The Crucible (1953). Content and Description

When The Crucible premiered on January 22, 1953, at New York’s Martin Beck Theatre, Miller was already considered one of the leading playwrights of his generation. All My Sons (1947) and Death of a Salesman (1949) combined for more than a thousand Broadway performances, two Drama Critics Circle Awards, two Donaldson Awards, two Tony

Awards, and one Pulitzer Prize. Despite opening to mixed reviews, The Crucible cemented Miller’s literary reputation, placing him in the company of Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams. Yet, while the play secured Miller’s standing alongside the giants of American drama, it drew the ire of political conservatives and thrust Miller into the center of a national controversy. Citing Miller’s “communist sympathies,” the State Department revoked his passport and prevented him from traveling to Belgium for The Crucible’s international premier.

Three years later, after his refusal to identify other communist artists, the U.S. House of Representatives held Miller in contempt, a crime for which he received a one-month suspended jail sentence and a $500 fine. Since then, the communist threat has dissipated, but The Crucible remains popular. It was made into a film starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder in 1996 and is routinely staged in the United States and abroad.

Part morality play, part personal tragedy, part social commentary, The Crucible dramatizes the notorious Salem witch trials of 1692. When the town preacher’s daughter, Betty Parris, descends into a catatonic stupor after participating in a ritualistic campfire ceremony, rumor of satanic infiltration spreads throughout Salem, a small Massachusetts enclave of Puritan colonials. Reverend Parris suspects Betty’s cousin, Abigail Williams, of spreading witchcraft among the town’s girls, and, when pressed, Abigail claims to have fallen, along with Betty and a dozen others, under the spell of the Parris family’s slave, Tituba.

The accusation sets off a series of forced confessions and accusations. In a matter of days, the Massachusetts government establishes a tribunal to root out witchcraft. Within the atmosphere of suspicion and fear, a few opportunistic individuals exact vengeance on local rivals, accusing them of “trucking with the devil,” hoping to seize vacated land, or, in Abigail’s case, a former lover’s attention. Abigail’s zeal forces John Proctor into a hero’s role. Having had an affair with Abigail sometime prior to the action on stage, Proctor is trying to repair his marriage when Abigail accuses his wife, Elizabeth, of witchcraft.

Proctor’s refusal to surrender Elizabeth to the authorities puts him under suspicion, but unlike the majority of the accused, he refuses to implicate his neighbors. In the final scene, Proctor declines to sign a confession, crying out, “I have given you my soul; leave me my name!” Disappointed, Deputy Governor Danforth sentences Proctor to death.

On the most literal level, The Crucible is a work of historical fiction. Before composing a word, Miller sifted through thousands of pages of land deeds, personal correspondence, and trial proceedings. Although he used considerable dramatic license, his characters are based on historical figures. Like his dramatic counterpart, Reverend Parris was a divisive preacher who elicited dread from parishioners and drove away several independent- minded churchgoers. His daughter, Betty, and niece, Abigail, generated suspicions of satanic infiltration when, after experimenting with the occult, they fell ill. Records also verify that Anne Putnam held a grudge against Rebecca Nurse, who, despite a reputation for benevolence, was hanged on July 19, 1692.

The real-life John Proctor had an independent streak that angered his fellows; as in the play, he opposed the witch hunt from the outset. His indignation is a matter of public record: “If [the afflicted girls] were let alone, we should all be devils and witches quickly. They should rather be had to the whipping post [where one might] thrash the Devil out of [them]” (quoted in Hansen 53). In all, between June 1692 and May 1693, 20 people were executed; five more died in prison. More than 200 were incarcerated. Because of the mysterious nature of witchcraft, the only “evidence” required for conviction was the testimony of another townsperson.

From a contemporary vantage, the Salem witch trials might seem an isolated bout of communal insanity. Such an interpretation, however, neglects the historical record; the episode was not a mere aberration. Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, European women were routinely burned at the stake for practicing witchcraft. Almost no one questioned the existence of witches. They were recognized not only in the Bible, but also in legal codes, philosophical treatises, scientific literature, and medical textbooks.

Within a century, witchcraft became an obsolete explanation for illness, accidents, and other calamities. The Crucible counts on the audience’s inability to identify with late 17th-century worldviews. In doing so, the play underscores the changing nature of cultural belief systems, questions the legitimacy of judging others on the basis of these systems, and casts doubt on ethical, religious, and political “certainties.” Reverend Hale, who, during the play’s course, undergoes the greatest personal growth, voices these sentiments: “The very crowns of holy law I brought, and what I touched with my bright confidence, it died; and where I turned the eye of my great faith, blood flowed up. . . . Life is God’s most precious gift; no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it” (Collected Plays 1945-1961 444).

Miller wants audiences and readers to probe their own moral views, bearing in mind that the passing of time will likely render them antiquated and barbaric. He suggests that just as we look upon the Salem hysteria with contempt and amusement, so too will future generations look upon our own times. Seen in this light, the Salem episode demonstrates the need for moral restraint and social acceptance.

Miller also wants audiences to recognize parallels between the Salem witch hunts and the red scare that swept the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Few failed to see the connection in 1953, when witch hunt was common parlance for congressional efforts to root out communist infiltration in the United States. In order to appreciate the play in today’s post-cold war era, it must be placed in historical context. Eight years before The Crucible reached the stage, in the aftermath of World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as the only viable global leaders. Never comfortable allies during the war, their uneasy partnership quickly devolved into a fierce competition for economic and political allies.

In 1947, the United States began offering financial support to overseas anticommunist regimes, no matter how corrupt or abusive. The same year, by executive order, President Harry Truman instituted “loyalty” review boards to bar communist sympathizers from government employment. Meanwhile, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) investigated communist subversion, both inside and outside the government. Among the committee’s targets, Hollywood screenwriters and directors were the most prominent. Several were accused of disseminating communist propaganda and were cited for contempt when, in their own defense, they invoked the First Amendment.

Public fear, already high, peaked in 1949 when the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb. On February 9, 1950, Joseph McCarthy, Wisconsin’s little-known junior senator, delivered a now-infamous speech in which he claimed to have a list of State Department employees who were “known members of the Communist Party.” The speech was not recorded, and the audience was small. Nevertheless, rumor of the allegation spread quickly. Within weeks, the Senate created an ad hoc panel—the Tydings Committee—to investigate McCarthy’s charges.

When pressed, McCarthy whittled his list of communist State Department workers from 205 to nine. All were exonerated. By then, however, McCarthy had captured the public’s imagination. After he was reelected in 1952, McCarthy was appointed chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Operations, which, together with HUAC, forced thousands to explain their political beliefs and profess loyalty to the United States. In the wake of the anticommunist crusade, McCarthy and other politicians ruined thousands of careers. Even when cleared of illegal activity, the accused were often fired, shunned by friends and coworkers, and shut out of community organizations.

In early 1953, when The Crucible opened on Broadway, few had the courage to criticize McCarthy’s tactics. High-visibility anticommunists such as McCarthy, Richard Nixon, and J. Edgar Hoover did not tolerate dissent. These men divided Americans into two camps, echoing Dan- forth’s warning to Francis Nurse in Act 3: “A person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between” (416). Using the same polarizing logic, McCarthy bullied witnesses and political opponents, branding anyone who disagreed with his browbeating methods a “traitor.”

In one of the great examples of life imitating art, political opponents considered The Crucible as evidence that its creator was an enemy of the United States. The play called Miller to the attention of HUAC, which summoned him to testify in 1956. As did Proctor, Miller pleaded guilty—he had dabbled in socialism during his college years—but he refused to incriminate others. Resembling the Salem trials, the McCarthy and HUAC hearings promised absolution to defendants willing to “name names.” The year before The Crucible premiered, Miller felt personally betrayed when one of his closest friends, the stage and film director Elia Kazan, exposed a handful of Miller’s colleagues during a HUAC deposition.

Just as it had during the Salem witch hunts, politics turned friends into foes, rivals into enemies. Leaders in both eras used public anxiety to turn neighbors against one another. Accusing a rival of communist sympathies—so-called red- baiting—became an effective measure for seizing power in both political and business arenas, just as accusing George Jacob of witchcraft enables Thomas Putnam to seize the imprisoned man’s land. In 1989, 36 years after he wrote The Crucible, Miller commented, “I could not imagine spending so much time [writing] what seemed to me so obvious a tale. But as the anti-Communist crusade settled in, and showed signs of becoming the permanent derangement of the American psyche, a kind of mystery began to emerge from its melodramas and comedies. We were all behaving differently than we used to; we had drunk from the cup of suspicion of one another. . . . We had entered a mysterious pall from which there seemed no exit” (Theater Essays 461).

Two of the most bizarre and appalling episodes in American history—the Salem trials and the communist witch hunts—ended when exhaustion and moral outrage overwhelmed anxiety and fear. The Crucible does not dramatize the aftermath of the Salem episode, primarily because its contemporary analog, the red scare, was still in full swing when it reached the stage. A year after the play opened on Broadway, James Welch, special counsel for the army, humiliated McCarthy on national television, asking him, “Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” Within months, the Senate formally censured McCarthy for abusing his power.

By the time Miller published his Collected Plays in 1957, he considered it safe to discuss The Crucible’s allegory. The republished text of the play includes supplemental commentary linking the characters and stories to the communist witch hunts. Half a century later, with McCarthy in his grave, HUAC decommissioned, and communism no longer a threat, the red scare has joined the Salem witch trials in the history books. In the intervening years, public sentiment vindicates Miller’s interpretation of both events—that they are, above all, shameful.

With cold war hysteria a distant memory, The Crucible’s continued popularity defied many mid- 20th-century critical expectations. There are several explanations for the play’s endurance. In terms of pure entertainment value, few 20th-century American plays can match The Crucible. Beyond this, the play still resonates with readers and audiences, who recognize an irrational “us and them” attitude in 21st-century American culture. Bloom suggests that the play lacks the aesthetic range of a genuine tragedy, but the “social benignity is . . . beyond questioning. . . . We would have to mature beyond our national tendency to moral and religious self-righteousness for The Crucible to dwindle into another period-piece, and that maturation is nowhere in sight” (Modern Critical Interpretations: The Crucible 2). Miller thinks it taps into something even more basic, “something very fundamental in the human animal: the fear of the unknown, and particularly the dread of social isolation” (Theater Essays 463). If he is right, The Crucible will fascinate for decades to come.

For Discussion or Writing:
1. After watching the 2005 film Good Night and Good Luck, compare the Salem and communist witch hunts. Discuss the similarities and differences between (a) John Proctor and the American journalist Edward R. Murrow or (b) Deputy Governor Danforth and Joseph McCarthy.

2. Keeping The Crucible in mind, discuss the conflict between security and liberty. Why are these two values so often at odds with each other? How might the conflict be resolved? Consider researching a historical period in which these questions were the topic of national or international debate and compare the conditions to those depicted in The Crucible. Potential areas of inquiry include domestic spying and indefinite detention of “enemy combatants” in post-9/11 America, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the suppression of “heresy” during the Spanish Inquisition, and the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution.

3. Although Miller based The Crucible on real events and people, he alters key facts to heighten the play’s dramatic effect. For example, Miller fabricated the affair between John Proctor and Abigail Williams; in reality, Proctor was 60 years old when he was tried and executed, while Williams was only 11. With this in mind, discuss the pros and cons of “dramatic license.” Should authors be limited in their straying from documented fact when they build a work on a historical foundation? Is there a sharp distinction between “history” and “fiction”? What does “Based on a True Story” mean?

4. Discuss the portrayal of gender in The Crucible. Given that most of the Salem witch hunt victims were female, is it significant that the play’s hero is male? Why or why not?

5. Critics generally agree that The Crucible succeeds as a social critique of mid-20th-century American politics. However, both shortly after the play’s premiere and decades later, critics have disagreed on the play’s merits as a tragedy. In Poetics, Aristotle defines tragedy as “an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its katharsis of such emotions. . . . Every Tragedy, therefore, must have six parts, which parts determine its quality—namely, Plot, Characters, Diction, Thought, Spectacle, Melody.” Does The Crucible meet these criteria? Does the play depict lasting, universal qualities of human existence, or is it a period piece destined to fade as its political relevance diminishes?