Structural Analysis Of The Crucible

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Cause and Effect in The Crucible Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is a chilling depiction of mass hysteria and cruelty, and for half a century it has served as a warning about the dangers of groupthink. He structures his play using a straightforward episodic plot in order to demonstrate the ease and speed with which fear can become persecution; the cause-and-effect relationship of events in this type of structure clearly demonstrates how one event leads to another. Miller uses it to show how quickly a relatively small indiscretion can snowball out of control in a culture that demands conformity and demonizes individualism and critical thinking. By dramatizing a literal witch hunt from inciting incident to inevitable tragic conclusion, Miller presents the audience with an allegorical lesson about the value – on both an individual and cultural level – of thinking critically, of questioning authority, and of preserving individual integrity. The Crucible has an episodic structure, meaning that its action moves forward in time and occurs in a series of rather short, distinct scenes that use cause-to-effect sequencing to build to a climax, similar to climactic structure. It is not a climactic play, however, as it has several subplots—the conflict between John and Elizabeth Proctor, the affair between John and Abigail, and the conflict between the Putnams and the Nurses, to name a few—a large cast of characters, and several different locales. Miller also uses a fairly early point of attack and manipulates dramatic time in order to show the audience exactly how the witch trials began and progressed in Salem, skipping over periods of several weeks between acts. The causal relationship between the events of the play is obvious. Miller shows us exactly how institutionalized fear can descend into paranoid chaos, step by step. For example, in Act I Abigail seizes the

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