The Crucible

Arthur Miller
 Firstly, what is a crucible?
Crucible:
 a vessel or melting pot

 A test of the most

decisive kind, a severe

trial
crucible = a vessel in which
substances are heated to high
temperatures, the impure elements
being melted away to leave the
pure elements behind.
 The Crucible is . . .

Puritanism
+
Witchcraft
+
McCarthyism
+
Arthur Miller
 Puritanism
 Christian faith that originated in England during the
early 1600s
The Puritans

 They were a religious group in England who

had very strict rules about how people should
behave. Eventually, the English people got
sick of them, and so many Puritans fled to the
US to escape religious persecution.
 They settled in North America in 1620.
•They brought with them the
hope of religious freedom but
instead became embroiled in
hysteria over the existence of
witches.
•They had been persecuted in
their native England, but they
created a theocracy and
eventually persecuted others.
 The Puritans
 They firmly believed:
 in the Bible; they felt that it revealed the Lord’s word, and only
through it does he directly communicate to people.
 They believed man could do nothing to be saved – salvation was
a gift that could only come from God
 Your soul was predestined from birth – you were either going to
Heaven or Hell. They constantly searched for hints as to what
path they were on.
 The Puritans
 Women were considered subservient to men,
and women were more likely to consort with
the Devil than men
 The church was the centre of society
 They also wanted to purge evil from the world.
One way to do this  confront and eradicate
witchcraft.
 Witchcraft in Salem
 Like all Puritans, the residents of
Salem Village believed in witches
and in witchcraft.
 They believed that witchcraft was
“entering into a compact with the
devil in exchange for certain powers
to do evil.”
 They considered witchcraft both a
sin and a crime; it was a very serious
accusation, which was carefully and
thoroughly investigated.
•Most of those accused of being
witches were women.
•Many were healers and used plants to
heal people.
•Many were without family, and this
made them easy targets.
•They were people who did not fit in
with the mainstream for some reason.
One of the ways most
witches were accused
was with the use of
“spectral evidence.”
If someone said they
had seen the accused
with the devil in a
dream, or that the
accused had visited
them in the night, or
had hurt them, it was
taken as evidence
that the devil was at
Those accused of being
witches were most often
found guilty. Sometimes
they were sentenced to be
tied to a rock dunked in a
pond, and if they sank, they
were declared innocent.
Innocent. If they somehow
survived the dunking, they
were obviously witches, and
they were executed.
Most of those found guilty
of witchcraft were hanged.
One man was pressed to
death with rocks because
 The Salem Witch Trials

http://www.schooltube.com/video/
93b2256b232a4c419ba0/The%20REAL
%20HISTORY%20Behind%20the%20Salem
How did it start?
In 1692, several girls in the village of Salem,
Massachusetts, became intrigued when a
West Indian servant told them stories of
magic and voodoo from her native land.
Bored and restricted by the oppressive
Puritan life, the girls slipped into the woods
one night and “conjured” love charms and
hexes.
One girl, Betty Parris, slipped into
unconsciousness when her father caught
them. She wouldn’t wake up, and this
started the discussion of witchcraft. To
avoid punishment, the girls created the
story of the “witches” who made them
Map of the United States of America
Map of Massachusetts
 Witchcraft in Salem
 The witchcraft hysteria began in
Salem, Massachusetts, in early
1692.
 Reverend Samuel Parris’s
daughter and Abigail Williams
started having fits of convulsion,
screaming, and hallucination.
 A doctor examined the girls and
concluded that the only
explanation for these bizarre
behaviors was witchcraft.
 Witchcraft in Salem
 A recently published book of
the time detailed the
symptoms of witchcraft; the
girls’ fits were much like
those described in the book.
 Therefore, the Puritans of
Salem were quick to believe
the doctor’s diagnosis.
 Witchcraft in Salem
 The girls pointed
fingers at Tituba (the
Parris’ slave), Sarah
Good, and Sarah
Osborn, which sparked
a witch hunt.
 Witchcraft in Salem
 During the next eight months of
terror, more than 150 people were
imprisoned for witchcraft.
 By the time court was dismissed,
27 people had been convicted, 19
hanged, and 1 pressed to death.
 The hysteria that snowballed in
Salem reveals how deep the belief
in the supernatural ran in colonial
America.
Why did it happen?
It began as a way for the oppressed
girls to avoid being punished.

It then became an ideal way to get

revenge on anyone whom you disliked.

People started accusing their neighbors

of being witches so they could steal
their farm land.
People accused others of being
witches if they wanted to steal their
husbands or wives or possessions.
 The Witch Trials
 Numerous reasons have been offered since to explain
the original symptoms the girls showed, including
hysteria, hallucinations brought on by food
poisoning, and various diseases.
 There is also no one reason as to why things got so
out of control – desire for land and power, strict
religious beliefs, and a tightly controlled society are
just some of the explanations.
So…
Why did Arthur Miller, almost 400 years
after these events took place, decide to write
about them?
 Basically, he saw a strong parallel
between the witch-hunts in Salem, and what
was happening in America in the 1950s.
However, this time, the hunt was for
Communists.
 The Cold War
 Back in the 20th century, there were two world
superpowers: the USA and the USSR.
 In 1946, the USSR acquired nuclear weapons.
This was effectively the start of the Cold War
between the USSR and the USA – an
undeclared war not of bloody fighting but of
threat and counter threat.
 Capitalism v Communism
 America represented the
ideology of capitalism,
while the USSR represented
communism.
 In 1949, China became a
Communist country, and
American paranoia about
Communism reached crisis
proportions.
 Fear of Communism
 In America, and in Australia to a lesser extent, the common
perception was that the Communists were “an empire of
Evil”.
 The struggle was for control of trouble spots. On one side
were the good (the US, with it’s freedom loving, democratic
traditions), while on the other, was the bad (the USSR and
China, with repressive police states, human rights abuses
and lack of freedom). This is how it was portrayed in the
Western media.
 McCarthy
 Into an American society
that was extremely paranoid
that the Communists were
going to take over the
world, a Senator named
Joseph McCarthy rose to
prominence.
 McCarthy
 He made a speech in February 1950, where he claimed to have
a list of more than 200 Communist party members who were
working for the US State Department.
 The attempt to ‘weed out’ Communists had been going on
before McCarthy, and continued after him, but he became
symbolic of the era, and his involvement coined the term
“McCarthyism”.
 The Red Scare
 He held hearings where
people were demanded to
give names of other
Communists in order for
leniency. People were afraid
they might be named
Communists, and it was
called The Red Scare. (“red”
is a term used for
Communists)
McCarthyism

 McCarthyism is the term used to describe a period of intense

suspicion in the United States during the early 1950s.
 A special House Committee on Un-American Activities was formed
to investigate allegations of communism.
 During this period, people from all walks of life became the
subjects of aggressive “witch hunts” often based on inconclusive,
questionable evidence.
 The Hunt for Communists
 This whole period of United States history was
characterised by suspicion, paranoia and
hysteria. People were encouraged to turn on
each other, and to name suspected
Communists.
McCarthyism

 Persons accused of being communists were

often denied employment in both the public
and private sector.
 In the film industry alone, over 300 actors,
writers, and directors were denied work in the
U.S.
 American writer, Arthur Miller, was one of
those alleged to have been “blacklisted.”
The House Un-American Activities Committee
(HUAC)
 This committee was formed in 1938, and its
focus soon shifted to identifying Communists.
 Its most notorious investigation was into the
Hollywood film industry. Actors, writers, and
directors were called to testify about the
Communist beliefs of themselves and their
colleagues.
 The Hollywood Ten
 Initially, ten guys refused to answer under the
First Amendment. They were sentenced to
prison for contempt of Congress.
 Blacklists
 All of this investigation and suspicion led to
‘blacklists’. No-one every really admitted that
these lists existed, but what it meant was that
hundreds of people working in the
entertainment industry were denied work
because they had been accused of being
Communists, or refused to cooperate with
inquiries.
 Who was blacklisted?
Some of the people blacklisted include:
 Charlie Chaplin (actor)

 Orson Welles (actor, author, director) ( Citizen

Kane)
 Leonard Bernstein (composer) ( West Side

Story)
And…
 Arthur Miller
 Consequences
 Hundreds were imprisoned
 Tens of thousands lost their jobs
 Some of these people did have a past or
present connection with the Communist Party,
however, may not have meant any harm to the
United States at all.
 For most, the evidence linking them to the
Communist Party was dubious at best.
 McCarthyism

 McCarthy’s influence finally faltered in

1954 when a famous CBS newsman,
Edward R. Murrow, aired an
investigative news report which revealed
McCarthy as dishonest in his speeches
and abusive in his interrogation of
witnesses.
 The public was finally made aware of
how McCarthy was ruining the
reputations of many individuals through
false accusations of communism.

Edward R. Murrow
 Comparison between the Salem
Witch Trials and McCarthyism:
1. Suspension of
rational judgment
2. People who
challenged the
authority of the court
soon found
themselves under
suspicion of guilt
3. Conscience was no
longer a private
matter but one of
state administration
 Arthur Miller and The Crucible
 Arthur Miller was in the middle of all of this
hysteria about Communism.
 He saw clear parallels between that and the
hysteria over witches that had existed 4
centuries earlier.
 He wrote The Crucible as an allegory to
illustrate how ridiculous the paranoia about
Communism in the US was.
The Crucible was Arthur Miller’s
way of protesting the House
Unamerican Activities Committee
hearings. He compared the
Communist hearings to the witch
hunts of Salem, where gossip,
rumors, and fear were evidence
enough to convict people.

The term “witch hunt” now applies

to any activity where people are
looking for a scapegoat or where
they are using accusations to get
 Arthur Miller
 1915-2005
 American Playwright and Writer
 In 1953 he wrote The Crucible, which uses the
Salem witchcraft trials of 1692 to attack the anti-
communist “witch hunts” of the 1950s.
 He believed the hysteria surrounding the witch
craft trials in Puritan New England paralleled the
climate of McCarthyism – Senator Joseph
McCarthy’s obsessive quest to uncover
communist party infiltration of American
institutions.
 After the publication of the The Crucible, Miller
himself was investigated for possible associations
with the communist party.
 He refused to give information regarding his
colleagues and was found guilty of contempt of
court. His sentence was later overturned.
It’s really two stories in one:
One: a dramatisation of the real-life events of
Salem, Massachusetts in the late 1690s
and
Two: a comment on how ludicrous the hunt for
Communists in the 1950s was.
Through this play, he makes clear comments
about American government and society.
The Crucible does three
important things:
1. Illustrates the belief that history

repeats itself
2. Through the retelling of the

Salem witch trials during the Red

Scare of the 50s, The Crucible
helped people to understand that
often in life we are unable to see
our moment in history very easily
unless we are aided by earlier
examples, or, in other words,
unless we are able to make a
connection between what is
going on now and what has
already happened.
3. Shows the danger of mob

mentality—the kind of
thinking/action where a large
number of people act on poor
information or they act using
 Themes in The Crucible
 Hypocrisy
 Individual vs. the
community (unity and
exclusion)
 Authority
 Greed
 Justice vs. retribution
and revenge
 Godliness vs.
worldliness
 Ignorance vs. wisdom
It is also a story about the
 The Puritan Myth struggle between good and
 Order vs. Individual evil inside the heart of one
man.
Freedom
REFLECTION (150 + words)
Based on what you’ve heard about the Salem
Witch Trials and the McCarthy hearings, write
a paragraph detailing any connections you see
between the two occurrences.
Why do you think Arthur Miller chose to use
the period of history (1692) that he chose?
Why didn’t he just write about the Red Scare
and the McCarthy trials?
Are there any differences between the two
occurrences (other than the obvious things,
such as time periods and clothes, etc.).
How do you think both of these “witch hunts”
were stopped eventually?