Historical Context and Author’s Purpose
The Crucible is taken from history. No character is in the
play who did not take a similar role in Salem, 1692. The
basic story is recorded, if briefly, in certain documents of
the time. It will be a long time before I shall be able to
shake Rebecca Nurse, John Proctor, Giles Corey and the
others out of my mind. But there are strange, even weird
memories that have connected themselves to this play,
and these have to do with the present, and it has all got
mixed up together.
The more I read into the Salem panic, the more it touched off
corresponding ages of common experiences in the fifties: the old
friend of a blacklisted person crossing the street to avoid being
seen talking to him; the overnight conversions of former leftists
into born-again patriots; and so on. Apparently, certain processes
are universal. When Gentiles in Hitler's Germany, for example, saw
their Jewish neighbors being trucked off, or rs in Soviet Ukraine
saw the Kulaks sing before their eyes, the common reaction, even
among those unsympathetic to Nazism or Communism, was quite
naturally to turn away in fear of being identified with the
condemned. As I learned from non-Jewish refugees, however there
was often a despairing pity mixed with "Well, they must have done
something." Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society
must somehow make sense. The thought that the state has lost its
mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And
so the evidence has to be internally denied.
•
Who was Arthur Miller, author of The Crucible, and what
inspired him to write the play?
• McCarthyism
• The Salem Witch Trials
 Born in 1915 in New York City to parents who were
Jewish Polish immigrants
 Graduated from the University of Michigan with a BA
in English
 Joined the Federal Theater Project, which was part of
the New Deal
 When Congress shut down the Federal Theater Project
(due to fear of communist infiltration), he started
working in a shipyard while he continued writing
 Married Mary Grace Slattery in 1940
 They had two children
 Did not fight in World War II due to an old high
school football injury to his knee
 Won a Tony Award (like the Oscars of theater) for his
play All My Sons in 1946
 Called “a very depressing play in a time of great
optimism”
 A good review in The New York Times saved the
production from failure
 Built his own studio in Connecticut
 Wrote Act I of Death of a Salesman in one day;
finished the play in six weeks
 Premiered in 1949 and is considered one of the
greatest plays ever written
 Won another Tony Award
 Won the New York Drama Circle Critics’ Award
 Won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama
 The first play ever to win all three of these awards
 Play was directed by Elia Kazan and performed 742
times
 In 1952 Elia Kazan appeared before the House Un-
American Activities Committee
 Kazan was worried about his career
 To save himself from trouble, he named eight members of
“The Group Theater,” which was a group of playwrights,
directors, actors ,and producers, as communists
 Those named as communists faced the destruction of their
career
 Those who named names were “safe”
 Although Miller was not named by Kazan, their decades-
long friendship was destroyed by Kazan’s choice to testify
 After Kazan testified, Miller decided to write a play about
the situation, but decided to tell the story through the lens
of the Salem Witch Trials instead of directly dramatizing
current events
Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American
Activities Committee
 An investigative committee in the US House of
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representatives
Originally created in 1938 to uncover citizens with
Nazi ties; this led to the Hollywood Blacklist (next
slide)
Name was changed in 1969 to “House Committee on
Internal Security”
Abolished in 1975
Joseph McCarthy was not actually a member since he
was a senator (not a member of the House of
Representatives), but he is associated with the antiCommunist activities of the committee
 The HUAC released a report in 1938 claiming that
communism was pervasive in Hollywood
 A former Communist party member named 42 names,
claiming these were communists
 Although his testimony was supposedly in confidence,
it was leaked to the press
 Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, and Katharine
Hepburn were among those named
 The committee chairman promised to “clear” those
who “cooperated.”
 World War II took attention away from these efforts
 After the war, the hunt was back on
 A pamphlet was published to instruct directors on how to
avoid glorifying communists:
 Don’t criticize the wealthy
 Don’t criticize big business
 Don’t praise the “common man” too much
 Don’t praise grassroots efforts
 The committee called in the people on their previous list.
Ultimately, ten refused to testify, citing their First
Amendment rights to freedom of speech and assembly
 The Motion Picture Association of America’s president said
these people would be fired/suspended without pay
 As the 1950s progressed, the blacklist grew
 Actors and actresses were fired/could not get work
 Journalists and news programs were afraid to air both
sides of the story for fear of appearing to be
Communist sympathizers (which could lose them
their jobs as well)
 Many in the entertainment industry “named names”
in order to stay on the good side of investigators and
keep their jobs (after they had admitted past
membership in the Communist party)
 U.S. senator from Wisconsin
 In 1950, became the face of anti-Communist
sentiment, actions, and investigation in the U.S.
 Made claims that there were large numbers of
Communists, Soviet spies, and sympathizers (people
who supported them) operating in the government and
elsewhere
 Although he had no evidence to substantiate his claims,
his investigations inspired fear and ruined the careers
and lives of many people
 He was eventually censured (had to give up committee
chairs, but did not lose his position) by the Senate, but
this was after he had destroyed all those lives
 Term coined in 1950
 Applied then to the hunt for Communists
 Political repression of communists
 A campaign to spread fear about their activities
 Unsubstantiated claims of widespread espionage
 Possible consequences for those found to be Communist or
Communist sympathizers:
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Loss of employment
Loss of custody of children in divorce proceedings
“Blacklisting” (couldn’t get new jobs)
Imprisonment
 These consequences were eventually declared unconstitutional
(after the damage was done)
 Applied now to reckless, unsubstantiated public attacks
(a.k.a. “witch hunts”)
 In 1953, respected newscaster Edward R. Murrow and
his staff decided to take on McCarthy, even though
telling the truth could cost them their livelihoods
 Those not under investigation saw the devastation
caused by the unconstitutional activities of McCarthy
and others and took a stand
 Politicians (including McCarthy’s rivals and fellow
Republicans) criticized his scare tactics and baseless
accusations
 Ultimately, in 1959, President Truman called the
investigations the “most un-American thing in the
country today.”
How Miller told the story of McCarthyism
 Reminder: One of his longest friendships had just
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ended over McCarthyism
Miller was watching his friends’ and colleagues’ lives
be destroyed by McCarthyism
In his personal life, in 1951 he cheated on his wife (and
they eventually divorced)
In other words, tough times for Arthur Miller
Went to Salem to research the witch trials, which were
not a thing everyone knew about then
 At this time, puritanism was the law of the land
 Other religions were illegal in Massachusetts colony
 One woman was hanged for being a Quaker
 Puritans believed they were the “elect,” or the only people
God had chosen to take to heaven
 But not all of them. They thought they needed to constantly
keep an eye out for the devil, because the devil was real, could
be walking in flesh among them, and wanted nothing more
than to steal them from the righteous path.
 There was strong distrust of others, a dark and fatalistic
idea of a vengeful God and an active devil, and a deep,
pervasive fear of not being seen to be among the elect
 Several towns were involved in the area
 People were executed for witchcraft here and there in
the years leading up to 1692
 Salem was known as a “quarrelsome” town with many
local disputes
 Selection of their minister (Rev. Parris) was contentious
 He was also notorious for seeking out problems between his
parishoners
 He assigned public punishments for small infractions
 Property lines were in constant dispute
 Grazing rights were a problem too
 People blamed witchcraft and spells for a number of
problems:
 Misbehavior in children
 Being tired
 Not being tired
 Sneezing a lot
 Teenagers being rebellious
 Yelling
 Neck and back pain
 Arm flapping
 Assaulting other people
 Girls in the Parris household made the first
accusations in January and February of 1692
 Betty (age 9) and Abigail (age 11) began to have fits
 They screamed, threw stuff, made weird noises, and crawled
under furniture
 They also claimed to feel like they were being pinched or
pricked with pins
 Soon other girls in town developed the same problems,
including during church services
 Three women were originally accused:
 Sarah Good (a homeless beggar)
 Sarah Osborne (a woman who did not regularly attend church and
had recently remarried)
 Tituba (a non-white slave)
 These women represented the “usual type” for a witchcraft
accusation
 However, in March, more were accused
 Martha Corey (who had expressed doubt about the girls’ claims)
 Dorothy Good (a four year old)
 Rebecca Nurse (along with Martha Corey, a fully conveanted
member of the church)
 … and more in April
 Sarah Cloyce (Nurse’s sister)
 Elizabeth Proctor
 … and that afternoon, when he objected to his wife’s arrest, John
Proctor
 Within a week
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Giles Corey (Martha’s husband)
Abigail Hobbs*
Bridget Bishop
Mary Warren (who used to be one of the accusers)*
Deliverance Hobbs*
• Some of those arrested (*) confessed and named names;
they received mercy
• The accusations and arrests continued; eventually several
hundred people were in jail awaiting trial
• They accused the wife of the governor!!
• Eventually, 20 were executed and 5 died in jail
 Spectral evidence
 The afflicted claimed to see the apparition or the shape of the
person who was allegedly afflicting them
 Theological dispute: Could the devil use a person’s shape
without his or her permission?
 Witch cake
 A form of white magic: They made a cake from rye meal + the
afflicted girls’ urine and fed it to a dog. When the dog ate the
cake, it would hurt the witch and she would cry out.
 Touch test
 If the afflicted is having a fit and the accused witch touches
her, if the fit stops, then that means that person was a witch
 If you named names, you could get out of trouble
 No one who confessed was executed
George Lincoln Burr
 The play caused problems for Miller with the HUAC
 In 1956, he applied to renew his passport
 The HUAC took this opportunity to require him to
appear before the committee
 His wife, Marilyn Monroe, attended with him, putting her
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own career at risk
The chairman promised NOT to ask him to name names
The chairman then asked him to name names during the
hearing; Miller refused
He was fined, blacklisted, and denied a passport renewal
In 1958, his conviction was overturned
A work of literature or picture that can be interpreted to
reveal a second meaning, typically a moral or political one