|I|I|I| |I|I| |I|I|I| |I|I| The Crucible |I|I|I| |I|I| |I|I|I| Owen Davies B13
The Crucible is a play written in 1953 by Arthur Miller. Arthur Miller is a talented author who was born to a Jewish family in New York in 1915. His grandparents had to move to America from Poland. When the family business unfortunately failed, they moved to Brooklyn, where Miller set the play A view from the Bridge. In Brooklyn Arthur Miller worked in a warehouse to earn money for his university fees.
Moving on to the play itself, The Crucible describes the events that occurred during the Salem witch trials. Miller used the event as an allegory for McCarthyism and the Red Scare. That was a period in the 1940’s and 50’s in which Americans were in fear of communism and the government blacklisted all accused communists.
So the play itself is surprisingly very true to today’s historical knowledge of the Salem witch trials. However there are several noticeable differences between the play and fact. For example, in The Crucible, John Proctor is troubled by a small affair he had with Abigail Williams some time before the play’s opening. At one point in the play, Abigail tries to use John’s lechery in court against him, wrongly assuming that he would never admit it to the court. But the truth of the fact is that John Proctor was, in reality, over sixty years old, and Abigail was only eleven when the trials began. Miller brings John’s age down into his thirties and brings Abby’s up to seventeen because it allows the plot to be strengthened as it adds links between characters in the story, whereas in real life they would not have been tied together.
Similarities and differences between fact and fiction aside, the play is set in the year of 1692 which is the same year according to historical references that Salem with trials did actually begin. Being set in these times, with towns obsessed with witchcraft and power, there naturally would be people that stand out from...