Arthur Miller's "The Crucible"
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“THE CRUCIBLE” OVERVIEW
The stage play “The Crucible” is set in Salem, Massachusetts in the spring, summer & fall of 1692. It was first performed in January of 1953 and won the Tony Award for “Best Play” that same year.

“The Crucible” is a re-telling of the Salem witchcraft trials that paralleled the contemporary equivalent, the McCarthy hearings, when the same type of hysteria & paranoia over Communism permeated the American culture from 1950 to 1954. The figurative witch-hunt of McCarthyism becomes literal in Arthur Miller's play to illustrate how fear and an atmosphere of persecution may lead to tragically unjust consequences.

The paradox that Arthur Miller displays as the major theme in “The Crucible” is in order to keep the community together, members of the community believe that they must in some sense tear it apart. Miller relates the intense paranoia over the integrity of the Puritan community to their belief that they are in some sense the chosen people who will forge a new destiny for the world. The witch trials serve as a means to publicly confess one's sins through accusation.

Arthur Miller did not intend “The Crucible” to be a strict history lesson, although the characters and names in “The Crucible” were real people involved in the trials. Many of the actual events portrayed in the stage play would most likely not have taken place and have been embellished for theatrical purposes. As examples, John Proctors adulterous affair with Abigail was highly unlikely, as in 1692 John was 60 years old and Abigail 11. Another difference is that Tituba is hanged in the stage play but was in reality, released from prison and sold to another slave owner in 1693. The number of girls involved in the “crying out” has been reduced, and two judges symbolized the actual five involved in the trials.