Juxtaposition of the Anti-Tradition and Realism and Experimentation in “Th Crucible”

Juxtaposition of the Anti-Tradition and Realism and Experimentation in “Th Crucible”

  • Submitted By: dabella
  • Date Submitted: 12/22/2008 5:52 PM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 382
  • Page: 2
  • Views: 902

In “The Crucible”, it is possible to see the juxtaposition of two trends in American literature: the Anti-tradition and realism and experimentation. In the second half of the 20th century, traditional forms and ideas no longer provided meaning to many American writers. In poetry, style and form was seemed as provisional and originality started to become a new tradition. This change was caused by World War II, the rise of anonymity and consumerism in a mass urban society, the protest movements of the 1960s, the Vietnam conflict, the Cold War, environmental threats and specially the rise of the mass media and culture, which changed American life and customs. At the same time, Americans became uncomfortably aware that technology could be used to manipulate the culture and many writers used their writings to articulate this impact on the individual.
“The Crucible” depicts a period in which there was much intolerance towards communists. As with the alleged witches of Salem, suspected Communists were encouraged to confess as means of escaping punishment. The policy resulted in a whirlwind of accusations. People began to realize that they might be condemned as Communists regardless of their innocence and many “cooperated,” attempting to save themselves through false confessions. Those who were revealed, falsely or legitimately, and those who refused to incriminate their friends, saw their careers suffer, as they were blacklisted from potential jobs for many years afterward. Arthur Miller, for example, was called before the House in 1956 and asked to provide the name of persons who might have Communist sympathies and because of his refusal to do so was charged with contempt of Congress. As he specifies “The fate of each character is exactly that of his historical model, and there is no one in the drama who did not play a similar -and in some cases exactly the same- role in history”.
In my opinion, in this play Miller tried to project subjective life and the...

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