Arthur Millers The Crucible Essay -- Arthur Miller Crucible Essays

Arthur Miller's The Crucible Arthur Miller demonstrates the familiarities of the life he lived in the 1950's and of everyday life we live in through his plays. He communicates through his work to the way people are in society. The extreme witch hysteria deteriorated the rational and emotional stability of its citizens. This exploited the population's weakest qualities, and insecurities. The obvious breakdown in social order led to the tragedy that saw innocent souls hang on the accusation of witchcraft. Miller's way of writing plays which relate to our lives and the way in which we do things and treat one another is very interesting. He seems to see the world a different way to most people and expresses our everyday actions and the things we do wrong in another form. The audience should see parallels in the play to happenings in our every day life. The Crucible was written in the middle of the McCarthy political "witch-hunt" in America. The play relates to the fears in America that the philosophy of communism was spreading there and would eventually undermine and destroy capitalism and the American way of life. Almost any criticism the government received, in the eyes of McCarthy was not acceptable. A petition for communist sympathisers was set up in which Miller signed. He was asked to confess to signing his name. He quoted: "In truth, I had supported these various causes to express my fear of fascism and my alienation from the waste of potential in America while knowing nothing about life under any socialist regime" The activities seemed to have been linked in Millers mind with witchcraft trials two centuries ago. Miller saw these public confessions as parallels with the naming at Salem... ... play includes interesting messages about how reasonable individuals can become completely irrational and get carried away when they become part of a mob. But in the end, who is to blame? Puritanism, Abigail or Danforth? The play is deliberately complex and multi-faceted, and not in plain and simple black and white, even though the characters themselves are black and white. In my opinion everyone's to blame, If one person would have seen sense or not added to problem or admitted it was a hoax it would have never happened. If Abigail hadn't added to the story it wouldn't have happened. If Judge Danforth hadn't of been so single-minded he would have seen through straight through Abigail's sweet and innocent routine, and so on. But at the end as in many situations in our own lives no one is completely to blame. Very rarely is anything one person's fault.