Link for Crucible script PDF:

https://wiki.uiowa.edu/download/attachments/184886812/Crucible%20Script.pdf?api=v2

Fantastic link to an interview about the Salem Witch Hunt:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-witches-stacey-schiff-salem_5627aae3e4b0bce34703363e

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A frightening account of current-day witch killings.
Can you see yourself in there?

THEY BURN WITCHES HERE

STORY BY KENT RUSSELL ART BY ALESSANDRA HOGAN

http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/they-burn-witches-here/

“The preening of one’s status wasn’t just tabu; it was dangerous. The person who threw many large feasts or cultivated many fruitful gardens ran the risk of making his or her clanspeople jelas, a word that goes beyond mere “jealousy” to convey something akin to “a state of uncontrollable, angry covetousness.” Nowadays, a person can make others jelas by owning a car or running a successful highway-side concession stand. Making others jelas is to be avoided, especially since it is believed that witches are very jelas and vindictive creatures indeed.”

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A series of reviews and reactions from the time when the play was first presented in the USA.

http://www.amerlit.com/plays/PLAYS%20Miller,%20Arthur%20The%20Crucible%20(1953)%20analysis%20by%2018%20critics.pdf

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A powerful article about our response to female anger

http://time.com/4089074/angry-men-women/?xid=homepage

Why Angry Men Are More Influential Than Angry Women

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What is truth?

 

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A seminal article by the BBC about the issue of who to trust and why figuring that out is a big deal.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170301-lies-propaganda-and-fake-news-a-grand-challenge-of-our-age

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Wider world example of the way Australia is choosing to handle climate change.

‘Truth vs Lies’ is one of the big issues we face with respect to survival in our day. E.g. Vaccinations, the climate situation. Because these are complicated issues, often the truth includes vital pieces of relevant information from both sides. With accurate weighting and a decent understanding of how the facts fit together in context, a valid, factual truth can be expected to be achieved.

Unfortunately, the internet has created an environment where even the most ludicrous, ignorant and down-right evil people have been given a megaphone. If their concoctions align enough with our fears, suspicions, greed or other biases, we can be easily caught up in their baited hooks. Even the mildest of our elderly aunties can be turned into keyboard warriors when given the right cause to “share” for.
This article does a good job of clearly outlining the murky pathway taken by trouble-making trolls, powerfully motivated, highly financed, biased media and the regular people with opinions who have contributed towards Australia’s particular stance on climate change. A stance that, some could argue, has had life and death consequences, along with deeply embittering the opposing sides – just like the situation in Salem.  Fear and the fight for survival drive the action in the play and in our global economies. With so much at stake for all of us, how do we determine the truth? How useful might that truth be if it is not nearly as meme-able or clear as a more “believable” lie?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/08/australia-climate-disaster-denial-bushfires-online-rightwing-press-politicians

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/feb/14/the-crucible-the-perfect-play-for-our-post-truth-times

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The play in 10 minutes (Still read the play – because it is brilliant!! And you will be a better human being if you do.)

Spark Notes Summary:

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Awesome link to more great info:

Go to this link.  http://mrhoyesibwebsite.com

From the homepage, click on Drama then click on The Crucible. This will take you to an excellent resource for quotes, themes, motifs and more.

HOT TIP: Check out KEY QUOTATIONS in preparation for the exam!

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PAST EXAM QUESTIONS FOR 3.1

QUESTIONS (Choose ONE)

 

1. “Major characters can find themselves in collision with forces beyond their control, and in many cases their responses to the collision can be described as morally questionable.”

To what extent do you agree with this statement?

Respond to this question with close reference to one or more text(s) you have studied.

 

2. “Forget the big players in the world; it is the people in the margins of our society whose stories are most compelling.”

To what extent do you agree with this statement?

Respond to this question with close reference to one or more text(s) you have studied.

 

3. “The setting that is most accessible and relevant to the reader is the one that is grounded in realism.”

To what extent do you agree with this statement?

Respond to this question with close reference to one or more text(s) you have studied.

 

4. “While the conclusion of a text is important, what really matters is the foundation of a good opening.”

To what extent do you agree with this statement?

Respond to this question with close reference to one or more text(s) you have studied.

 

5. “The use of symbolism can transform the most straightforward theme.”

To what extent do you agree with this statement?

Respond to this question with close reference to one or more text(s) you have studied.

 

6. “A successful text will be one in which the reader is asked to be more than a spectator, in fact they are encouraged to be involved.”

To what extent do you agree with this statement?

Respond to this question with close reference to one or more text(s) you have studied.

 

7. “In order to be informative, the shape and / or style of a text must always be straightforward.”

To what extent do you agree with this statement?

Respond to this question with close reference to one or more text(s) you have studied.

 

8. “An exceptional text will be one that handles facts and opinion with care.”

To what extent do you agree with this statement?

Respond to this question with close reference to one or more text(s) you have studied.

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https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/crucible

THE CRUCIBLE INTRODUCTION

In A Nutshell

 WHY SHOULD I CARE?

There is something about the cocktail of fear, anxiety, passion, and jealousy in The Crucible that we find disturbingly familiar. As wild as The Crucible’s plot is, we’ve seen this episode in history over and over again. The Crucible drives home how often history repeats itself.

As we mention in “In a Nutshell”, The Crucible is a parable that tells the tale of a similar “witch hunt” that went down in author Arthur Miller’s time. Fearing the spread of communism and seeing it as a threat to government and individual freedoms, the American government, led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, sought out every single communist in the U.S. They put suspects on trial and forced them to “name names” and rat out their friends and compatriots. Soon the whole country was whipped into a moral frenzy. (Learn more.)

Arthur Miller, playwright extraordinaire, realized that the lingo being thrown around by McCarthy sounded very similar to the language used in the Salem Witch Trials (some 300 years before), a historical period he researched heavily while in college. In comparing the Salem Witch Trials and the McCarthy era, we see a similar cocktail of fear, anxiety, passion, and jealousy pervade the country. Check out Shmoop History’s coverage of “Colonial New England,” and learn more about the parallels between the Salem witch trials and the McCarthy era.

Where would you stand if history were to repeat itself once more and you found yourself in the middle of a “witch hunt?” Would you agree to say something that wasn’t true in order to save your family? What would you do if you became the scapegoat, the person on whom all blame is placed? Arthur Miller helps us try to think about how we would handle ourselves if we were to find ourselves in this situation, and he also makes us think about how emotional humans can get when justice is on the line.

THE CRUCIBLE SUMMARY

How It All Goes Down

Here is the MOST fantastic link to info on important themes in The Crucible.

https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/crucible/themes

Themes include:

Lies and Deceit

Respect and Reputation

Compassion and Forgiveness

Good vs Evil

The Supernatural

Justice

Religion

Jealousy

https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/crucible/themes

THE CRUCIBLE THEME OF LIES AND DECEIT

Most of the characters in The Crucible are lying – if not to other people, then to themselves. Abigail lies about her ability to see spirits, as do the other girls; Proctor is deceitful first for cheating on his wife and then for hiding it; and the judge and lieutenant governor and ministers lie to themselves and everybody else in saying that they serve the cause of God’s justice. The twist in the story is that by telling the truth (“I am not a witch”), you die, but you also gain your freedom – that is, you retain your standing with God, and you become a martyr.

Questions About Lies and Deceit

1. What are the different methods used by the religious authorities in Salem to decide whether people are telling the truth or not? How would you evaluate the effectiveness of these methods?
2. Do any characters deceive themselves? Who and why?
3. Why does John Proctor fail to mention that he met alone with Abigail when she told him the accusations of witchcraft weren’t true?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

John Proctor is lying to his wife when he claims that he no longer has feelings for Abigail.

The play makes the radical argument that no kind of deception can ever be ethically justified.

 

THE CRUCIBLE THEME OF RESPECT AND REPUTATION

Reputation is extremely important in a town where social standing is tied to one’s ability to follow religious rules. Your good name is the only way you can get other people to do business with you or even get a fair hearing. Of course, reputation meant nothing when a witchcraft accusation was staring you in the face. But it is what made the Reverend Hale begin to doubt whether the accused individuals were actually guilty. Reputation had to do with religion: if you were a good and trustworthy person, you were also a good member of the church. Last but not least, it is for the sake of his reputation and his friends’ reputations that John Proctor refuses to sign a false confession. He would, quite literally, rather die.

Questions About Respect and Reputation

1. Why is reputation so important to the people of Salem? What happens if you lose your good reputation (before the witch hunt)?
2. In what ways is a person’s good reputation similar to he way we think of it today? In what ways is it different?
3. What are some of the factors (lust and greed being two obvious ones) that cause people to ignore the good reputations of their neighbors?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

Although John Proctor goes to his death falsely condemned as a witch, he gains his reputation and respect among those who matter, like his wife, because he refuses to falsely identify his friends and neighbors as witches.

The loss of Abigail’s reputation toward the end of the play shows that characters inThe Crucible eventually earn the reputation they deserve, despite the personal tragedies that might take place along the way.
THE CRUCIBLE THEME OF COMPASSION AND FORGIVENESS

John Proctor, our main character, is in desperate need of forgiveness at the start of the play, but his wife seems torn about whether to grant it. He had committed adultery earlier that year while she was sick, and though his lover Abigail Williams is now out of his life, she still judges him for it. More importantly, he still judges himself. It isn’t until Elizabeth forgives him, and admits her own fault in the matter, that John Proctor is able to forgive himself and recognize some goodness left in him. It is also what gives him courage to go to his death.

Questions About Compassion and Forgiveness

1. Do you think Elizabeth is “cold” for not forgiving her husband, or does she have good reason to suspect that he may not have completely let go of his desires for Abigail?
2. What do you think will happen to Rev. Parris after John Proctor is put to his death? The townspeople, furious with the outcome of the trials, have already threatened his life. What will it take for him to be forgiven by the community, or do you think he is beyond redemption?
3. Through reading The Crucible, what do you learn about the difference between forgiveness and judgment? Forgiveness and justice? Justice and mercy?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

Even though John Proctor wants his wife’s forgiveness, he actually needs to forgive himself, just like she says.

Although Elizabeth Proctor argues that John is his own worst judge and needs to forgive himself, she is justified to think that he is still not completely faithful in his heart.
THE CRUCIBLE THEME OF GOOD VS. EVIL

The entire village bases its belief system on the conflict between good vs. evil, or Satan vs. God. Over and over, as people are accused of witchcraft, this paradigm gets dragged out. When Tituba confesses, she claims she wants to be a good Christian now and stop hurting people. She must renounce the Devil. When Mary Warren can’t handle the girls’ accusations, she accuses Proctor of making her sign the Devil’s book and claims she is now with God. The world in The Crucible is clearly divided into these two camps. Unfortunately, everybody’s confused about which side is actually good, and which side is actually evil, though it’s abundantly clear to the reader. It may seem like evil is winning, as one innocent person after another is put to death, but we also see that there is power in martyrdom. The innocent people who confessed are beginning to rebel, and both ministers have recognized their mistakes by the end of the play. Above all, the religion of Salem is incredibly bleak and tends to focus on human frailty and sin to the exclusion of the good things in the world.

Questions About Good vs. Evil

1. Are any of the characters in The Crucible beyond redemption? Abigail’s flight at the end furthers the impression that she is simply a bad apple, but even Elizabeth is able to see how Abigail could have interpreted her affair with Proctor as something more than lust.
2. The characters in the play are obsessed with evil and the Devil. If the Devil is so powerful, what kind of role, if any, is left to God to perform?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

God has no positive presence for the people of Salem; only Satan is an active force in the world.
THE CRUCIBLE THEME OF THE SUPERNATURAL

The supernatural is real to the Salem townsfolk. They see evidence of God and evidence of the Devil everywhere. Yet nobody actually sees spirits — though the girls claim they do. The play makes it clear that they are pretending. Their pretense may be a group psychological phenomenon, but in the world as the reader understands it, if there is a Devil, he’s not in Salem: there are only people – some good, some misled, some greedy, some jealous, some vengeful, some evil.

Questions About The Supernatural

1. How do random events on earth – the inexplicable death of children, for example – determine the way the supernatural is conceived?
2. Do these beliefs about the supernatural change during the course of the play? If not, why not? If yes, how and why?
3. Do you think Miller portrays the townspeople as fools for their belief in things like invisible birds that try to attack the soul? In other words, what is Miller’s perspective on the supernatural?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

There are many moments in the play when Miller makes the people of Salem seem more stupid than was necessary for dramatic purposes.

Even though Rev. Hale starts out with a firm understanding of the supernatural, his knowledge is based on books. In Salem, he learns that there is evil, but it is not necessarily manifested in supernatural ways.
THE CRUCIBLE THEME OF JUSTICE

The Salem of the play is a theocracy, which means that God is supposed to be the ultimate leader, arbiter, and judge. In practice, however, the town’s religious authorities do the governing. God needs men on earth to do his work of justice, and Hathorne, Danforth, Hale, and Parris are all part of that system. They believed that God was speaking through the children to help them prosecute invisible, hidden crimes. The whole system gets turned upside down, and these men of experience and education are completely dependent on the assumption that the children were telling the truth and really did see what they claim to. In Salem during the witch trials, to be accused was to be guilty. To be guilty meant death. And the only way to avoid death was to confess. Though confessing was a way to bring those who strayed back into the fold, in this case it meant a lot of innocent people had to lie in order to keep their lives. Strange sort of justice.

Questions About Justice

1. What is the concept of justice, according to the Reverend Paris and Hathorne and Danforth?
2. What is Proctor’s concept of justice? How does that differ from other characters, such as Elizabeth’s?
3. Does the play take a stand on the question of whether people have an innate sense of justice? For example, do young people and the uneducated fare any better with questions of justice than educated people do?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

Only those characters who have fallen and admit to committing grave errors possess anything close to a sense of justice.

In a play that seems hostile to religion, the ending is especially ironic. John Proctor receives no justice on earth, so the only way that we can think he receives justice would be in some other realm.
THE CRUCIBLE THEME OF RELIGION

Religion is woven into the everyday life of the Salem of the play. Its exclusive form of Christianity centered on a set of clearly defined rules: you went to church every Sunday, you didn’t work on the Sabbath, you believed the Gospel, you respected the minister’s word like it was God’s, and so on. For people accused of witchcraft, any deviation from these rules in the past can be used as evidence for much greater sins in the present. But ultimately, even good and respected and highly religious women like Rebecca Nurse are accused and put to death, so past respectability and religiosity doesn’t necessarily protect one.

Questions About Religion

1. How would you characterize the play’s attitude toward organized religion? Does Miller see all forms of religion as corrupt, or only the particular form embodied by men like Rev. Parris?
2. How do the religious beliefs of certain characters help them survive or at least cope with difficult situations?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

Rebecca Nurse is the character in the play who best embodies a positive form of religiosity.

 

THE CRUCIBLE THEME OF JEALOUSY 

Many of the characters are motivated by jealousy and greed in The Crucible. Abigail is motivated by jealousy of Elizabeth Proctor; she wants Elizabeth to die so that she can marry John, Elizabeth’s husband. Thomas Putnam is motivated by jealousy of other people’s property; he wants George Jacobs to die so that he could get his hands on a great piece of land. Little attention is devoted to the subject of envy by any of the characters, even though it is the hidden force driving most of the drama in town.

Questions About Jealousy

1. Is it only the obviously “bad” characters in the play, like Abigail and Mr. Putnum, who show jealousy? What about other characters, like John and Elizabeth Proctor?
2. How does the theology of Salem prevent its citizens from recognizing envy as a source of the conflict?

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

Abigail’s actions have no justification other than envy, pure and simple.

Although Abigail is jealous of Elizabeth Proctor, she is not the only source of evil in the play. John Proctor’s deception during his affair with Abigail, when he made a physical “promise” to her, is the source of the play’s conflict.

https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/crucible/characters

JOHN PROCTOR

Character Analysis

Proctor’s Problem

John Proctor, The Crucible‘s protagonist, has some major issues. We can see why. Back in the day, he had everything your average Puritan man could want: a goodly farm to ceaselessly toil upon, three goodly sons to discipline, and a goodly wife with whom to make a home. Proctor was a stand-up guy who spoke his mind. Around town, his name was synonymous with honor and integrity. He took pleasure in exposing hypocrisy and was respected for it. Most importantly, John Proctor respected himself.

Enter: Abigail, the play’s antagonist. This saucy, young housekeeper traipsed in, and, before John knew it, his goodly life was irrevocably corrupted. John made the mistake of committing adultery with her. To make things worse, it was also lechery, as Proctor was in his thirties and Abigail was just seventeen. All it took was one shameful encounter to destroy John’s most prized possession: his self-respect.

When we first meet John Proctor halfway through Act One, we discover a man who has become the thing he hates most in the world: a hypocrite. He is caged by guilt. The emotional weight of the play rests on Proctor’s quest to regain his lost self-image, his lost goodness. Indeed, it is his journey from guilt to redemption, which forms the central spine of The Crucible. John Proctor is a classic Arthur Miller hero – a man who struggles with the incompatibility of his actions with his self-image. (Willy Loman ofDeath of a Salesman, Eddie Carbone of A View From the Bridge, and Joe Keller of All My Sons, all have similar issues.)

Why the Fall?

Adultery? Lechery? John, what got into you? Well, apparently John’s wife Elizabeth was a little frigid (which she even admits), and when tempted by the fiery, young Abigail, John just couldn’t resist. Elizabeth was also sick while Abigail was working for the Proctors, so she probably wasn’t giving her husband much attention. More than likely, though, the cause of John’s transgression is much deeper than base physical reasons.

It’s also quite possible that John Proctor was attracted to Abigail’s subversive personality. Miller seems to hint at this in the first scene in which we see them together in Act One. Abigail tells John that all the hullabaloo about witches isn’t true. She and the other girls were just in the woods having a dance party with Tituba. Miller writes: “PROCTOR, his smile widening: Ah, you’re wicked yet aren’t y’! […] You’ll be clapped in the stocks before you’re twenty” (I.178). The key clue here is the stage direction. It seems to indicate that Proctor is amused and even charmed by Abigail’s naughty antics. This would be in keeping with his personality. We see him challenging authority, from Parris to Danforth, throughout the play.

Man of Action

John Proctor is a passive protagonist; for the first two acts, he does little to affect the main action of the play. (Read more on this in “Character Roles.”) By the time Act Three rolls around, however, he’s all fired up. Spurred by his wife’s arrest, he marches off to stop the spiraling insanity of the witch trials and to hopefully regain his own integrity in the process.

Proctor goes to court armed with three main weapons. There’s Abigail’s admission to him that there was no witchcraft. Also, he has Mary Warren’s testimony that she and the other girls have been faking. Last, but not least, he’s prepared to admit that he and Abigail had an affair. This would stain her now saintly reputation and discredit her in the eyes of the court. Between the wily machinations of Abigail and the bull-headedness of the court, all of these tactics fail. John only ends up publicly staining his good name and getting himself condemned for witchcraft.

Even though John doesn’t achieve his goals of freeing Elizabeth or stopping the overall madness, he does take two significant steps toward regaining self-respect in Act Three. One: he doesn’t stop fighting the false accusations even after he finds out that Elizabeth is pregnant and therefore safe for a while. He feels a greater duty to his community and proceeds anyway. Two: by openly admitting his adulterous lechery, he is no longer a hypocrite. He has publicly embraced his sin.

In Act Four, Proctor conquers the final hurdle on his path to redemption. This is no easy task; he stumbles a bit along the way. In order to save his life, he is tempted into admitting that he is indeed in league with the Devil. He justifies this lie to himself by saying that he’s a bad person anyway. What’s the difference? At least this way, he’ll be alive. Of course, by doing so he’s telling a terrible lie and is also blackening the names of all the other prisoners who’ve refused to give in.

However, when he’s asked to actually sign his name, John refuses. The act of putting his name to paper is just too much. By signing his name he would have signed away his soul. Though he would have saved his life, his goodness would’ve been forever out of his reach. With this final valiant act, John Proctor comes to a kind of peace with himself. He says, “I do think I see some shred of goodness in John Proctor. Not enough to weave a banner with, but white enough to keep it from such dogs” (IV.298).

 

ABIGAIL WILLIAMS

Character Analysis

Villain Extraordinaire

Abigail is vengeful, selfish, manipulative, and a magnificent liar. This young lady seems to be uniquely gifted at spreading death and destruction wherever she goes. She has an eerie sense of how to manipulate others, to gain control over them. All these things add up to make her a marvelous antagonist.

In Act One her skills at manipulation are on full display. When she’s on the brink of getting busted for dabbling in witchcraft, she skillfully manages to pin the whole thing on Tituba and several of Salem’s other second-class citizens. The horrible thing is that Abigail is the one who persuaded Tituba to go out and cast the spells. Ever since Abigail’s brief affair with John Proctor, she’s been out to get his wife, Elizabeth. Our crafty villain convinced Tituba to put a curse on Elizabeth, hoping to get rid of her and take her place at John’s side.

It’s ironic that the Abigail, who encouraged the witchcraft in the first place, is the one who goes around accusing everybody else. As ringleader, she excites the other girls into a frenzy of emotion, which allows them to condemn as witches the people they know and love. She riles up the entire village’s hatred of witches, just like her 20th-century counterpart, Sen. Joseph McCarthy, riled up Americans’ hatred of communists. Abigail’s main skill seems to be finding people’s flaws, their weaknesses, their prejudices and mercilessly manipulating them to her advantage.

Abigail’s ruthless cunning is shown again in Act Two when she frames Elizabeth Proctor for witchcraft. Later on in Act Three she seems to lose her last shred of humanity by damning John Proctor, whom she claims to love. When John attempts to expose Abigail, she skillfully manages to turn the whole thing around on him, packing him off to the slammer. Abigail rides her power trip out to the end, eventually beating town with all of her uncle’s money. Yes, it seems that Abigail ranks high on the list, along with Iago and maybe Hannibal Lecter, of most skillful antagonists ever.

Redeemable?

The character of Abigail is often accused of being one-dimensional, which is true to a certain extent. She doesn’t express one shred of remorse the entire time, making her seem almost inhumanly diabolical. However, even though Abigail’s actions are ruthless, they are in some ways understandable.

For one, Miller slips in an interesting detail about Abigail’s childhood that gives us a clue as to where her mercilessness might stem from. When she was younger, Abigail watched both of her parents be murdered. She tells the other girls, “I saw Indians smash my dear parents’ head on the pillow next to mine” (I.119). It’s no surprise that a person exposed to such brutality at a young age might eventually act brutally herself.

Abigail’s ruthless, manipulative tactics might also be a result of her low social position. She does have it pretty bad. She’s an orphan. She’s an unmarried teenager. And worst of all for her (in the patriarchal Puritan society), she’s female. The only person lower than her is probably the black slave Tituba. On top of all that, Elizabeth Proctor has been going around dropping hints that Abigail is sleazy, lowering Abby’s social status even more. With all this in mind, it’s pretty understandable that Abigail might seize any chance to gain power.

Historical Abigail

Abigail Williams was a real person, and she did spearhead the group of girls that saw spirits and pointed out the witches in Salem’s midst. The historical version was a bit different than the fictional character, though. Arthur Miller explained that one discovery he made while digging into the actual history of the Salem Witch Trials set his imagination on fire: Abigail Williams, the mover and shaker of the witch-finding craze, had been the Proctors’ house servant for a short time. Though Abigail called Elizabeth a witch, “with uncharacteristic fastidiousness she was refusing to include John Proctor, Elizabeth’s husband, in her accusations despite the urgings of the prosecutors” (source).

While there is no actual evidence that the real John Proctor and the real Abigail Williams had an affair, Miller could find no good reason why Abigail distinguished so vehemently between the guilt of a husband and wife. Arthur Miller took creative license with her character to make the connection between sexuality and politics more dramatic. In reality though, Abigail Williams was only eleven years old at the time of the witch trials. We will always wonder why she accused Elizabeth and not John. Maybe he was just nice to her. Who knows?

 

ELIZABETH PROCTOR

Character Analysis

Elizabeth’s positive qualities are also her negative ones. She is a virtuous woman who is steadfast and true. These traits also make her a bit of a cold fish. When we first meet her, she’s especially cold and fishy. She’s got good reason to be, though, because her husband has recently had an affair with their housekeeper, Abigail Williams.

Elizabeth’s reaction to the affair reveals a bit of a vindictive streak. When she discovered her husband’s sin, she gave Abby the boot and then proceeded to drop a few hints around town that the girl may just be tainted. (Isn’t John a little responsible, too?)

For the most part, though, Elizabeth is a stand-up woman. Throughout the play, she seems to be struggling to forgive her husband and let go of her anger. And, of course, her hatred of Abigail is understandable. Elizabeth’s dislike of Abigail seems justified later on in the play when Abigail tries to murder Elizabeth by framing her for witchcraft.

Overall, Elizabeth is a blameless victim. The only sin we see her commit is when she lies in court, saying that John and Abigail’s affair never happened. This is supposedly the only time she’s ever lied in her life. Unfortunately, it’s really bad timing. Though she lies in an attempt to protect her husband, it actually ends up damning him.

After she’s spent a few months alone in prison, Elizabeth comes to her own realization: she was a cold wife, and it was because she didn’t love herself that she was unable to receive her husband’s love. She comes to believe that it is her coldness that led to his affair with Abigail. This realization helps Elizabeth forgive her husband, and relinquishing her anger seems to bring her a measure of personal peace. Elizabeth’s noblest act comes in the end when she helps the tortured John Proctor forgive himself just before his death.
REVEREND PARRIS

Character Analysis

Parris is a wormy little character. Miller says in his notes that he found nothing redeemable about the historical Parris. As a result, he evidently felt no need to make his fictional version any better. First of all Parris is greedy. John Proctor accuses Parris of this several times in the play. The Reverend gives weak justifications, but never denies any of the accusations. Some examples of Parris’s greed include: quibbling over firewood, insisting on gratuitous golden candlesticks for the church, demanding (against time-honored tradition) that he have the deed to the house he lives in.

Parris’s repeated demonstrations of exceedingly selfish behavior don’t help his case. In the very first scene, we see him standing over his daughter Betty’s sick bed. At first the audience might feel bad for him. But then they’d quickly realize that Parris is just worried about his reputation. He’s afraid that if people think there’s witchcraft in his household, he’ll lose his position as minister of Salem. In Act Three, when he shows his spineless selfishness once again when he perjures (intentionally lies in court) himself. He tells the court that he saw no naked dancing in the woods, yet we know that he did, because he says as much to Abigail.

Parris’s lack of redeemable qualities becomes even more apparent in Act Four. At first it seems like he may have come to his senses, because he’s asking Danforth to postpone the hangings. Abigail has flown the coop, making it pretty darn obvious she was lying the whole time. It turns out that Parris isn’t pleading out of remorse at all, though, he’s only concerned for his own life. He found a dagger in his front door, and is afraid that if respectable citizens like John Proctor and Rebecca Nurse are hanged, the town will revolt. Most despicably we see Parris cry – not because of all the people who he’s helped to senselessly murder, but because Abigail stole his money and he’s now broke. Yes, by the end of the play, Reverend Parris is thoroughly exposed as the sniveling parasite that he is.

 

MARY WARREN

Character Analysis

Mary is a likeable enough character, but ultimately proves herself to be a bit spineless. She’s one of the girls who was caught in the forest with Abigail, dancing and conjuring spirits – though we quickly learn that she just watched and did not participate. She becomes part of the court that condemns witches. At first she seems to enjoy the power it gives her. When clearly innocent people begin to be convicted, however, Mary feels bad about the whole thing.

The first sign we see of Mary’s guilty conscience is when she makes a poppet (a doll) for Elizabeth Proctor, who she currently keeps house for. Abigail has brought Elizabeth’s name up in court, and Mary knows that Abigail did it only for vengeance. Mary was there when Abigail got Tituba to put a curse on Elizabeth, and she also knows about Abigail’s affair with John Proctor.

Mary’s feeble attempt at recompense backfires terribly, however, as Abigail uses the poppet to frame Elizabeth for witchcraft. This, of course, makes Mary feel even worse and she agrees to go with John Proctor and testify against Abigail in court. Mary’s ultimately spineless nature is revealed in the court scene, when under pressure of being hanged she once again flips, accusing John Proctor of witchcraft and Devil worship.

While Mary causes a lot of harm in the play, she lacks Abigail’s maliciousness. She’s just a weak girl who gets in way over her head. Yes, Miller’s portrait of Mary is sympathetic, but doesn’t let her off the hook. It could be that he’s pointing out how even good hearted people can commit destructive acts when swept up in mass hysteria like the Witch Trials (or McCarthyism and the Red Scare).

 

REVEREND JOHN HALE

Character Analysis

With notable exception of John Proctor, Hale gets our vote for most complex character in The Crucible. We say so, because Hale goes through a major personal journey over the course of the play. He starts off with really good intentions. In Act One, Miller writes of Hale: “His goal is light, goodness, and its preservation.” This guy has trained and trained to be the best witch-hunter ever, and he’s psyched to finally get a chance to show off his stuff. Though he’s probably a little full of himself, but ultimately his goal is to valiantly fight the Devil. What could be wrong with that? Well, a whole lot.

In Act Two, we see that Hale’s former confidence is slowly eroding. This is demonstrated by the fact that he shows up at the Proctors’ house of his own accord. He’s there without the court’s knowledge, trying to get an idea of who the Proctors are for himself. This independent action is a big hint that he’s probably beginning to doubt the validity of his own conclusions. When John Proctor gets convicted in Act Three, through Abigail’s transparent machinations, Hale’s confidence is shattered. He quits the court and storms out in anger.

The transition from overconfidence to total disillusionment is already a big journey, but then Miller takes his character a step further in Act Four. After taking off for some soul searching, Hale turns up hoping to save some lives. He councils convicted witches to confess, so that they won’t be hanged. Hale is knowingly counseling people to lie. He’s lost all faith in the law, and there’s a good chance his faith in God is a bit shaky as well.

Hale’s last effort to wash some of the blood of his hands fails. He’s not able to convince anyone to confess. When John Proctor marches off to his martyr’s death, Hale pleads with Elizabeth to change her husband’s mind, screaming, “What profit him to bleed? Shall the dust praise him? Shall the worms declare his truth?” (IV.207) Words like these show that Hale has become a completely different man than the one we met at the beginning of the play. The tortured reverend is a great example of the kind of rich, morally ambiguous character for which Miller is famous.

 

TITUBA

Character Analysis

Tituba, the Reverend Parris’s slave, is a woman from Barbados who practices what the Puritans view as “black magic.” Of course, it’s mainly because the conniving Abigail manipulates her into doing it. Tituba admits her supposed sin, but we never really find out what happens to her. The ambiguity of her fate actually emphasizes that whether or not these women are in fact witches is beside the point.

And we have to say, although there is nothing in the play that directly comments on it, racism undoubtedly plays a large part in her fate. The fact that she was convicted at all for her practices is actually inherently prejudice. Before being brought to Massachusetts, Tituba never saw her singing, dancing, and spell casting as evil. Such practices were spiritual and descended from her African roots. This is shown in Act Four, when we see poor Tituba say to her jailer:

Devil, him be pleasure-man in Barbados, him be singin and dancing […] It’s you folks – you riles him up ’round here […] He freeze his soul in Massachusetts, but in Barbados he just as sweet. (IV.15)

It’s ironic that the Puritans, who came to America to escape religious persecution, would practice such deliberate, cruel, and ignorant persecution themselves.

GILES COREY

Character Analysis

Giles Corey is a strong old man and has only recently converted to Christianity. He’s likeable, but is not too bright. His biggest bumble in the play is when brings up the fact that his wife reads strange books. To Giles, any book is strange and the idea of a woman wanting to read totally blows his mind. His mention of this fact leads to an accusation that his wife is a witch.

Giles feels terrible about this. He knows his wife is innocent and recognizes that his own actions have led to her incarceration and impending death. He attempts to defend his wife by going to the court and showing them proof that, in at least one case, the accusation is based on Thomas Putnam’s greed for a neighbor’s bit of land. This backfires and he is condemned himself.

Corey’s incredible strength of character is shown in the end when he neither confesses to, nor denies, the charges of witchcraft. By doing so, he ensures that his sons can legally inherit his property. Even though he is brutally tortured by having crushingly heavy stones place on his chest, the only thing Giles he says is “More weight” (IV.186).

Miller would go on to pull a “Giles Corey” of his own, when he was called to testify before McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee. Despite tremendous pressure, Miller refused to name names of suspected Communists.

DEPUTY GOVERNOR DANFORTH

Character Analysis

Deputy Governor Danforth oversees the witchcraft trials in Salem, as in other parts of Massachusetts. He likes to think of himself as fair-minded, so it disturbs and angers him to discover that people fear the court. He believes that no innocent person should fear the court, and that he and Judge Hathorne are guided by God, so nobody will be punished unjustly. As a result, he fails to examine evidence critically or to act when he could to stop the hysteria. Even at the end, when it’s obvious that the society is disintegrating, he refuses to see the role that the witchcraft trials and hangings have played in it.

Miller’s depiction of the characters of the people who prosecuted witches, like Danforth, was sometimes criticized as being too excessive. Miller agreed, but defended his depiction as adhering to the facts of history. Miller suggested Danforth was important because he helped define and defend the boundaries of society, the rules that people lived by. His character, Miller says, is driven by the idea that mankind must be protected from knowledge, an idea that Miller characterized as believing that “evil is good.”

THOMAS PUTNAM

Character Analysis

Thomas Putnam is a greedy man who urges Reverend Parris to be strong and face up to the witchcraft in their midst. He uses his daughter to accuse people whose property he covets. Miller, and most historians, believed that many of the accusations of witchcraft were based in these sorts greedy, selfish desires. Perhaps, Miller intended audiences to see parallels between Putnam and individuals in Miller’s own time who were accusing people of being communist for equally selfish and petty reasons (learn more in “Cold War: McCarthyism & Red Scare“).

 

MRS. ANN PUTNAM

Character Analysis

To be fair, Mrs. Putnam might not mean any harm – she just wants to find out why her babies have been dying, and she’s sad and angry about it.

REBECCA NURSE

Character Analysis

Rebecca is a pillar of the community, a devoutly religious woman in her seventies. When she is accused of witchcraft, it makes the Reverend Hale pause and reconsider whether the proceedings are just and fair. After her arrest and conviction, Rebecca continues to be a pillar of the community, but this time, the community of falsely accused people. She is an example of strength and resolve for those who choose not to confess, even though it means going to their death.

FRANCIS NURSE

Character Analysis

Francis Nurse is a good man and a good husband who has the courage to stand up to the court and say that the judge and governor have been deceived.

Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory

Though there isn’t a lot of symbolism in the story, the events in the play itself are an allegory for the intolerance of McCarthyism. For a decade spanning the late 1940s to the late 1950s, the American government was intensely suspicious of the possible influence of communism on citizens and institutions. The FBI accused thousands of people of “un-American activities” and monitored many more; these people’s careers and personal lives were frequently destroyed. More often than not, there was little to no evidence to support the accusations. Nevertheless, the FBI and various government groups involved in monitoring or accusing individuals, such as The House Un-American Activities Committee, enjoyed widespread support from the American population. (Learn more here.)

Similarly, in The Crucible, there is little evidence that much witchcraft activity is going on, but once accusations started flying, many innocent people get caught in the web of hysteria. Lives are destroyed and people die based on zero evidence.

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https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/crucible/analysis

ANALYSIS: SETTING

Where It All Goes Down

Who is the narrator, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?

ANALYSIS: WHAT’S UP WITH THE TITLE?

ANALYSIS: PLOT ANALYSIS

Most good stories start with a fundamental list of ingredients: the initial situation, conflict, complication, climax, suspense, denouement, and conclusion. Great writers sometimes shake up the recipe and add some spice.

ANALYSIS: BOOKER’S SEVEN BASIC PLOTS ANALYSIS

Christopher Booker is a scholar who wrote that every story falls into one of seven basic plot structures: Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, the Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, and Rebirth. Shmoop explores which of these structures fits this story like Cinderella’s slipper.

ANALYSIS: THREE ACT PLOT ANALYSIS

For a three-act plot analysis, put on your screenwriter’s hat. Moviemakers know the formula well: at the end of Act One, the main character is drawn in completely to a conflict. During Act Two, she is farthest away from her goals. At the end of Act Three, the story is resolved.

ANALYSIS: TRIVIA

Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge

THE CRUCIBLE QUESTIONS

Bring on the tough stuff – there’s not just one right answer.

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Author: Margo Burns

Name of Page: Arthur Miller’s The Crucible: Fact & Fiction (or Picky, Picky, Picky…)

Name of institution/organization publishing the site: This site has no institutional affiliation, although you may want to include the name of the entire website,17th Century Colonial New England, depending on the format you use.

Date of Posting/Revision: Sep. 25, 2018

Website address: http://www.17thc.us/docs/fact-fiction.shtml

Date Retrieved/Viewed: Jan. 6, 2020

Arthur Miller’s The Crucible:Fact & Fiction

(or Picky, Picky, Picky…) by Margo Burns Revised: 10/18/12

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I’ve been working with the materials of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 for so long as an academic historian, it’s not surprising when people ask me if I’ve seen the play or film The Crucible, and what I think of it. Miller created works of art, inspired by actual events, for his own artistic/political intentions. First produced on Broadway on January 22, 1953, the play was partly a response to the panic caused by irrational fear of Communism during the Cold War which resulted in the hearings by the House Committee on Unamerican Activities.¹ In Miller’s play and screenplay, however, it is a lovelorn teenager, spurned by the married man she loves, who fans a whole community into a blood-lust frenzy in revenge. This is simply not history. The real story is far more complex, dramatic, and interesting – and well worth exploring. Miller himself had some things to say about the relationship between his play and the actual historical event that are worth considering. In the Saturday Review in 1953, Henry Hewes quotes Miller as stating, “A playwright has no debt of literalness to history. Right now I couldn’t tell you which details were taken from the records verbatim and which were invented.” I, on the other hand, can tell you, and that is the purpose of this essay.

Whether this activity is worthwhile or not really depends on what one wants from the play or movie. I find that many people come across this unusual episode in American history through Miller’s story, and if they want to start learning what “really” happened in 1692, they have a hard time distinguishing historical fact from literary fiction because Miller’s play and characters are so vivid, and he used the names of real people who participated in the historical episode for his characters. Miller wrote a “Note on the Historical Accuracy of this Play” at the beginning of the Viking Critical Library edition:

This play is not history in the sense in which the word is used by the academic historian. Dramatic purposes have sometimes required many characters to be fused into one; the number of girls involved in the ‘crying out’ has been reduced; Abigail’s age has been raised; while there were several judges of almost equal authority, I have symbolized them all in Hathorne and Danforth. However, I believe that the reader will discover here the essential nature of one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history. 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.

As for the characters of the persons, little is known about most of them except what may be surmised from a few letters, the trial record, certain broadsides written at the time, and references to their conduct in sources of varying reliability. They may therefore be taken as creations of my own, drawn to the best of my ability in conformity with their known behavior, except as indicated in the commentary I have written for this text. (p. 2)

Miller clings to simultaneous claims of creative license and exactitude about the behavior and fate of the real people whose names he used for his characters. This is problematic for anyone who is beginning to take an interest in the historical episode, based on his powerful play.²

In Miller’s autobiography, Timebends: A Life, originally published in 1987, Miller recounts another impression he had during his research:

One day, after several hours of reading at the Historical Society […] I got up to leave and that was when I noticed hanging on a wall several framed etchings of the witchcraft trials, apparently made by an artist who must have witnessed them. In one of them, a shaft of sepulchral light shoots down from a window high up in a vaulted room, falling upon the head of a judge whose face is blanched white, his long white beard hanging to his waist, arms raised in defensive horror as beneath him the covey of afflicted girls screams and claws at invisible tormentors. Dark and almost indistinguishable figures huddle on the periphery of the picture, but a few men can be made out, bearded like the judge, and shrinking back in pious outrage. Suddenly it became my memory of the dancing men in the synagogue on 114th Street as I had glimpsed them between my shielding fingers, the same chaos of bodily motion – in this picture, adults fleeing the sight of a supernatural event; in my memory, a happier but no less eerie circumstance – both scenes frighteningly attached to the long reins of God. I knew instantly what the connection was: the moral intensity of the Jews and the clan’s defensiveness against pollution from outside the ranks. Yes, I understood Salem in that flash; it was suddenly my own inheritance. I might not yet be able to work a play’s shape out of this roiling mass of stuff, but it belonged to me now, and I felt I could begin circling around the space where a structure of my own could conceivably rise. [p. 338]³

There are no extant drawings by witnesses to the events in 1692. My best guess is that what Miller may have seen was a lithograph – popular framed wall art in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – from a series produced in 1892 by George H. Walker & Co., drawn by Joseph E. Baker (1837-1914) [See image to the right to compare with Miller’s description.]. Although it is fine for artist to be inspired by whatever stimulates their creative sensibilities, Miller’s descriptions of his own research, however credible they may come across and however vivid an imprint they may have left on him, are riddled with inaccuracies, and memories Miller claims to have had of the primary sources, are seriously flawed.

When the movie was released 1996, Miller published an article in the New Yorker, discussing “Why I Wrote The Crucible”, in which he describes, over four decades after writing the play, what he remembered of his process with the material. He began by stating that he had read Salem Witchcraft: “[I]t was not until I read a book published in 1867 – a two-volume, thousand-page study by Charles W. Upham, who was then the mayor of Salem – that I knew I had to write about the period.” It was in Upham’s work that Miller encountered the description of a single gesture that inspired him:

It was from a report written by the Reverend Samuel Parris, who was one of the chief instigators of the witch-hunt. “During the examination of Elizabeth Procter, Abigail Williams and Ann Putnam” – the two were ‘afflicted’ teen-age accusers, and Abigail was Parris’s niece – “both made offer to strike at said Procter; but when Abigail’s hand came near, it opened, whereas it was made up into a fist before, and came down exceeding lightly as it drew near to said Procter, and at length, with open and extended fingers, touched Procter’s hood very lightly. Immediately Abigail cried out her fingers, her fingers, her fingers burned….” In this remarkably observed gesture of a troubled young girl, I believed, a play became possible.

This is terrific stuff for a fertile, creative mind (see Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, No. 49, p. 174 for a transcription of the full primary source), and immediately Miller veered away from the historical record, imagining the backstory of this gesture: “Elizabeth Proctor had been the orphaned Abigail’s mistress, and they had lived together in the same small house until Elizabeth fired the girl. By this time, I was sure, John Proctor had bedded Abigail, who had to be dismissed most likely to appease Elizabeth.” That’s fine fiction, as long as readers know that this was his creative mind at work not what really happened, but even in discussing his own work, Miller is often unable to tell what was historically true and what he had made up. In the introduction to his Collected Plays published in 1957 (republished in the Viking Critical Library edition, p. 164), Miller claimed that the story of Abigail Williams as a servant in the Procter house was historically accurate:

I doubt I should ever have tempted agony by actually writing a play on the subject had I not come upon a single fact. It was that Abigail Williams, the prime mover of the Salem hysteria, so far as the hysterical children were concerned, had a short time earlier been the house servant of the Proctors and now was crying out Elizabeth Proctor as a witch; but more – it was clear from the record that with entirely uncharacteristic fastidiousness she was refusing to include John Proctor, Elizabeth’s husband, in her accusations despite the urgings of the prosecutors.

This is also not historically accurate: the real Abigail Williams cried out against John Procter on April 4, on the same day Elizabeth Procter was formally accused, although he was not included on the arrest warrant issued on April 8. (See RSWH, Nos. 39, 46, 47 & 61). Miller continued to claim that it was a fact. “It was the fact that Abigail, their former servant, was their accuser, and her apparent desire to convict Elizabeth and save John, that made the play conceivable for me.” (Viking Critical Library edition, p. 165) What Miller had to say about the line between his play and historical accuracy is as unreliable as the play itself is as history.

Another example of this fictionalization of this research can be found in Miller’s article “Are You Now Or Were You Ever?”, published in The Guardian/The Observer (on line), on Saturday, June 17, 2000. He wrote, “I can’t recall if it was the provincial governor’s nephew or son who, with a college friend, came from Boston to watch the strange proceedings. Both boys burst out laughing at some absurd testimony: they were promptly jailed, and faced possible hanging.” As delightfully ironic as this sounds, again, it is simply fabricated, although whether by Miller himself or from some secondary source he may have read – he states in this article that he had read Marion Starkey’s book,The Devil in Massachusetts (1949), for instance – but there is simply nothing even remotely like this mentioned in the primary sources.

Miller is, of course, not alone in his misconceptions about the history of this episode. He was using it to make sense of his own life and times. Popular understandings include many general inaccuracies – for instance, that the witches were burned to death. People condemned as witches in New England were not burned, but hanged, and in the aftermath of the events in Salem, it was generally agreed that none of them had actually been witches at all. Some modern versions also cast the story as having to do with intolerance of difference – a theme that was in the words of Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel at the dedication of the Tercentenary Memorial in Salem in August 1992, for instance – that the accused were people on the fringes that the community tacitly approved of casting out. In fact, most of the people who were accused, convicted, and executed by the court in Salem were remarkable by their very adherence to community norms, many were even fully covenanted members of the church. Such impressions that vary from the historical facts are more likely to come from pressing concerns of the time of the writer.

Another current misconception about the events had its beginning in 1976, when Linnda P. Caporael, then a graduate student, published an article in Science magazine positing that the afflicted had suffered from hallucinations from eating moldy rye wheat – ergot poisoning. The story was picked up and published on the front page of the New York Times on March 31, 1976, in the article “Salem Witch Hunts in 1692 Linked to LSD-Like Agent”. The use and abuse of LSD was a major public concern at the time. The theory was refuted, point by point, by Nickolas P. Spanos and Jack Gottlieb seven months later in the very magazine Caporael had published her original article, demonstrating how Caporael’s data was cherry-picked to support her conclusion. For instance, the kind of ergotism that produces hallucinations has other symptoms – gangrene fingers and digestive-tract distress – which would likely have been reported in 1692, but were not. Nevertheless the life of this theory continues in the popular imagination as a viable explanation of the events. It was later backed up by Mary Matossian in 1982 in an article in American Scientist, “Ergot and the Salem witchcraft affair” (also covered by the New York Times, 8/29/1982), and in her 1989 book Poisons of the Past: Molds, Epidemics and History. Caporael herself re-appeared in 2001 on the subject, in a PBS special in the series Secrets of the Dead II: “Witches Curse”, repeating her claims, unrefuted. Another biological theory, by Laurie Winn Carlson, published in 1999, suggested that the afflicted suffered from encephalitis lethargica, but this one also fails to hold up under the scrutiny of medical and Salem scholars alike. Additionally, even if these biological explanations could be the root of the accusers’ “visions”, they still do not go far to explain the credulity and legal response of the public and authorities. They do reflect a current perception that unacknowledged toxins in our daily environment can explain many medical issues.

Lastly, Rev. Parris’ slave woman, Tituba, is persistently portrayed as having been of Black African descent or of mixed racial heritage, despite always being referred to in the primary sources as “an Indian woman”. This presentation of Tituba, known to have been a slave from Barbadoes, began in the Civil War era, when most slaves from Barbadoes were, in fact, of Black African heritage. Had the real Tituba nearly two centuries earlier actually been African or Black or mulatto, she would have been so described. Contemporary descriptions of her also refer to her as a “Spanish Indian”, placing her pre-Barbadoes origins somewhere in the Carolinas, Georgia or Florida. Historian Elaine Breslaw details how we know that Tituba was Amerindian, probably South American Arawak. (See my supplemental notes about Tituba.)

Returning to Miller’s tellings of the tale, I am always distracted by the wide variety of minor historical inaccuracies when I am exposed to his play or movie. Call me picky, but I’m not a dolt: I know about artistic license and Miller’s freedom to use the material any way he choose to, so please don’t bother lecturing me about it. This page is part of a site about the history of 17th Century Colonial New England, not about literature, theater, or Arthur Miller, even though you may have landed smack dab in the middle of the site thanks to a search engine hit for information about Miller.

Reasons why I began providing this list include, 1) actors contact me about making their portrayals of characters in the play “more accurate” – when that is impossible without drastically altering Miller’s work because the characters in his play are simply not the real people who lived, even though they may share names and basic fates, 2) people who are watching the stage production or movie and who are inspired to learn more about the historical event, and 3) students are given assignments in their English classes to find out more about what really happened (American high school juniors in honors and AP classes seem to be the most frequent visitors). I can be an ornery cuss when it comes to being asked the same English class homework questions that I’ve already said I don’t care to answer because I am an historian, so before you even think of writing to ask me a question about the play, please read through my list of frequently-asked questions where I will give you what answers I have to offer to the most questions I am most commonly asked – be prepared: they may not be the answers you want.

Here’s my list of some of the historical inaccuracies in the play/screenplay:

• Abigail tells Betty, “Your Mama’s dead and buried!”, (Screenplay, Scene 21; play, Act 1, Scene 1). Betty Parris’ mother was not dead and was very much alive in 1692. Elizabeth (Eldridge) Parris died four years after the witchcraft trials, on July 14, 1696, at the age of 48. Her gravestone is located in the Wadsworth Cemetery on Summer Street in Danvers, MA:http://gravematter.smugmug.com/gallery/903002#41044279_2RnRT 

• Soon after the legal proceedings began, Betty was shuttled off to live in Salem Town with Stephen Sewall’s family. Stephen was the clerk of the Court, brother of Judge Samuel Sewall.

• The Parris family also included two other children — an older brother, Thomas (b. 1681), and a younger sister, Susannah (b. 1687) — not just Betty and her relative Abigail, who was probably born around 1681.

• Abigail Williams is often called Rev. Parris’ “niece” but in fact there is no genealogical evidence to prove their familial relationship. She is sometimes in the original texts referred to as his “kinfolk” however.

• Miller admits in the introduction to the play that he boosted Abigail Williams’ age to 17 even though the real girl was only 11, but he never mentions that John Proctor was 60 and Elizabeth, 41, was his third wife. Proctor was not a farmer but a tavern keeper. Living with them was their daughter aged 15, their son who was 17, and John’s 33-year-old son from his first marriage. Everyone in the family was eventually accused of witchcraft. Elizabeth Proctor was indeed pregnant, during the trial, and did have a temporary stay of execution after convicted, which ultimately spared her life because it extended past the end of the period that the executions were taking place. 

• There never was any wild dancing rite in the woods led by Tituba, and certainly Rev. Parris never stumbled upon them. Some of the local girls had attempted to divine the occupations of their future husbands with an egg in a glass — crystal-ball style. Tituba and her husband, John Indian (absent in Miller’s telling), were asked by a neighbor, Mary Sibley, to bake a special “witch cake,” — made of rye and the girls’ urine, fed to a dog — European white magic to ascertain who the witch was who was afflicting the girls. Supplemental Notes

• The first two girls to become afflicted were Betty Parris and Abigail Williams, and they had violent, physical fits, not a sleep that they could not wake from. 

• The Putnams’ daughter was not named Ruth, but Ann, like her mother, probably changed by Miller so the audience wouldn’t confuse the mother and the daughter. In reality, the mother was referred to as “Ann Putnam Senior” and the daughter as “Ann Putnam Junior.” 

• Ann/Ruth was not the only Putnam child out of eight to survive infancy. In 1692, the Putnams had six living children, Ann being the eldest, down to 1-year-old Timothy. Ann Putnam Sr. was pregnant during most of 1692. Ann Sr. and her sister, however did lose a fair number of infants, though certainly not all, and by comparison, the Nurse family lost remarkably few for the time. 

• Rev. Parris claims to Giles Corey that he is a “graduate of Harvard” — he did not in fact graduate from Harvard, although he had attended for a while and dropped out. 

• The judges in The Crucible are Thomas Danforth, and John Hathorne in the play, with Samuel Sewall added for the screenplay. The full panel of magistrates for the special Court of Oyer and Terminer were in fact named by the new charter, which arrived in Massachusetts on May 14, 1692 were William Stoughton, John Richards, Nathaniel Saltonstall, Wait Winthrop, Bartholomew Gedney, Samuel Sewall, John Hathorne, Jonathan Corwin and Peter Sergeant. Five of these had to be present to form a presiding bench, and at least one of those five had to be Stoughton, Richards, or Gedney. Thomas Danforth, as Deputy Governor and a member of the Governor’s Council, joined the magistrates on one occasion as the presiding magistrate in Salem for the preliminary examinations in mid-April of Sarah Cloyce, Elizabeth Procter and John Procter, but once the new charter arrived with Gov. Phips in May, William Stoughton became the Lieutenant Governor and Chief Magistrate.

• The events portrayed here were the examinations of the accused in Salem Village from March to April, in the context of a special court of “Oyer and Terminer.” These were not the actual trials, per se, which began later, in June 1692. The procedure was basically this: someone would bring a complaint to the authorities, and the authorities would decide if there was enough reason to send the sheriff or other law enforcement officer to arrest them. While this was happening, depositions — statements people made on paper outside of court — were taken and evidence gathered, typically against the accused. After evidence or charges were presented, and depositions sworn to before the court, the grand jury would decide whether to indict the person, and if so, on what charges. If indicted, the person’s case would be heard by a petit jury, basically to “trial”, something like we know it only much faster, to decide guilt or innocence. Guilt in a case of witchcraft in 1692 came with an automatic sentence of death by hanging, as per English law. 

• Saltonstall was one of the original magistrates, but quit early on because of the reservations portrayed as attributed to Sewall’s character in the play. Of the magistrates, only Sewall ever expressed public regret for his actions, asking in 1696 to have his minister, Rev. Samuel Willard, read a statement from the pulpit of this church to the congregation, accepting his share of the blame for the trials. 

• Rebecca Nurse was hanged on July 19, John Proctor on August 19, and Martha Corey on September 22 — not all on the same day on the same gallows. And the only person executed who recited the Lord’s Prayer on the gallows was Rev. George Burroughs — which caused quite a stir since it was generally believed at the time that a witch could not say the Lord’s Prayer without making a mistake. They also would not have been hanged while praying, since the condemned were always allowed their last words and prayers. 

• Reverend Hale would not have signed any “death warrants,” as he claims to have signed 17 in the play. That was not for the clergy to do. Both existing death warrants are signed by William Stoughton. 

• The elderly George Jacobs was not accused of sending his spirit in through the window to lie on the Putnam’s daughter – in fact, it was usually quite the opposite case: women such as Bridget Bishop were accused of sending their spirits into men’s bedrooms to lie on them. In that period, women were perceived as the lusty, sexual creatures whose allure men must guard against! 

• The real John Procter (vs. the fictional John Proctor in the play) maintained his innocence throughout, however another accused man – whose wife was also accused – did confess and recant and was hanged: Samuel Wardwell of Andover. When pressed to confirm the text of his confession, Wardwell refused, stating, “the above written confession was taken from his mouth, and that he had said it, but he said he belied himself.” He also said, “He knew he should die for it, whether he owned it or not.” (See Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, No.538, p. 577) 

• The hysteria did not die out “as more and more people refused to save themselves by giving false confessions,” as the epilogue of the movie states. The opposite was true: more and more people were giving false confessions and four women actually pled guilty to the charges. Some historians claim that this was because it became apparent that confession would save one from the noose, but there is evidence that the Court was planning to execute the confessors as well. What ended the trials was the intervention of Governor William Phips. Contrary to what Phips told the Crown in England, he was not off in Maine fighting the Indians in King William’s War through that summer, since he attended governor’s council meetings regularly that summer, which were also attended by the magistrates. But public opinion of the trials did take a turn. There were over two hundred people in prison when the general reprieve was given, but they were not released until they paid their prison fees. Neither did the tide turn when Rev. Hale’s wife was accused, as the play claims, by Abigail Williams (it was really a young woman named Mery Herrick), nor when the mother-in-law of Magistrate Jonathan Corwin was accused — although the “afflicted” did start accusing a lot more people far and wide to the point of absurdity, including various people around in other Massachusetts towns whom they had never laid eyes on, including notable people such as the famous hero Capt. John Alden (who escaped after being arrested). 

• Abigail Williams probably couldn’t have laid her hands on 31 pounds in cash in Samuel Parris’ house, to run away with John Proctor, when Parris’ annual salary was contracted at 66 pounds, only a third of which was paid in money. The rest was to be paid in foodstuffs and other supplies, but even then, he had continual disputes with the parishioners about supplying him with much-needed firewood they owed him, primarily because they were not in agreement that the parsonage should have been deeded to Parris.

• Certain key people in the real events appear nowhere in Miller’s play: John Indian, Rev. Nicholas Noyes, Sarah Cloyce, and most notably, Cotton Mather. 

• Giles Corey was not executed for refusing to name a witness, as portrayed in the movie. The stage play is more accurate: he was accused of witchcraft, and refused to enter a plea, which held up the proceedings, since the law of the time required that the accused enter a plea and agree to be tried “before God and the country” (i.e. a jury). He was pressed to death with stones, but the method was used to try to force him to enter a plea so that his trial could proceed. Corey may have realized that if he was tried at all, he would be executed, and his children would be disinherited, but he had already deeded most of his property to his children by then anyway. (Interestingly, Miller wrote both the play and the screenplay… Who knows why he changed it to a less-accurate explanation for his punishment and execution?)

• “The afflicted” comprised not just a group of a dozen teenage girls — there were men and adult women who were also “afflicted,” including John Indian, Ann Putnam, Sr., and Sarah Bibber — and there were more in Andover, where the total number of people accused was greater than any other town, including Salem Village. 

• There’s a tiny scene in the movie with a goat getting into someone’s garden and tempers flaring — the actual history is that three years before the witchcraft accusations, a neighbor’s pigs got into the Nurse family’s fields, and Rebecca Nurse flew off the handle yelling at him about it. Soon thereafter, the neighbor had an apparent stroke and died within a few months. This was seen as evidence in 1692 of Rebecca Nurse’s witchcraft.

• At the end of Act II, Scene 2 in the play (p. 75), John Proctor states, “”You are pulling down heaven and raising up a whore.” In the film (Scene 74. EXT DAY. WATER’s EDGE, p. 79), John Proctor says this line, but follows it with, “I say God is dead!” This idea of the death of God dates from the 19th century work of German philosopher, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900).

NOTE: All of the above can be verified through primary sources, which are not listed here only to avoid providing an easy on-line source of plagiarism — not that your teacher couldn’t spot a ringer like this one from a mile away. (Trust me: your teachers can usually tell when you are plagiarizing. If you think you are “getting away with it,” it may just be a temporary thing while they figure out how to prove it or catch you at it. Do your own work.) Everything stated here can be corroborated with a little research of your own, and isn’t that the point of most school assignments? Start with the the searchable on-line edition of The Salem Witchcraft Papers, Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, the books listed in my bibliography and various rare books available on-line. I encourage you to read these for yourself!

Now I have a few questions, for anyone who is inclined to think about them or who needs an idea to start writing a paper:

1. It may not matter if one’s sole interest is in Miller work as literature or theater, but what happens when people only know history through creative works of art and not from primary sources and facts, letting someone else pick and choose between which facts to include and which to alter for their own artistic purposes and political arguments? 

2. What are the current-day implications of the racial misidentification of Tituba as “black” or “African” in many high school history books and Miller’s play written in the 1950s, when all of the primary sources by the people who actually knew the real woman referred to her as “Indian”? What would happen to Miller’s story if Tituba were not portrayed as the well-worn American stereotype of a Black slave woman circa 1850 practicing voodoo, but as a Christianized Indian whose only use of magic was European white magic at the instruction of her English neighbors? 

3. Since there never was a spurned lover stirring things up in Salem Village and there is no evidence from the time that Tituba practiced Caribbean Black Magic, yet these trials and executions actually still took place, how can you explain why they occurred? 

4. As a result of reading Miller’s play or seeing the movie, are you more interested in what actually happened in Salem in 1692, what actually happened during McCarthyism in the 1950’s, what happens when an illicit teenage lover is spurned, or what effects infidelity has on a married couple? What is it about Miller’s work that prompts your interest in that direction? 

5. Accusations of sexual-abuse against childcare providers are now sometimes referred to as “witch hunts” when the accusers are suspected of lying, as in Miller’s play, yet children’s advocates tell us that we must believe children’s claims of abuse because it certainly — horribly — does occur. How can the veracity of children’s testimony be evaluated when children have been proven to be very impressionable and eager to give the answers that adults lead them to give? 

6. Why do teachers assign projects to their students to compare the events in the play to what really happened historically? What kind of conclusions do teachers expect their students to make about how to navigate between art and history when faced with the kind of information provided on this page?

---

Notes

1. The play premiered before anti-Communist Senator Joseph McCarthy’s actual participation started on Feb. 3, 1953. The House Committee on Unamerican Activities (HCUA), however, began their inquiries earlier than McCarthy’s participataion. Elia Kazan’s testimony before it — which is assumed to have influenced Miller — was on April 12th, 1952. Do not write to me asking about any specifics of the events in the 1950s: that’s not my area of expertise.

2. You may also want to read Robin DeRosa’s “History and the Whore: Arthur Miller’s The Crucible“, pp. 132-140 in The Making of Salem: The Witch Trials in History, Fiction and Tourism (2009).

3. It’s worth reading the entire section, pp. 335-342, for the context of this quotation. Miller describes this memory slightly differently on pages 42-43 of the same book, so it’s worth a comparison. Maybe I’ll incorporate that one into this essay at some point. © 1997, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2011 Margo Burn Return to 17th c. Index Page.
This page was last updated 06/21/13 by Margo Burns, .

 MORE NOTES AND QUOTES

These quotes from Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” reveal the personalities and motivations of the characters and the major themes in the play.

Use these Crucible quotes for class discussion, for a better understanding of the play, or for writing a literary analysis.


Quote: I want the light of God, I want the sweet love of Jesus! I danced for the Devil; I saw him, I wrote in his book; I go back to Jesus; I kiss His hand. I saw Sarah Good with the Devil! I saw Goody Osburn with the Devil! I saw Bridget Bishop with the Devil

Analysis: Abigal Williams “confesses” to being a witch. This outburst exemplifies the hypocrisy present in Salem as well as the ridiculousness of the witch trials. Abigail follows the pattern set forth by Tituba the slave. It begins with confessing a meeting with the devil, continues with declaring a reunification with Jesus, and ends with accusing others of witchcraft. The false confessions favor the dishonest and are motivated by jealousy and spite.


Quote: Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!

Analysis: John Proctor says these words at the end of the play while deliberating whether or not to sign the confession. Proctor understands his reputation is at stake, a reputation he attempts to save by withholding his confession of an adulterous affair earlier in the play. He realizes now that the only way to save his reputation is by telling the truth.





Quote: And mark this. Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you. And you know I can do it; I saw Indians smash my dear parents’ heads on the pillow next to mine and I have seen some reddish work done at night, and I can make you wish you had never seen the sun go down! (Act I)


Analysis: We get a glimpse of Abigail Williams’ ruthless nature. She fully understands the ramifications of being found guilty of witchcraft, which makes her faulty accusations all the more disturbing. The whole “Indians smashed my dear parents’ head on the pillow next to mine” quote would evoke some sympathy from the reader if Abigail weren’t such a manipulator.


Quote: Let you not mistake your duty as I mistook my own. I came into this village like a bridegroom to his beloved, bearing gifts of high religion; 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. ( Act IV)


Analysis: Reverend Hale, who enters Salem naive and convinced of his greatness in discerning spirits, realizes he has caused irreparable damage. In order to right one of his many wrongs, he wishes for Elizabeth Proctor to convince John Proctor to sign a false confession in order to save his life.





Quote: I speak my own sins; I cannot judge another. I have no tongue for it.
Analysis: Proctor confesses to witchcraft yet refuses to incriminate others. Although the confession, in the context of the play, refers to witchcraft, it can be inferred that he is referring to his affair with Abigail, is accepting his fault in the matter, and wishes not to point the finger at another.





Feel free to comment on these important quotes from The Crucible and give your own interpretations and analysis.





The Crucible Quotes

Want to Rea

The Crucible by Arthur Miller

“Until an hour before the Devil fell, God thought him beautiful in Heaven.”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“Life, woman, life is God’s most precious gift; no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it.”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“I speak my own sins; I cannot judge another. I have no tongue for it.”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“You are pulling down heaven and raising up a whore”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“More Weight

-Giles Corey-”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“It is rare for people to be asked the question which puts them squarely in front of themselves”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“A child’s spirit is like a child, you can never catch it by running after it; you must stand still, and, for love, it will soon itself come back.”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“…an everlasting funeral marches round your heart.”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you. And you know I can do it; I saw Indians smash my dear parents’ heads on the pillow next to mine, and I have seen some reddish work done at night, and I can make you wish you had never seen the sun go down!

– Abigail”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“Peace. It is a providence, and no great change; we are only what we always were, but naked now.”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“Sex, sin, and the Devil were early linked.”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“I cannot sleep for dreaming; I cannot dream but I wake and walk about the house as though I’d find you comin’ through the door.”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“Great stones they lay upon his chest until he plead aye or nay. They say he give them but two words. “More weight,” he says. And died.”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“He have his goodness now. God forbid I take it from him!”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“The Devil is precise; the marks of his presence are definite as stone…”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“Oh,Elizabeth, your justice would freeze beer.”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“it’s the proper morning to fly into Hell.”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“PROCTOR, his mind wild, breathless: I say–I say–God is dead!”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“What work you do! It’s strange work for a Christian girl to hang old women!”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“When it is recalled that until the Christian era the underworld was never regardded as a hostile area, that all gods were useful and essentially friendly to man despite occasional lapsesl when we see the steady methodical inculcation into humanity of the idea of man’s worthlesseness – until redeemed – the necessity of the Devil may become evident as a weapon, a weapon designed and used time and time again in every age to whip men into a surrender to a particular church or church state.”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“A fire, a fire is burning! I hear the boot of Lucifer, I see his filthy face! And it is my face, and yours, Danforth! For them that quail to bring men out of ignorance, as I have quailed, and as you quail now when you know in all your black hearts that this be fraud – God damns our kind especially, and we will burn, we will burn together!”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“Proctor: I am only wondering how I may prove what she told me, Elizabeth. If the girl’s a saint now, I think it is not easy to prove she’s fraud, and the town gone so silly. She told it to me in a room alone- I have no proof for it.

Elizabeth: You were alone with her?

Proctor: (stubbornly) For a moment alone, aye.

Elizabeth: Why, then, it is not as you told me.

Proctor: (his anger rising) For a moment, I say. The others come in soon after.

Elizabeth: (as if she has lost all faith in him) Do as you wish then. (she turns)

Proctor: Woman. (she turns to him) I’ll not have your suspicion any more.

Elizabeth: (a little loftily) I have no-

Proctor: I’ll not have it!

Elizabeth: Then let you not earn it.

Proctor: Now look you-

Elizabeth: I see what I see, John.”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“[W]e conceive the Devil as a necessary part of a respectable view of cosmology. Ours is a divided empire in which certain ideas and emotions and actions are of God, and their opposites are of Lucifer. It is as impossible for most men to conceive of a morality without sin as of an earth without ‘sky’. Since 1692 a great but superficial change has wiped out God’s beard and the Devil’s horns, but the world is still gripped between two diametrically opposed absolutes. The concept of unity, in which positive and negative are attributes of the same force, in which good and evil are relative, ever-changing, and always joined to the same phenomenon – such a concept is still reserved to the physical sciences and to the few who have grasped the history of ideas.”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“PROCTOR–he knows it is insane: No, it is not the same! What others say and what i sign to is not the same!”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“There is prodigious fear in seeking loose spirits”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“HALE, with a tasty love of intellectual pursuit”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“Pontius Pilate! God will not let you clean your hands of this!”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“Pray calm yourselves. I have eleven children, and I am twenty-six times a grandma, and I have seen them all through their silly seasons, and when it come on them they will run the Devil bowlegged keeping up with their mischief. I think she’ll wake when she tires of it. A child’s spirit is like a child, you can never catch it by running after it; you must stand still, and, for love, it will soon itself come back.”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

The Crucible by Arthur Miller

“…I can. And there’s your first marvel, that I can. You have made your magic now, for now I do think I see some shred of goodness in John Proctor. Not enough to weave a banner with, but white enough to keep it from such dogs.

(Elizabeth, in a burst of terror, rushes to him and weeps against his hand.)

Give them no tear! Tears pleasure them. Show honor now, show a stony heart and sink them with it!”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“I look for John Proctor that took me from my sleep and put knowledge in my heart! I never knew what pretence Salem was, I never knew the lying lessons I was taught by all these Christian women and their covenanted men! And now you bid me tear the light out of my eyes! I will not, I cannot! You loved me, John Proctor, and whatever sin it is, you love me yet!”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

t

“we are only what we always were”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“Man, remember, until an hour before the Devil fell, God thought him beautiful in Heaven.”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“John Proctor’s flaw is his failure, until the last moment, to distinguish guilt from responsibility; America’s is to believe that it is at the same time both guilty and without flaw.”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“It is the essence of power that it accrues to those with the ability to determine the nature of the real.”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“The concept of unity, in which positive and negative are attributes of the same force, in which good and evil are relative, ever-changing, and always joined to the same phenomenon—such a concept is still reserved to the physical sciences and to the few who have grasped the history of ideas. When it is recalled that until the Christian era the underworld was never regarded as a hostile area, that all gods were useful and essentially friendly to man despite occasional lapses; when we see the steady and methodical inculcation into humanity of the idea of man’s worthlessness—until redeemed—the necessity of the Devil may become evident as a weapon, a weapon designed and used time and time again in every age to whip men into a surrender to a particular church or church-state.”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“Some dream I had must have mistaken you for God that day.”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“knowing smile on his face: What’s this mischief here?”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“Here is all the invisible world, caught, defined, and calculated. In these books the Devil stands stripped of all his brute disguises. Here are all your familiar spirits-your incubi and succubi; your witches that go by land, by air, and by sea; your wizards of the night and of the day. Have no fear now-we shall find him out and I mean to crush him utterly if he has shown his face!”

― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

Act 1 Quotes

I want to open myself! . . . I want the light of God, I want the sweet love of Jesus! I danced for the Devil; I saw him, I wrote in his book; I go back to Jesus; I kiss His hand. I saw Sarah Good with the Devil! I saw Goody Osburn with the Devil! I saw Bridget Bishop with the Devil!

Speaker: Abigail Williams

Mentioned or related: Sarah Good, Mrs. Osburn

Related themes: Puritanism and Individuality, Hysteria, Reputation and Integrity

There are wheels within wheels in this village, and fires within fires!

Speaker: Ann Putnam

Related themes: Hysteria

I have trouble enough without I come five mile to hear him preach only hellfire and bloody damnation. Take it to heart, Mr. Parris. There are many others who stay away from church these days because you hardly ever mention God any more.

Speaker: John Proctor

Mentioned or related: Reverend Parris

Related themes: Puritanism and Individuality, The Danger of Ideology

I look for John Proctor that took me from my sleep and put knowledge in my heart! I never knew what pretense Salem was, I never knew the lying lessons I was taught by all these Christian women and their covenanted men! And now you bid me tear the light out of my eyes? I will not, I cannot! You loved me, John Proctor, and whatever sin it is, you love me yet!

Speaker: Abigail Williams

Mentioned or related: John Proctor

Related themes: Puritanism and Individuality, Reputation and Integrity

Act 2 Quotes

I have seen too many frightful proofs in court—the Devil is alive in Salem, and we dare not quail to follow wherever the accusing finger points!

Speaker: Reverend Hale

Related themes: Hysteria, The Danger of Ideology, Reputation and Integrity

I’ll plead no more! I see now your spirit twists around the single error of my life, and I will never tear it free!

Speaker: John Proctor

Mentioned or related: Elizabeth Proctor

Related themes: Reputation and Integrity

I’ll tell you what’s walking Salem—vengeance is walking Salem. We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law! This warrant’s vengeance! I’ll not give my wife to vengeance!

Speaker: John Proctor

Mentioned or related: Elizabeth Proctor

Related themes: Puritanism and Individuality, Hysteria, The Danger of Ideology

I like it not that Mr. Parris should lay his hand upon my baby. I see no light of God in that man. I’ll not conceal it.

Speaker: John Proctor

Mentioned or related: Reverend Parris

Related themes: Puritanism and Individuality

Act 3 Quotes

You must understand, sir, that a person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between. This is a sharp time, now, a precise time—we live no longer in the dusky afternoon when evil mixed itself with good and befuddled the world. Now, by God’s grace, the shining sun is up, and them that fear not light will surely praise it.

Speaker: Deputy Governor Danforth

Mentioned or related: Francis Nurse

Related themes: Puritanism and Individuality, The Danger of Ideology

Do you take it upon yourself to determine what this court shall believe and what it shall set aside? . . . .This is the highest court of the supreme government of this province, do you know it?

Speaker: Deputy Governor Danforth

Mentioned or related: Giles Corey

Related themes: Puritanism and Individuality, The Danger of Ideology

A man may think God sleeps, but God sees everything, I know it now. I beg you, sir, I beg you—see her what she is . . . She thinks to dance with me on my wife’s grave! And well she might, for I thought of her softly. God help me, I lusted, and there is a promise in such sweat. But it is a whore’s vengeance.

Speaker: John Proctor

Mentioned or related: Abigail Williams, Elizabeth Proctor

Related themes: Reputation and Integrity

A fire, a fire is burning! I hear the boot of Lucifer, I see his filthy face! And it is my face, and yours, Danforth! For them that quail to bring men out of ignorance, as I have quailed, and as you quail now when you know in all your black hearts that this be fraud—God damns our kind especially, and we will burn, we will burn together!

Speaker: John Proctor

Mentioned or related: Deputy Governor Danforth

Related themes: Puritanism and Individuality, Hysteria, The Danger of Ideology, Reputation and Integrity

Act 4 Quotes

It is mistaken law that leads you to sacrifice. Life, woman, life is God’s most precious gift; no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it . . ..it may well be God damns a liar less than he that throws his life away for pride.

Speaker: Reverend Hale

Mentioned or related: Elizabeth Proctor

Related themes: Puritanism and Individuality, The Danger of Ideology, Reputation and Integrity

Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!

Speaker: John Proctor

Mentioned or related: John Proctor

Related themes: Reputation and Integrity

I do think I see some shred of goodness in John Proctor. Not enough to weave a banner with, but white enough to keep it from such dogs. Give them no tear! Tears pleasure them! Show honor now, show a stony heart and sink them with it!

Speaker: John Proctor

Related themes: Puritanism and Individuality, Reputation and Integrity

The Crucible – Quotations

 Characters:

Abigail Williams

Stage directions: an endless capacity for dissembling

“…and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you.”

“I’d almost forgot how strong you are, John Proctor!”

Stage directions: Winningly she comes a little closer, with a confidential, wicked air.

“I want to open myself! I want the light of God… I saw Sarah Good with the Devil! I saw Goody Osburn with the Devil! I saw Bridget Bishop with the Devil!”

Stage directions: in an open threat. “Let you beware, Mr Danforth.”

Stage directions: They all watch, as Abigail, out of her infinite charity, reaches out and draws the sobbing Mary to her, and then looks up to Danforth.

 

John Proctor

“Ah, you’re wicked yet, aren’t y’!”

It’s well seasoned.”

“It is a providence, and no great change; we are only what we always were, but naked now. Aye, naked! And the wind, God’s icy wind, will blow!”

“But it is a whore’s vengeance…”

“I cannot mount the gibbet like a saint.”

“Is there no good penitence but it be public?”

“Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!”

 

Elizabeth Proctor

Stage directions: She receives it.

“She thinks to take my place, John.”

“Adultery, John.”

“He have his goodness now. God forbid I take it from him!”

 

Rebecca Nurse

“I have seen them all through their silly seasons…”

“Let us rather blame ourselves…”

 

Reverend Hale

“We cannot look to superstition in this.  The Devil is precise; the marks of his presence are as definite as stone…”

“But it does not follow that everyone accused is part of it.”

“I may shut my conscience to it no more – private vengeance is working through this testimony!”

“I denounce these proceedings!”

“I come to do the Devil’s work. I come to counsel Christians they should belie themselves. There is blood on my head! Can you not see the blood on my head!!”

 

Thomas Putnam

“There is a murdering witch among us, bound to keep herself in the dark.”

“Sarah Good? Did you ever see Sarah Good with him? Or Osburn?”

 

Giles Corey

“This man is killing his neighbours for their land!”

 

Deputy Governor Danforth

“But witchcraft is ipso facto, on its face and by its nature, an invisible crime, is it not? Therefore who may possibly be witness to it? The witch and the victim. None other. Now we cannot hope the witch will accuse herself; granted? Therefore we must rely upon her victims…”

“Postponement now speaks a floundering on my part; reprieve or pardon must cast doubt upon the guilt of them that died till now. While I speak God’s law, I will not crack its voice with whimpering.”

“Look you, sir. I think you mistake your duty here. It matters nothing what she thought…”

“Is that document a lie? If it is a lie I will not accept it! What say you? I will not deal in lies, Mister!”

“Who weeps for them, weeps for corruption!”

Themes:

Individual vs. Society

p.16      ‘The witch-hunt was a perverse manifestation of the panic which set in among all the classes when the balance began to turn toward greater individual freedom.’ (p.16)

p.33      MRS PUTNAM: ‘There are wheels within wheels in this village, and fires within fires!’

p.35      PARRIS: ‘There is a party in this church.’ PROCTOR: ‘Why then I must find it and join it!’

p.35      PROCTOR: ‘I like not the smell of this ‘authority’.’

p.54      ELIZABETH: ‘You must tell them it is a fraud.’ (p.54)

p.71      CHEEVER: ‘You’ve ripped the Deputy Governor’s warrant, man!’

p.80      GILES: ‘She has been strivin’ with her soul all week, Your Honour; she comes now to tell the truth of this to you.’

p.84      PARRIS: ‘He has come to overthrow this court, Your Honour!’

p.97      PROCTOR: ‘It is a whore!’ PROCTOR: ‘A man will not cast away his good name.’

p.124    PROCTOR: ‘I have given you my soul; leave me my name!’

 

Repressive/Oppressive/Controlling nature of society

p.13      ‘…until this strange crisis he [Parris], like the rest of Salem, never conceived that the children were anything but thankful for being permitted to walk straight, eyes slightly lowered, arms at the sides and mouths shut until bidden to speak.’

p.14      ‘Their creed forbade anything resembling a theatre of ‘vain enjoyment’. They did not celebrate Christmas, and a holiday from work meant only that they must concentrate even more on prayer.’

p.38      ‘…the necessity of the Devil may become evident as a weapon, a weapon designed and used time and time again in every age to whip men to surrender to a particular church or church-state’

p.85      HALE: ‘Is every defence an attack upon the court?’

 

Hysteria through Secrecy and Rule Breaking, Jealousy, Violence

p.17      ‘Old scores could be settled on a plane of heavenly combat between Lucifer and the Lord; suspicions and the envy of the miserable toward the happy could and did burst out in the general revenge.’

p.19      PARRIS: ‘That my daughter and my niece I discovered dancing like heathen in the forest?’

p.25      MARY WARREN: ‘The village is out! I just come from the farm; the whole country’s talkin’ witchcraft! They’ll be callin’ us witches, Abby!’

p.27      ABIGAIL: ‘I have seen some reddish work done at night, and I can make you wish you had never seen the sun go down!’

p.28      PROCTOR: ‘Ah, you’re wicked yet, aren’t y’!’

p.41      PROCTOR: ‘I’ve heard you to be a sensible man, Mr Hale. I hope you’ll leave some of it in Salem.’

p.49      ABIGAIL: ‘I want to open myself!…I saw Sarah Good with the Devil! I saw Goody Osburn with the Devil! I saw Bridget Bishop with the Devil!’

p.72      PROCTOR: ‘…vengeance is walking Salem…This warrant’s vengeance! I’ll not give my wife to vengeance!’

p.87      GILES: ‘This man is killing his neighbours for their land!’

p.98      PROCTOR: ‘She thinks to dance with me on my wife’s grave!…But it’s a whore’s vengeance’