The Crucible
by Arthur Miller
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Book Reviews of The Crucible
Book Review: "Show honor now, show a stony heart and sink them with it."
Summary: 5 Stars
When John Proctor says these words to his wife Elizabeth at the conclusion of this play, he has faced accusations of being in league with the Devil and is ready to face consequences meted out by the religious tribunal he has faced. Though he has sinned by committing adultery with Abigail Williams, he believes the witchcraft trials which have ultimately consumed him to be the result of human, rather than godly, forces. Playwright Arthur Miller sets the scene for this action in an Overture explaining the theocracy which controlled Salem. Powerful clergymen, some more rigid in their interpretations of Scripture than others, "protected" citizens by enforcing conformity with the church's teachings.
Through detailed character sketches inserted into the structure of the play, Miller broadens the realism, and when a group of hysterical young women makes accusations of witchcraft, resulting ultimately in the deaths of nineteen of their fellow-citizens, Miller has prepared his audience to accept the trials and the behavior of the characters as plausible. His straightforward prose, use of homely details, and simple sentence structure (despite its archaic tone) further add to the realism. When the affair between John Proctor and Abigail Williams, who precipitates and then promotes the hysteria among the young "afflicted" girls, is revealed within the play, the modern reader is given a "hook" with which to identify with characters and situations which might otherwise feel foreign.
Miller's play is a powerful revelation of themes involving mass hysteria, fear of the unknown, and a belief in the essential evil hidden within the hearts of men. As the accused are required to prove their innocence, questions regarding the role of individualism within this society, its intolerance of differences, its justice as defined by the state and by clergymen who differ, and the hysteria which grows from repression all surface within the dramatic action, leading to an intensity of feeling rare in modern theater. When John Proctor is faced with a choice of telling the truth and being sentenced to death or lying and being saved, the ironies of the play are fully revealed.
Written in 1952, slightly before the McCarthy era, Miller's depiction of these trials presages the McCarthy hearings and illustrates his belief that the fear of Communism is the equivalent of fear of the Devil in colonial times. Miller, however, has selected facts which illustrate his point of view and his themes, making no pretense of accuracy regarding the witchcraft trials themselves. In reality, Abigail Williams was eleven, and John Proctor was sixty, quite different from the dramatic circumstances here. Mary Whipple
Book Review: Simply Gripping
Summary: 5 Stars
A powerful and exciting rollercoaster is what this play will bring. Its plot, its characters are all engaging and interesting to read. In The Crucible, Arthur Miller has written a book that not only entertains but forces the reader to question the integrity of human beings at its instance of greatest power and weakness.
Set in the late 1600s, The Crucible depicts the horrendous events of the Salem Witch Trials. Even before reading the book, the subject captures the interest of many as images of the mysterious and mystical come to life. As a play, this story already entertains its readers but as a masterfully written piece of literature, this play makes it all the more worthwhile to read. With the backdrop of the Red Scare as the inspiration for this play, Miller plays with the ideas of jealousy, vengeance, and radicalism against the infamous Salem Witch trials to show how quickly problems can escalate out of hand. The plot of the play centers on the couple of John Proctor and his wife, Elizabeth, who are caught up in the middle of a city-wide scandal to rid the town of "witches." The problem begins when the town's reverend finds his daughter and a few other girls dancing out in the woods during the dead of night. Alerted, he requests the help of Rev. Hale, an expert in supernatural affairs. Soon the girls are accused of being witches and are forced to name others. Acting in the worst of human character, they indict those they hate and the conflict flares up and consumes the entire town.
The power and brilliance of this plays stems not from its ability to entertain but from the reader's ability to connect with the characters. Miller has created characters that seem like common people caught up in a malicious scandal. We all erupt in fury as Abigail escapes unpunished for her crime; we cringe as Mary Warren betrays Proctor and we weep as John Proctor is executed for a crime he did not commit. Within the play, Proctor is the only beacon of righteousness that, for his honor and pride, would forfeit his life than lie. This powerful thought provoking event ends the play with a dramatic question lingering in the reader's mind: What would I have done in Proctor's shoes? Against the incessant cries of others to lie for his life, Proctor refuses and will rather die for his beliefs. The audience is dismayed that Abigail and the other girls are capable of such evil. With an impactful ending and solid ability to entertain, The Crucible will leave readers grasping for more.
Book Review: Playing Tituba
Summary: 4 Stars
When I was up at Cambridge back in the olden days when there were only three women's colleges and men's colleges were single sex, I tried my hand at acting and ended up joining an "indie" production of "The Crucible. By "Indie" I mean that it was not produced by either the of the two drama societies the Amateur Dramatic Club and the Mummers, nor by a college drama society. It was instead produced by this second-year student and performed in a church and performed by people who answered an ad in Varsity. That was how I got into it.
I probably got the part of Tituba because I am Chinese and they didn't have a more authentic applicant. I also was a member of the ADC. What we did have was the up and rising freshman actress to play Abigail Proctor. We happened to be reading English at Griton in the same year. She was a much better actress.
But one thing that really struck me when I was reading this play was how it was basically the McCarthy Treason trials and Miller's take on them. I didn't know about the trials first-hand but I was certainly aware that they had happened and the kind of hysteria behind it.
Having said that, I also did not think that Miller was trying to portray Salem, Massachusetts when those trials took place. Gone from the picture in spite of the presence of a minister is any sense of the religious fervor and fear which also played a significant role then. This went beyond orthodox political thinking. I don't think that we ever quite got the crying-out scene right, but I don't think there was all that much guidance either. And actually, looking back now, I am not so sure that the rest of the cast were quite as aware of the McCarthy trials as perhaps they should have been. Certainly they were never mentioned at any rehearsal I ever attended. And the copy we used was not footnoted or anything, nor did it have an introduction.
All this indicates to me that Miller's play did not travel all that well, as is the case with a few others I have read. Not "Death of a Salesman" though.
That little production did all right though. It was also the last time I acted in Cambridge. I didn't figure there were going to be too many opportunities for a not-so-wonderful Chinese actress (of course I didn't think so then) and started working for the newspaper rather more seriously. But I still have the play, and I read it again every so often.
Book Review: "It is no part of salvation that you should use me!"
Summary: 5 Stars
Arthur Miller's masterful play explores the consequences of greed, envy, vengeance, extremism, and hypocrisy run amok. It is set in Salem during the infamous witch trials, but could easily translate to other times in history (Robespierre's reign of terror during the French revolution, McCarthy's Communist hearings, etc.). Miller shows how the witch trials took flight and gathered speed and power until they nearly consumed the whole of Salem. He also shows how the officials in charge refused to hear evidence contrary to their purpose so as not to lose face publicly by standing down. Through the story of John and Elizabeth Proctor, a couple caught in the center of the firestorm, the tragedy of the trials is made abundantly clear. In a futile attempt to save his wife from the machinations of Abigail Williams (the young girl Proctor had had an affair with, and who kicks off the accusations with her friends to get Elizabeth Proctor out of the way so that she can be with John), Proctor fights the system by challenging the court to see the motives behind the accusations. His attempts to bring reason into madness are met with the insistence that if he is not with them, he is against them (which should sound eerily familiar to anyone with a television set). After Proctor himself has been accused of colluding with the Devil and sentenced to death the officials in charge become determined to use him to validate their holy terror. If Proctor, a popular and well-liked man in town, were to lie and give them a confession that he had conspired with Satan it would legitimize all of the hangings that went on in the public eye. Giving a false confession would save Proctor from hanging and allow him to live to see the birth of the child Elizabeth is carrying -- but can he go through with it? Miller's multilayered play is a classic for the ages -- a truly timeless work of drama that is every bit as relevant today as it was when it was first produced in 1953 (at the height of the McCarthy hearings), and which will most likely prove relevant in another fifty years as well. That is a sad statement for humanity, but a credit to Miller for his perceptive eye and his courage to capture it so eloquently. Perhaps with the example set forth in "The Crucible" we can learn from the past, and not be doomed to repeat it.Book Review: A heretical view
Summary: 3 Stars
What was Miller writing about in this play? Was it an examination of the psychological and social phenomena that led to the Salem witch trials? If so, it failed, because the story departs too much from historic fact and thus changes the motivation of the protagonists. Miller makes Abigail older and Proctor younger than they were in reality, and makes them erstwhile lovers, which they never in fact were. So Abigail is motivated by the jealousy and resentment of a spurned lover. Another character is motivated by a desire to seize the property of the victims. Although greed and the settling of old scores no doubt played a part in the terrible events of 1692, they could not have been the whole story. Deeper and broader religious forces must have been at work to bring about the execution of 20 innocent people. The Crucible does not enlighten us on what those forces were. That play remains to be written.
The conventional interpretation is that Miller was really writing about the McCarthy anti-Communist hearings, and likening them to a witch-hunt. This too is problematic. Miller draws the parallel in the notes in this book and elsewhere, but never explicitly states that it was the real, prime theme of the play. And once again, the essentially domestic and personal themes of the play do not shed light on the political forces that shaped the McCarthy hearings.
What is clear is that the play stands as a dramatic tour de force. It is a gift to actors, being one dramatic, emotional crisis after another. So, if it lacks the intellectual density that Miller said he aimed at after his success with Death of a Salesman, it has the dramatic force to keep it a perennial favorite in theaters. It has one weakness dramatically, and that is an excessively large cast, particularly in the first scene, where all the entrances and exits in Betty's bedroom are rather ludicrous.
The Penguin Classics edition has a good introduction by Christopher Bigsby and incorporates notes by the author. It also includes - as an appendix - Act 2, Scene 2, which is omitted in most productions.