WRITING PORTFOLIO
Note for teachers: All Writing Portfolio prompts have been designed to correspond with
Kentucky Department of Education Core Content for Writing Assessment.
1. LITERARY WRITING
Fund for the Arts
Members Agency
In The Crucible, townspeople are arrested for practicing witchcraft. Today people can be arrested for
stealing another’s identity. Imagine a world 25 years from now. Can you think of a crime for which
someone could be put on trial that is not around today? Write the first scene of a play in which this
trial takes place. Here are a few questions to keep in mind while writing:
How is this future society different from our own and how will this be conveyed to your audience?
Why is this new law important? What makes it dangerous? Is this a crime that is committed purposefully or can it be an accident?
For help, use the first scene of The Crucible to see how Arthur Miller sets up a world in which witchcraft is illegal.
Study
Guide
CRUCIBLE
THE
Getting the most out of the Study Guide for
2. TRANSACTIVE WRITING
The Crucible
th
Witch hunting was an important trade in the 17 century. Pretend you are
a witch hunter. Create a brochure to advertise your services. Be sure to
include a catchy slogan/headline, summary of the services you provide,
pictures/examples of your work, frequently asked questions and answers,
and your contact information. Remember, without a creative brochure you
will not have a successful business!
Our Study Guides are designed with you and your classroom in mind, with information and activities that can be implemented in your curriculum. Feel free to
copy the study guide for other teachers and for students. You may wish to cover
some content before your workshops and the performance; some content is more
appropriate for discussion afterwards. Of course, some activities and questions will
be more useful for your class, and some less. Feel free to implement any article,
activity, writing portfolio exercise or post-show discussion question as you see fit.
Before the Performance:
Using the articles in the study guide, students will be more engaged in the
performance. Our articles relate information about things to look for in the show
and information on the play and Arthur Miller. In addition, there are articles on
the real Salem Witch trials, Puritans and McCarthyism. All of this information,
combined with our in-classroom workshops, will keep the students attentive and
make the performance an active learning experience.
3. PERSONAL WRITING
Many of the afflicted girls involved in the Salem witch trials were orphans. Historian Carol Karlsen
writes that the girl’s insecurity and newfound power that led them to accuse innocent people. Take a
moment to journal about power in your life. Is there a group of people you can think of who abuse
power? How has your own power or lack thereof influenced the way you act? If you had more power
would you act differently?
After the Performance:
With the play as a reference point, our questions, activities, and writing portfolio
exercises can be incorporated into your classroom discussions and can enable students to develop their higher-level thinking skills. Our study guide for The
Crucible addresses specific Core Content, for example (more core content found
in the guide):
AH-M 3.2.32-(Arthur Miller bio and Puritan life article)
AH-H 3.3.312-Modern and Contemporary Drama (Arthur Miller bio)
AH-H 3.1.34-Identify skills and training necessary for a variety of careers related
to drama. (Careers in Theatre Article)
If you have questions or suggestions for improvements in our study guides,
contact Education Director Danielle Minnis at DMinnis@ActorsTheatre.org
or 502-584-1265.
Actors Theatre of Louiville
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Box Office 502-584-1205
316 West Main Street
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Louisville, Kentucky 40202-4218
Group Sales 502-585-1210
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Business Office 502-584-1265
ActorsTheatre.org
Study Guide compiled by Jess Jung and
Joanna K. Donehower unless otherwise noted.
Play
Synopsis
The Crucible begins in Reverend Parris’ home where his
daughter Betty lies paralyzed. Rumors have already
begun to spread throughout Salem—could witchcraft be
the cause of Betty’s condition?
Salem meeting house where trials were held
The night prior, Parris stumbled upon his worst nightmare. His servant Tituba stood over a fire mumbling in
her native tongue while the young girls of Salem, including Betty and Parris’ niece Abigail Williams, ceremoniously danced around her. Terrified at the severity of her
actions, Betty fell faint.
Parris now turns to Abigail for answers. She is far from
innocent. Her affair with John Proctor is the talk of
Salem. Determined to save her name, Abigail claims
Tituba made the girls conjure with the Devil. Now
joined by the other girls, the group begins to accuse the
“witches” of Salem.
Those accused are put on trial for witchcraft and given
two options: confess or be hanged. When the afflicted
girls are brought into the courtroom they cry as if invisible spirits are attacking them, proving to the judges that
the accused were assaulting the girls. As the trials continue, more and more accusations are made. It is not
long before John’s wife, Elizabeth, is brought in front of
the court. John must defend his wife, even if it means
admitting to his affair with Abigail. When he makes his
doubts about the truth of the girls’ claims public, John
finds himself fighting for his own life as well.
The Crucible uses historic events from the Salem Witch
Trials to tell a tragic story of manipulation, revenge, and
corruption.
The room in which the House of UnAmerican Activities Commission heard
testimony by and against suspected Communists during the Red Scare.
Post-Show
Discussion Questions
Scapegoating is picking a person or a group of people to bear
the blame for and action that is not the individual or group’s
fault. What is the role of scapegoating in The Crucible — upon
whom do the accusations of witchcraft fall and why? Why do
the young girls make accusations of sorcery?
What role does fear play in creating the world of The Crucible?
What do the characters fear most?
The Puritans believed in the forces of both God and the Devil.
How is the relationship between good and evil illustrated in The
Crucible? How is it illustrated within each character?
Reflect on the final images of each character in The Crucible.
Which characters would you define as weak? Which characters
would you define as strong? Who do you think “wins” at the
end of the play. Why?
CAREERS IN THEATRE
An interview with Marc Masterson,
The Crucible director and Actors Theatre Artistic Director
Marc Masterson begins his sixth season as Artistic
Director of Actors Theatre of Louisville after serving as
Producing Director of City Theatre in Pittsburgh for 20
years. At Actors, he has directed many Humana Festival
premieres, including Gina Gionfriddo’s After Ashley,
Melanie Marnich’s Tallgrass Gothic, and Chuck Mee’s
Limonade Tous les Jours. His Actors Theatre credits also
include several mainstage productions, including As You
Like It and his three-actor production of Macbeth, which
employed multimedia technology and projections. This
season, Marc will direct Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Jess
Jung and Joanna Donehower interviewed Marc about sustaining a career in regional theatre, selecting the seasonal
repertoire, and playing traffic cop in large-cast productions like The Crucible.
political ideology, but rather dramatizes what happens to
a specific group of people at a time of particular moral crisis. It’s about how a single person or a group of people
reacts to a world of challenge. What does it mean to put
your life on the line for something you believe in? That’s
ultimately a very interesting story.
As a director, how do you convey your concept for the
production to your set, lighting, costume, and props
designers?
I’m looking for a kind of timeless look. I’m less interested
in historic authenticity in this production but I want a feel
for that without locking it into those funny hats and shoes
with buckles. What I’m looking for is something contemporary — really clean lines, simple furniture. Simplicity is
J & J: What does an artistic director do exactly? What are the mantra.
his/her responsibilities within the theatre?
How did you first become involved in theatre?
MM: I’ve been trying to explain this to my mother now
for about 25 years! Well, really simply, the artistic director I got started in theatre at age ten as an actor, and I studchooses the plays…and then supervises the work process ied in an institution that performed children’s theatre —
to make sure it is quality. I’m also the spokesperson for the theatre for and by young people. I decided I wanted to
theatre within the community.
study theatre in college and then went on to get my graduate degree.
There must be a great deal of pressure on you to pick the
perfect line-up of plays for each season. What consider- And was there anything in particular that led you to purations do you make in selecting Actors’ season?
sue directing as opposed to acting?
I just find things that speak to me. There are all these
other realities that come into play, like cast size and set
design. What can we do with the resources we have?
Sometimes that has to factor into the way it all comes
together, which is why it is so important to fall in love
with more plays than you can actually do. Sometimes I’ll
connect to a person that I feel is passionate about something, and I want to empower that possibility. I want that
person — whether a director, actor, or designer — to be
able to realize his or her project. I want theatre to reflect
all of the different strains of our culture that are out there,
to embrace diversity, richness, and abundance rather than
one particular aesthetic.
Well, my teachers helped me to realize that being an actor
wasn’t my greatest skill, which was a traumatic and painful
thing. I was always over-intellectualizing my work, and
that’s just not a good thing.
Why were you drawn to The Crucible?
What is your favorite aspect of directing? Bossing people
around?
It was a play that I felt was important to do—that I wanted to do. I felt like I had the maturity to direct it this year.
I have great respect and admiration for Arthur Miller. This
is a classic American text, and when I decided I wasn’t
going to direct Shakespeare this year, I wanted to do
something else that’s big and ambitious. One of the things
that makes a play classic is that it survives the moment it
was created. It gets recreated at different times, and is seen
through different prisms. The Crucible doesn’t prescribe a
What was the first play you ever directed?
The first show was a play called Circus Lady (Jason Miller)
and it starred Cherry Jones [Tony Award-winning actress
for The Heiress and Doubt, with film roles in Cradle Will
Rock, Erin Brockovich, Signs, and Ocean’s Twelve]. It was
my directing project as a junior in college. So, it was a
good way to start!
That’s what my wife says! Actually it’s the opposite. In a
play with a cast of this size, if you just sort of let everybody
go wherever, pretty soon everybody starts bumping into
one another. So part of my job is to keep people from colliding! But seriously, I love to be surprised by other people’s ideas. I love to create an environment where people
can do astonishing things, something greater than I can
imagine on my own, sitting in my room reading the play.
Cast of Characters:
Reverend Samuel Parris: Reverend of Salem Village
for the last three years
Betty Parris: Daughter of Reverend Parris, nine years old
Abigail Williams: Niece of Reverend Parris, seventeen
Tituba: Servant of Reverend Parris from his time in Barbados
Reverend John Hale: Reverend of Beverly, a
neighboring town
John Proctor: A farmer and frequent detractor of
the way Reverend Parris runs his services
Elizabeth Proctor: His wife
Mary Warren: Servant of the Proctors
Francis Nurse: A well-respected farmer
Rebecca Nurse: His wife, 72 years old and a frequent
midwife to the village. Well-loved by the town.
Giles Corey: A farmer and frequent plaintiff in legal
squabbles in town
Mrs. Ann Putnam and Thomas Putnam: Parents of
Ruth Putnam; Rev. Parris’s largest supporters in the village
Mercy Lewis & Susanna Wallcott: Teenage girls of Salem
Ezekiel Cheever: Clerk of the court
John Willard: Court Marshall
Judge Hathorne: From Salem Town
Deputy-Governor Danforth: Deputy Governor of
Massachusetts Bay Colony
Hopkins: Guard
Sarah Good: Homeless member of Salem’s community,
frequently begging at doors. Accused of witchcraft.
Surrogate: n. a person who substitutes for the
role of another, as in a surrogate mother.
The Real Crucible
Arthur Miller’s The Crucible was inspired by the Salem Witch Trials.
Samuel Parris was the Reverend of Salem and his daughter, Betty, was the
first to show signs of affliction in January 1692. In the play Miller creates an affair between Abigail Williams and John Proctor, which instigates her actions in the play. Since John Proctor was sixty and Abigail
Williams twelve during the actual trials, it was highly unlikely that an
affair ever took place. Without it the motivation for Abigail and the
other girls’ actions is unclear. Why would the young girls of Salem accuse
innocent people? Many historians have made their own speculations
based on the lifestyle of the community in question.
The story of Salem begins with the Great Puritan migration of 1630.
Two thousand Puritans sailed away from England. In England,
Catholicism was becoming a popular form of worship, and the Puritans
wanted freedom over their religion. They believed they were the new
Chosen, and that the world’s Redemption would be found in their new
land, New England. Governor John Winthrop stated at the beginning of
their journey that if the Puritans failed, they would feel God’s wrath.
The Puritans were Calvinist reformers. In Calvinist belief all humans are
born sinful. God, the center of the Universe, predetermines who will be
granted free grace. This meant that no one had control over his or her
salvation. The new Chosen were bound to a life of strict worship, and as
such their religion was the center of their lives.
We covenant with our Lord, and one with another; and we do bind ourselves
in the presence of God, to walk together in all his ways, according as he is
pleased to reveal himself unto us in his blessed word of truth; and do explicate, in the name and fear of God, profess and protest to walk as followeth,
through the power and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Excerpt from the church of Salem’s covenant
The Puritans often found their measure of goodness in nature. Today
scientists grapple with natural disasters by searching for how they occur.
The Puritans saw the weather as one way to see into the will of God. A
beautiful day was a gift, while a great storm was a sign of God’s anger.
The Puritans believed that before their arrival, New England was the
property of The Great Tempter (the Devil). The land was dangerous and
the natives occupying it were evil. As the Chosen, the Puritans believed
they were claiming the land for God. However, they knew the more they
prospered, the more they would become victims of the Devil’s threat.
Thus, it is not surprising that the Puritans believed the Devil used witches as helpers within their community. Witchcraft was a voluntary pact
with the Devil. One became a witch by signing her name in the Devil’s
book and then persuaded others to do the same. Under the Devil’s
influence, a witch had the power to lead the Chosen away from God.
This was the Puritan’s worst nightmare. They became determined to vanquish all evil. This frame of mind became the catalyst of the Salem trials.
In a community where one must walk a tightrope between good and evil,
a sense of powerlessness is inevitable. The young girls of Salem were tied
to a life of duty. Any act of indulgence, including dancing, was considered evil. Historian Carol Karlsen attributes the girl’s actions to insecurity or feeling powerless. The Salem courtroom became a place where the
girls had control. Through their affliction, they became the most powerful — and terrifying — people in Salem.
The REAL Players:
Reverend Parris
Parris gave his first sermon in Salem in November, 1688. He would have
begun his duties immediately but his post was postponed over disagreements with his salary. Parris believed it was his duty to guard his church
from evil, which created a few enemies. His church doors were not open
to everyone.
Betty Parris & Abigail Williams
Betty and Abigail secretly experimented with fortune telling in 1691.
They used a “venus glass” to detect their future social status. In their
experiments, an egg white was placed into a glass of water. The shapes
formed by the egg revealed the girl’s fortune.
Betty was the first of the girls to exhibit signs of affliction. It began as
absentmindedness — staring off into space — but progressed into incoherent babbling, barking, choking, and painful physical symptoms. Soon
Abigail showed signs of affliction as well. Parris tried to cure the girls
through prayer but their symptoms became more severe. William
Griggs, the town doctor, diagnosed the girls of being afflicted by the
“Evil Hand.”
Tituba
Tituba was a servant in the Parris household. On February 25th, the aunt
of Mary Walcott (another afflicted girl), asked Tituba and her husband
to a bake a witch cake. The cake batter was mixed with the afflicted girl’s
urine, cooked and fed to a dog. It was believed that if the dog showed
the same tortures as the young girls, they were in fact bewitched. This
enraged Parris. Upon hearing her father’s complaints, Betty went into fits
and accused Tituba of witchcraft. The other girls followed. Ann Putnam
(also afflicted) accused Sarah Good and Sarah Osbourne as well.
Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osbourne were arrested February 29th.
Enlightenment: n. 18th-century philosophical
movement that encouraged reasoning and
scrutiny of previously accepted doctrines and
traditions. (Often associated with the birth
of science).
Spectral: adj. immaterial and phantasmic as
opposed to physical.
Activity
Select a primary source (an historical document, video, or film) about any historical
conflict. Court transcripts, contemporary
news reports, interviews with eyewitnesses,
and
personal
diaries
are
useful sources for this activity. (Visit The
Salem Witch Trials: Documentary Archive
and Transcription Project on the web at
http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/sale
m/home.html for some primary source
texts.)
T.H. Matteson’s 1855 representation of the Salem Witch Trials in Examination of a Witch
First, ask what happened. What are the
main plot points? Why should we care
about this event now? 2) Who are the key
players in your historical event and what
conflicts are apparent between them? Less
obvious? Can you see “both sides” of the
story? Are there more than two viewpoints? Who did what, and why? (If it is
not explicitly stated in the text, hazard a
guess). 3) Select several key words and
perhaps a few dialogue samples from your
primary source. These phrases should be
vital to the telling of the story as well as
sound interesting when they roll off the
tongue.
Write a short skit (no more than one page)
based on your primary source, using the
plot points, characters, conflicts, and key
terms. Do not be afraid to add details from
your own imagination in order to flesh out
a more interesting play.
A portion of Ann Putnam’s transcribed testimony against George Jacobs, “a dreadful wizzard.”
HISTORICAL DRAMA
Language, Conflict & Character in The Crucible
A playwright has no debt of literalness to history. Right now I couldn’t tell
you which details were taken from the records verbatim and which were
invented. I think you can say that this play is as historically authentic as
Richard II, which took place closer to Shakespeare’s time than The Crucible
did to ours.
—Arthur Miller on the “accuracy” of his portrayal of
—Salem in The Crucible.
In 1952, Arthur Miller visited the Massachusetts Historical Society,
reading transcripts of court proceedings, death warrants, property deeds,
and wills written by the historical actors of Salem in 1692. From these
written records, Miller gained insight into the real personages embroiled
in the historical moment of the Salem witchhunt. The primary documents furnished Miller with insider perspectives on the trials, and he
constructed much of The Crucible from the individual (and often
conflicting) accounts. Impressed by the heroism of many of the victims
and intrigued by the testimony of the accusers, Miller declared a “burning desire…to raise them out of the historic dust,” and re-introduce
these historical figures to contemporary audiences.
But how would modern audiences relate to Salemers, who — embroiled
in the rampant mysticism, fear, and paranoia of their time — appeared
far removed from 1950s America in time, religious belief, and circumstance? Salem bore seemingly little resemblance to contemporary
America, with its industrial centers, democratic ideals, and secular government. The historical distance between 17th and 20th century Americas
appeared unbridgeable. The colony of Salem was an isolated farming village petrified by attacks of surrounding Native American nations and
ruled by Puritan orthodoxy. The Puritans believed not only in the Devil’s
incarnation on earth, but in the doctrines of original sin and predestination, and inflicted harsh punishments for crimes as insignificant to us
as dancing and reading unorthodox books. Furthermore, the language
employed in the written records could further estrange contemporary
viewers were it to be placed upon the stage, given audiences’ infamiliarity with the archaic syntax and phraseology. In seeking to create meaning for his contemporary audience, he imagined characters, conflicts,
and plot points that would engage viewers with the events of the past.
Inventing a Language
Miller narrowed the distance between his subject and audience by coining a new Salem dialect for the stage. He strove not for “historical accuracy,” but rather for historical relevance, handpicking salient anecdotes
and resonant phrases from the historical texts — such as Tituba’s confession, Corey’s complaints against his wife, and Mary Warren’s poppet —
for inclusion within The Crucible. Miller combined antiquated verbal
forms (i.e., “he were” rather than “he was”) and archaic vocabulary (doll
becomes poppet) with modern English language. In peppering the text
with these terms and syntax structures, Miller renders the dialogue accessible to modern audiences while situating the events onstage in the historical past.
Creating Conflict
Miller challenges the Puritan’s notion of clear-cut divisions of good and
evil through his dramatization of historical characters, pitting flawed
character against flawed character and forcing the audience to negotiate
between opposing viewpoints presented in the trial. Miller invented the
Abigail-Proctor affair, as well as Proctor’s confession and recantation,
constructing psychologically complex characters caught in intense
conflicts and moral dilemmas. Miller’s Abigail Williams is not an “innocent” child, but rather a “sinning” woman, who loses credibility with the
audience as a moral authority. She becomes a hypocrite when she scapegoats “innocent” women for witchcraft against her, after she herself has
apparently cast a spell to kill Goody Proctor. John Proctor must overcome stigma and assume personal guilt for his adultery in order to avoid
persecution for witchcraft. Miller leaves his characters without clean exits
and clear choices. The audience laments as Goody Proctor protects her
husband’s good name and his life by denying his adultery, but in so
doing lies and condemns him to death.
A Contemporary Hero
Miller’s John Proctor serves as the surrogate through whom the modern
viewer navigates his/her way through the strange past of Puritan Salem,
as a post-Enlightenment thinker and skeptic with whom s/he can
identify. Through John Proctor, the audience finds a way to rationalize
and to question the hysteria of those perpetrating the witchhunt. The
Crucible’s Proctor, unlike his historical counterpart, questions the validity of spectral evidence, and thus, challenges the religious authority of
the court. He also struggles against the Puritan community, insisting that
Salemers must adhere to their individual consciences, rather than follow
the crowd.
Vocabulary
Secular: adj. Not relating to religion.
Original sin: n. The belief that all humans are born sinful due to Adam’s
fall for consuming the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden.
Predestination: n. According to Puritan orthodoxy, God predetermines
one’s fate, and only a select few are chose for His salvation. There is no
way to know, as a mere human, whether you are among the Elect while
you are living.
Estrange: v. Create indifference or angst by distancing somebody or
something from a familiar environment.
Ann Putnam
Vocabulary
The daughter of Ann Putnam Sr. (Arthur Miller changed her name to
“Ruth”). Ann was known as the leader of the afflicted. Fourteen years
after the trials, she became the only girl to apologize:
Crucible: a heat-resistant container in which material can be subjected
to great heat
“… now I have just grounds and good reason to believe they were innocent
persons; and that it was a great delusion of Satan that deceived me in that
sad time, whereby I justly fear I have been instrumental, with others, though
ignorantly and unwittingly, to bring upon myself and this land the guilt of
innocent blood” Ann Putnam, 1706
John and Elizabeth Proctor
The Proctors earned a prosperous living managing a farm and a local tavern. John made it known that he did not believe the stories of the
afflicted girls. He was present at his wife Elizabeth’s hearing. Although it
is not in the record, it is speculated that he made comments in the courtroom to the afflicted girls because they accused him as well:
Then Abigail and Ann had fits. — By and by they cried out, look you there
is Goody Proctor upon the beam. — By and by, both of them cried out of
Goodman Proctor himself, and said he was a wizard.—Immediately, many,
if not all of the bewitched, had grievous fits.
—Excerpt from the Salem Witchcraft Papers
Affliction: distress caused by evil
Salvation: the saving of a person from sin or its consequences in the life
after death
Activity
How has power affected your world?
Can you think of groups of people who use power to their advantage? They could be groups in your school, community, or even
larger political groups that affect your world. Use newspapers, the
Internet, and magazines to find images of these groups and make
a collage showing ways they present themselves. Be sure to create
a title and label your images. What do these images say about the
world you live in?
John was executed on August 19th. Elizabeth escaped execution because
she was pregnant.
Mary Warren
Mary, a maid in the Proctor’s household, was missing from the Proctors’
hearing. In her absence, Ann Putnam and Abigail Williams accused
Mary of signing the Devil’s book with Elizabeth Proctor. She was
brought before the court April 19th. When questioned she collapsed into
fits, “I will speak! I am sorry for it!” and was arrested. Later, when questioned in private, Mary confessed to signing the Devil’s book. She was
released from jail and rejoined the afflicted girls in court.
Rebecca Nurse
Rebecca was 72 years old at the time of the trials. She was executed July
19th in the first mass hanging. The bodies were thrown into a shallow
grave at the top of Gallows Hill. Rumor has it that Rebecca’s children
went back to Gallows Hill after dark, dug up their mother’s body, and
took it home. The location of her remains is unknown.
Giles Corey
Giles Corey is the only person to be pressed to death by law in the
United States. Most of his records are lost. However, historians believe
he either refused trial or stayed silent when questioned. The pressing
began September 17th and as legend has it all Corey uttered was, “more
weight.” It was a slow end—Giles Corey was not pronounced dead until
September 19th.
Syntax: n. the pattern or order of a sentence or phrase; the structuring
of the subject, verb, etc. in the formation of a sentence.
Samuel Parris
ARTHUR
MILLER
1915–2005
Arthur Asher Miller was born into an educated Jewish
family in New York City in 1915. After receiving his
degree at the University of Michigan, Miller contributed to the World War II effort by interviewing
soldiers for The Story of G.I. Joe, a screenplay based on
the columns of celebrated war journalist Ernie Pyle.
Miller went on to write plays about the conflict of
family and national loyalties in All My Sons (1947),
disillusionment with the American dream in the
Pulitzer Prize-winning Death of A Salesman (1949),
and mass hysteria in The Crucible (1953). Throughout
the 1970s and 80s, Miller committed himself to global human rights causes, including freedom of expression for artists and writers. The film adaptation of The
Crucible, starring Winona Ryder and Daniel Day
Lewis, was nominated in 1996 for an Academy Award
(Best Screenplay), and a film version of A View from
the Bridge (1955) is slated for production in 2006.
Arthur Miller passed away in February of this year.
McCarthy’s Witchhunt:
The Crucible as Allegory?
How do the efforts to purge a community of evil transform that community into a wasteland of isolation and
fear? The Puritan colony of Salem fell prey to terror in
1692, when accusations of witchcraft by young women
exploded into a full-scale witchhunt. It was a chaotic
period, when fears of change and dissent loomed above
the City on the Hill. Arthur Miller dramatized this
chaos and its effect on a community in The Crucible.
“When certainties evaporate with each dawn, the
unknowable is always around the corner…. [H]ow
quickly swept by fear the mass of us can become when
our panic button is pushed,” cautioned the playwright.
He was alluding not only to the mass hysteria that
fueled the Salem witchhunt, but also to those “swept by
fear” in 1950s America during the reign of Red Terror.
As World War II came to a close, tensions surfaced
between the United States and the Soviet Union, ally
nations in the previous conflict, as competition for
postwar European and international markets increased.
During the Cold War (1947–1991), the rivalry for
economic and political superpower status between the
US, USSR, and their respective allies led to
mutual propaganda campaigns, trade embargoes, espionage, low-scale military operations,
and a nuclear arms race. Conservatives perpetuated the fear that Communists had infiltrated
the US government and were working to
destroy American values from within.
The proliferation of Cold War politics, Red
Communism, the female labor force, and the
Civil Rights movement disrupted the established order of white male economic and political dominance in 1950s America. Perceiving
these internal shifts as a threat to an essential
“American way of life,” conservatives endeavored to expunge all “UnAmerican” dissent.
Senator Joseph McCarthy led the Right’s
riposte, fostering a new America governed by
suspicion and an ethic of self-preservation:
colleagues testified against one another to
escape prosecution themselves. The House
UnAmerican Activities Committee, a commission dedicated to rooting Communist sympathizers out of Congress, the arts, and the media,
blacklisted artists and intellectuals who admitted to or were accused of belonging to leftwing
organizations. Many playwrights, actors, and
directors faced unemployment at home as a
result and were forced to seek work internationally. But unlike many of his compatriots,
Miller’s career rebounded after his brush with
the HUAC in 1956.
Fresh off the successes of Death of a Salesman
(1949) and The Crucible (1953), Miller was
called to testify before the HUAC after he was
identified as a Communist sympathizer, most
likely by his colleague, director Elia Kazan. The
Crucible further tarnished Miller’s name before
the HUAC, which interpreted the play as an
allegory for and mockery of conservative politics. Miller, who dismissed such allegorizations
of his work as reductive, was denied a passport
to attend the Brussels premiere of the play, and
charged with contempt for his refusal to name
names. “It was not the rise of ‘McCarthyism’
that moved me,” he insisted in 1957 in reference to his inspiration for The Crucible, “but
something…more weird and mysterious. 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.” In this new subjective reality, a way of
perceiving the world was constructed by
extreme conservatives and adopted by many
Americans, and anyone and everyone posed
potential threats to domestic security, even
family members and friends. Such is the reality
dramatized in The Crucible, as Miller investigates the circumstances in which anxious individuals fall prey to abstract notions of fear to
recover power and control in discovering
enemies among compatriots.
Vocabulary:
Disillusionment: n. increasing skepticism,
freeing from false belief.
Allegory: n. an extended metaphor, or a
narrative or drama that employs motifs,
characters, events, and setting to invoke
another narrative, subject, or event.
Cold War: n. a state of political and military
tension between nations that stops short of
“hot” war or combat, especially that which
existed between the United States and Soviet
Union following World War II.
Superpower: n. a strong and influential
nation-state that dominates its international
allies in regional or global politics and
economics.
Arms race: n. the amassing of powerful
weaponry by two rival nations.
Riposte: n. a retaliatory maneuver.
Blacklist: n. a list of persons or organizations
who have incurred disapproval or suspicion,
and are to be boycotted.
Subjective: adj. relating to a reality as it is perceived, rather than being provable.
Further Reading:
For a selected bibliography of Miller’s work visit
the Perspectives in American Literature website:
http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap8/miller.html
Plays by Arthur Miller:
All My Sons (1947)
Death of a Salesman (1949)
A View from the Bridge (1955)
Film:
The Crucible (1996), starring Daniel Day
Lewis as Proctor and Winona Ryder as
Abigail.
For a list of Miller’s film credits, go to:
http://imdb.com/name/nm0007186/
On Salem and the Puritans
Books:
In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft
Crisis of 1692 by Mary Beth Norton
(2002)
The Story of the Salem Witch Trials by
Bryan F. LeBeau (1998)
The Devil in the Shape of a Woman:
Witchcraft in Colonial New England by
Carol F. Karlsen (1987)
Website:
The Salem Witch Trials: Documentary
Archive and Transcription Project at the
University of Virginia
http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/salem/home.html.
HUAC protestors