. John has brought Mary Warren, his servant, to the court to admit that all the accusat...

  • Word Count: 1041
  • Approx Pages: 4
  • Grade Level: High School

3. What Lies Behind the Accusations of the Innocent?

... this probing question: What secret motivations or reasons lie behind the accusations of the innocent? In the Salem Witch Trials, the accusations were clearly caused by the girls" own fears, and the fears of the community also led to the use of scapegoats for the evils of Salem. Arthur Miller, who wrote The Crucible, a play depicting the tragic events that occurred in Salem, was "profoundly, angrily ... of Ann Putnam's pointing finger. The extreme fear of witchcraft held in the hearts of the community of Salem is revealed in The Crucible when Reverend Hale pleads, "The Devil is alive in ...

  • Word Count: 1838
  • Approx Pages: 7
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: Undergraduate

4. The Crucible

... The title of the play being The Crucible, the term "crucible" is never actually mentioned. The word crucible, in simplest terms, means "a trial." Although the play is based around a series of court-trials, Miller chose it as the title to mean a severe test, as of patience or belief; a trial within oneself. Many of the characters in The Crucible face difficult decisions, or crucibles, piecing together the story. The first crucible ... to take place is concerning John Proctor, the protagonist of the play. John has brought Mary Warren, his servant, to the court to admit that all the accusat...

  • Word Count: 986
  • Approx Pages: 4
  • Grade Level: High School

5. The Crucible

... quite by chance that Miller visited Salem, Massachusetts in the spring 1952. Some 250 years before, Salem had been the setting of the most tragic legal miscarriage of justice in the United States history. In the article, "Why I Wrote The Crucible,- originally published in The New Yorker, Miller explained how he came to write the drama: "The Crucible- was an act of desperation. Much of my ... "guilty until proven innocent,"" also. There are many parallels to these two trials in The Crucible. Several times the parallels between the witch hysteria in Salem and the contemporary hysterical ph...

  • Word Count: 822
  • Approx Pages: 3
  • Grade Level: High School

6. Crucible

... heat metals to break them down into their original elements. In Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, the title plays a very important role in symbolizing what the characters themselves go through. They were put to the test and broken down to see what their original feelings and thoughts were. Miller easily shows the crucible experience in 3 main characters. He shows this by showing each characters" original motivation, how ... also by showing what type of people they turned out to be in the end after the crucible experience was all said and done. The three characters that I am going to ex...

  • Word Count: 894
  • Approx Pages: 4
  • Grade Level: High School

7. The Scarlet Letter

... , while there are also specific parallels between characters, such as Abigail and Hester, and Parris and Dimmesdale. The settings in both The Scarlet Letter and The Crucible are similar in many ways. The Scarlet Letter takes place around the 1640s, as the The Crucible occurs in 1692. The time period is very important in both pieces, because it is a time of religious intolerance and a conservative attitude pervades in New England ... harmed him. Chillingworth tries to gain revenge on Dimmesdale, the man who commits adultery with his wife. The towndesire to seek out and personally condemn ...

  • Word Count: 1327
  • Approx Pages: 5
  • Grade Level: High School

8. The Crucible - Why Did Arthur Miller Write the Crucible

... contexts that influenced Arthur Miller as he wrote The Crucible. The first context relates to the 17th century repressive and socially constrictive Puritan society of Salem. The second context is concerned with the anti-communist crusade, which gripped America in the 1950s, also known as McCarthyism. Even though the Crucible was based upon the witchcraft hysteria of Salem, Arthur Miller aimed his ... a parallel between these two separate historical contexts of time. The first context, which influenced the writing of The Crucible, was one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human ...

  • Word Count: 528
  • Approx Pages: 2
  • Grade Level: Undergraduate

9. A Thesis: The Crucible

Arthur Miller chose a powerful and deep Title for his play The Crucible. Not only does it have many obvious meanings in which stem from the word "Crucible," but underlying ones as well. These meanings relate to significant points in the play, making the title The Crucible a very symbolic and excellent choice. The word Crucible may be defined in many ways, as a porcelain container in Chemistry, or a dire and ... severe trial/test. Each definition in someway, relates to each other. Quite, possibly the most important aspect of the play may be the severe trials and tests, in which the innocent vi...

  • Word Count: 715
  • Approx Pages: 3
  • Grade Level: High School

10. The Crucible and McCarthyism

... Miller's play could have been interpreted as a message to people about the problems with McCarthyism. In The Crucible, it is simple to find events that occurred similar to the Communist witch hunts. One of the heroes of the play, Giles Corey, is crushed to death, thereby circumventing the system, where he would have become forfeit and his family left destitute ... David. "David Levin on Early and Modern Witch Hunts." Modern Critical Views: Arthur Miller. Chelsea House Publishers. 1987, New York. Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. New York: Penguin Books, 1976. Nelson, Benjamin. "Benjamin Nels...

  • Word Count: 2143
  • Approx Pages: 9
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: High School

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