Summary “The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry Into the Salem Witch Trial” by Marion L. Starkey is a historical novel based upon facts of people and events surrounding the Salem Witch Trials. The format of the book is a narrative, with dialogue from actual trial records. The trial records are applied with a modern psychiatric knowledge, surrounding the witchcraft hysteria. Starkey recreates the sense of pity and terror that surrounded Salem and the suffering that many innocent people endured during the time. “The Devil in Massachusetts” presents an account of the accusers, accused, prosecutors and defenders surrounding the trials at Salem.
The most infamous trials were conducted by the Court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692 in Salem Town. One contemporary writer summarized the results of the trials: The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. The trials resulted in the executions of twenty people, most of them women. Despite being generally known as the Salem witch trials, the preliminary hearings in 1692 were conducted in several towns in the Province of Massachusetts Bay: Salem Village (now Danvers), Salem Town, Ipswich and Andover. The most infamous trials were conducted by the Court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692 in Salem Town.
They deemed The Crucible was an allegory to McCarthyism. The book follows the events that occurred in Salem, Massachusetts. It portrays from the view point of the girl who started the witch hunt to townsfolk being victimized by the horrible acts of fearful people. The person most responsible for the epidemic of fear is Abigail Williams, a manipulative teenager trying to connect with her lover. Abigail Williams
Motives in The Crucible Arthur Miller's The Crucible describes the hysteria surrounding the witchcraft trials that take place in Puritan Massachusetts at end of the seventeenth century. Many of the witchcraft accusations that swept through Salem during this time contained hidden motives that would directly benefit the accuser. Whether one gained land, power, or status by a false accusation, these trials turned neighbors and the whole community against each one another. The incentive of vengeance, desire for wealth, and demand for power fueled the Salam witch hunts of 1692. Fueled by vengeance and jealously of Elizabeth Proctor, Abigail Williams determines that the only way she can have John Proctor to herself is by killing Elizabeth, or accusing her of witchcraft.
This play is based on the salem witch trials in 1950's. John McCarthy conducted witch trials. He done this by accusing American leaders of being communists or communist sympathizers, the people he accused faced loss of employment, destruction of their careers and even imprisonment. McCarthy was very evil. When Miller wrote this play he used it to show the corruption of the witch trials and used the play to represent people in 1950's America, a distinctive allegory.
Arthur Miller’s, The Crucible is a classic parable which is based upon the 17th century witch-hunts which are sometimes referred to as “one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history”. These witch-hunts took place in the newly settled community of Salem – a small, pious colony of Puritans near Boston, Massachusetts. The Crucible is the horrifying story of a village overtaken by religious fervour and mounting panic, where people are arrested and hung for being witches without evidence. Arthur Miller’s suggestion that the tragedy of the crucible is caused by people mistaking problems of human nature with the work of the devil is rather difficult for us to understand due to our modern day thinking but the use of many different literary techniques helps us to understand the his perspective. The problem of greed and lust is explored by Arthur Miller particularly in the protagonist- Abigail Williams and the characters of Thomas Putnam.
The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 comprised of the false accusations and murders of innocent people claimed to be practicing witchcraft and involving themselves in Satanism (the worship and dealings with, or by the devil, in human form). Arthur Miller created the play The Crucible after being influenced by the McCarthy Hearings of the 1950s. The Crucible was a play designed to allude to the hearing while mainly focusing on the 1692 witch trials. Each character in the play is aimed to resemble their counterpart during the 1690s. A main character in the play is the farmer John Proctor.
‘Abigail Williams is the most important character in The Crucible, whether she is on stage, or not.’ Discuss this statement, with reference to language, structure and dramatic devices. The Crucible is a play written by Arthur Miller, and is about the persecution of persons falsely accused of being witches in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, based on a true story. Many people died in villages after a series of lies and unjust practices, which is the core foundation of the play, the illusory untruth and the dishonesty of sly females to their male counterparts, and in some extent to other females; trying avoid the unmerited punishment of execution. Abigail Williams, after having had an affair with a married man named John Proctor,
Miller makes her a young woman of eighteen or nineteen and invents an adulterous relationship between her and John Proctor in order to motivate her of John and his wife Elizabeth. The actual manner of the trials was outrageous, but no more outrageous than the conduct of ordinary criminal trials in England at that time. In any case, it is a little werid or ridiculous to ask the question of fair trial: how can there be a “fair trial” for a crime which not only has not been committed, but is impossible? The Salem “witches” suffered something that may be worse than persecution: they were hanged because some were accused with hysteria. And they choose to die, everyone could have saved themselves by “confession,” they would not say that they were witches when they were
A crucible represents the events in the town because it suggests how the town is boiling due to all the incidences going on within the society and how the court is trying to purify Salem of witchcraft and evil. The poppet represents the witchcraft within the play, because these types of dolls are connected to voodoo and other superstitious deeds that the Puritans considered evil. As it was found in the hands of the accused Elizabeth Proctor, they immediately concluded she was associated with witchcraft, this is obvious when Ezekiel Cheever says “’Tis hard proof! I find here a poppet Goody Proctor keeps.” When Abigail accuses Mary Warren of sending her spirit out to harm her in the church, Abigail uses the symbol of a bird and relates it to evil when she says “Why do you come, yellow bird?” Throughout history, bird