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The author writes in a satiric tone to mock the McCarthyism era of communism. The play is about human weakness, hypocrisy, and vindictiveness. Crucible by Arthur Miller Act 1 Flashcards | Quizlet Latest answer posted December 16, 2019 at 7:31:02 AM. To prove that the promise of salvation served as a reason for the sudden flare-up of witch hunts during this period of religious turmoil, we only need to look to the notable absence of witch trials in Catholic strongholds. In his telling, witch hunts are perpetrated by the marginalized rather than upon them, since, when sex is involved, women are inclined toward group-malice, sexual irrationality, and wholesale. So for a brief explanation, McCarthyism was carried out under senator Joseph McCarthy during 1950-1954 against alleged communist in the US government and in other institutions. Parris and his wife. Tituba was questioned for two more days. A detailed study of a timeline accompanies their close reading of The Crucible. Fear, accusations, and doing things for personal gain is a natural human instinct. Sermons and didactic treatises, including devil books warning of Satans power, spread both the terror of Satan and the corresponding frantic need to purge society of him. In the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller, the weak people are taunted by the stronger people to give in to admitting to witchcraft. He presents a situation of opposition where some characters are, In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, several innocent citizens were killed or harmed in some way for unjustified reasons. Arthur Miller's The Crucible: Witch Hunting for the Classroom Miller supports his claim by describing how the young girls of Salem blame the outsiders of their town of witchcraft. The witch hunts varied enormously in place and in time, but they were united by a common and coherent theological and legal worldview. eNotes Editorial, 4 Aug. 2011, https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/in-act-1-what-explanation-does-miller-give-as-to-270640. Their father had, of course, been persecuted in England. She would also have likely been aware of the unrest in the community when raids were launched in New England, starting up again in 1689 (and called King William's War), with New France using both French soldiers and local Native Americans to fight against the English colonists. Many critics described Death of a Salesman as the first great American tragedy, and Miller gained an associated eminence as a man who understood the deep essence of the United States. A Brief History of the Salem Witch Trials - Smithsonian Magazine Most of the factors influencing the widespread witch hunts over the course of the early modern period can be summarized under two headings; salvation and scapegoating.. Namely, that he was in a marriage he wasnt happy in, and ended up having an affair with the much younger Marilyn Monroe, with whom he then had a troubled relationship and marriage. Arthur Miller the author of The Crucible conveys this horrific event in his book and demonstrates what fear can lead people to do. A witch hunt is surprisingly efficient in dealing with all offenders because once the movement gains momentum, people are accused left and right for many reasons, such as protecting . It drew upon preexisting rivalries and disputes within the rapidly growing Massachusetts port town: between urban and rural residents; between wealthier commercial merchants and subsistence-oriented farmers; between Congregationalists and other religious denominationsAnglicans, Baptists, and Quakers; and between American Indians and Englishmen on the frontier. Reputation In The Crucible By Arthur Miller | ipl.org His 17 June 2000 article inThe Guardian/The Observer, "Are You Now Or Were You Ever?,"describes the paranoia that swept America in that era and the moment his then-wife, Marilyn Monroe, became a bargaining chip in his own prosecution. Girls had specific roles in society and were expected to follow the rules of the church without question, so when they acted out and danced or strayed from the church, chaos was unavoidable. In that examination, Tituba confessed, naming both Sarah Osborne and Sarah Good as witches and describing their spectral movements, including meeting with the devil. In the writing of Arthur Miller he chose to place the focus of the book around the witch trials that took place in Salem in the 1400s. Upon these people, the blame could be laid for all hardships endured by Puritan society. Abigail's Obsession With Proctor In The Crucible By Arthur Miller What part might this physical separation have played in turning neighbors against one another and stoking fears of demons? Cotton Mathers account of the witch trials reinforced colonial New Englanders view of themselves as a chosen generation of men. No wonder the term witch hunt has entered common political parlance to describe such campaigns as that of the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy in his attempt to root out communists in the United States in the 1950s. Therefore, to create unity, one also had to exclude and prohibit those who could threaten it. Senator McCarthy rose to power during this time by creating an atmosphere of fear and suspicion based on false claims of communist activity. This pattern took shape in 10501300, which was also an era of enormous reform, reorganization, and centralization in both the ecclesiastical and secular aspects of society, an important aspect of which was suppressing dissent. With our Essay Lab, you can create a customized outline within seconds to get started on your essay right away. It certainly was not deemed to be a threat, even by the leaders of the Catholic Church, who simply denied its existence. It was from a report written by the Reverend Samuel Parris, who was one of the chief instigators of the witch-hunt. Scrutiny of Miller's historical sources, which include biographies of key players (the accused and the accusers) and primary source transcripts of the Salem witch trials themselvesgive students a chance to trace the events embellished in the play back to historical Salem. The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling., Have a tip we should know? List their beliefs. Another accusation that often accompanied maleficium was trafficking with evil spirits. They claim the witches were making them do these bad things. The myths surrounding what happened in Salem make the true story that much more difficult to uncover. Also the fact people would accuse people of witchcraft which would then accuse other people of witchcraft and etc. Although the lurid trials at Salem (now in Massachusetts) continue to draw much attention from American authors, they were only a swirl in the backwater of the witch hunts. They believe that witches work with the devil and that they can see the devil and his followers. In this way, the socio-political changes caused by climate change, such as failed crops, disease, and rural economic poverty, produced the conditions that enabled witch-hunting to flare up. I Need To Know What 'Very Bland' Opinion Got J.K. Rowling Kicked Out of a Harry Potter Forum, Disney Found a Way To Make Us Care About Peter Pan Again, 'The Mandalorian' Makes It Pretty Clear Where Gina Carano's Cara Dune Went, 'Quantumania' Writer Shares Painful Thoughts on All the Negative Reviews, Jack Black Once Again Proves His Excellence in Super Mario Bros. Movie, Is Grogu Related to Yoda? In his telling, witch hunts are perpetrated by the marginalized rather than upon them, since, when sex is involved, women are inclined toward group-malice, sexual irrationality, and wholesale invention. Our summaries and analyses are written by experts, and your questions are answered by real teachers. Vengeful witch hunters left no time to spare when making accusations on their neighborhood enemies. Plot Summary of 'The Crucible': A Play by Arthur Miller - ThoughtCo Arthur Miller and The Crucible Background - SparkNotes In each paragraph these traits will be further explained. Tituba, also known as Tituba Indian, was an enslaved person and servant whose birth and death dates are unknown. The setting of a literary work refers to the time and place in which the action occurs. Witchcraft: What Caused the Witch-Hunts in Early Modern Europe On February 29, 1692, an arrest warrant was issued for Tituba in Salem Town. While she was imprisoned, two others accused her of being one of two or three women whose specters they'd seen flying. In the late 1940s early 1950s, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy made the grandiose pledge to uncover a communist plot to overthrow democracy in United States. The "parochial snobbery" as well as a "predilection for minding. The Crucible Act One Summary and Analysis | GradeSaver 2023 eNotes.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved, Essential Quotes by Character: John Proctor, Critical Context (Masterplots II: Juvenile & Young Adult Literature Series), Critical Context (Comprehensive Guide to Drama). Many social and religious factors triggered . John Hale, were called in by Parris. Tituba's confession, by the rules of the court, kept her from being tried later with others, including those who were eventually found guilty and executed. The Salem witch trials, which resulted in several deaths in 1692 in the small town of Salem, Massachusetts, have never been adequately explained. The Salem witch trials and McCarthyism have an uncanny relation to one another. Women were certainly more likely than men to be economically and politically powerless, but that generalization is too broad to be helpful, for it holds true for societies in periods where witchcraft is absent. According to a theory posited by economists Leeson and Russ, churches across Europe sought to prove their strength and orthodoxy by relentlessly pursuing witches, demonstrating their prowess against the Devil and his followers. One of the most important aspects of the hunts remains unexplained. Through works of literature such as the Malleus, witches were broadly blamed for the effects of the Little Ice Age, thus becoming a scapegoat across the Western world. Poor, poor men and their cold wives and their not being able to help being drawn to younger women only to ruin their lives, too. Torture was not allowed in witch cases in Italy or Spain, but where used it often led to convictions and the identification of supposed accomplices. The Crucible: McCarthyism and a Historical View of Witch Hunts Arthur Miller's allegorical play, The Crucible, was written in 1956 about the historic witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts. One of these women was Tituba, who was there at the. However, the general consensus is that the witch hunts spanning the two continents resulted in the deaths of between 40,000 and 60,000 people. ", EDSITEment is a project of theNational Endowment for the Humanities, Salem Witch Trials: Understanding the Hysteria, Origins of Halloween and the Day of the Dead. The hunts were not pursuits of individuals already identified as witches but efforts to identify those who were witches. Rev. Although many witchcraft theorists were not deeply misogynist, many others were, notably the authors of the infamous Malleus maleficarum. Children were often accusers (as they were at Salem), but they were sometimes also among the accused. As students examine historical materials with an eye to their dramatic potential, they also explore the psychological and sociological questions that so fascinated Miller: Aligns withCCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.8- Evaluate an author's premises, claims, and evidence by corroborating or challenging them with other information. Students can make very profitable comparisons between the two tragic heroes: The Manchurian Candidates Staff Sergeant Raymond Shaw, and The Crucible's John Proctor. Analysis. The so-called 'confessions' by many of the accusers were an effort for them to purge themselves, as it were, of sin and thus find redemption. "It would probably never have occurred to me to write a play about the Salem witch trials of 1692 had I not seen some astonishing correspondences with that calamity in the America of the late 40s and early 50s. Instead, they were just one very small chapter in the much longer story of the witch hunts that took place all across Europe and America in the early modern period, with the European witch hunts reaching a height between 1560 and 1650. The witch roused Samuel, who then prophesied. The gradual demise during the late 17th and early 18th century of the previous religious, philosophical, and legal worldview encouraged the ascendancy of an existent but often suppressed skepticism; increasing literacy, mobility, and means of communication set the stage for social acceptance of this changing outlook. Arthur Miller felt as if it were a . But the reason as to why Arthur Miller felt the need to write The Crucible in the first place was because the unfortunate reality that history seemed to have repeated itself again. Both he and you are wrong. Set in the 17th century The Crucible told the story of a town that ensued a hunt for witches, caused by the accusations of Salem 's young girls and their ring leader Abigail Williams. Indeed, Miller uses witchcraft and the Salem witch trials as a metaphor for situations wherein those who are in power accuse those who challenge them of suspect behavior in order to destroy them. Most scholars agree that the prosecutions were not driven by political or gender concerns; they were not attacks on backward, or rural, societies; they did not function to express or relieve local tensions; they were not a result of the rise of capitalism or other macroeconomic changes; they were not the result of changes in family structure or in the role of women in society; and they were not an effort by cultural elites to impose their views on the populace. They could now publicly state their own iniquities and were praised for seeking purification. The Crucible Overture Summary | Course Hero The Salem Witch Trials were a product of this fear and uncertainty that eventually overwhelmed the village for more than a year. The Reformation, Counter-Reformation, war, conflict, climate change, and economic recession are all some of the factors that influenced the witch hunts across the two continents in various ways. They believed that witches were quite real and a gateway into the dark side, the Devil and all that. Moving crabwise across the profusion of evidence, I sensed that I had at last found something of myself in it, and a play began to accumulate around this man. That Abigail started, in effect, to condemn Elizabeth to death with her touch, then stopped her hand, then went through with it, was quite suddenly the human center of all this turmoil. Headquarters: 49 W. 45th Street 2nd Floor New York, NY 10036, Our Collection: 170 Central Park West New York, NY 10024 Located on the lower level of the New-York Historical Society, 20092023 The latter was the greatest evil of the system, for a victim might be forced to name acquaintances, who were in turn coerced into naming others, creating a long chain of accusations. Miller wrote The Crucible during the time America was concerned about the rising power of Communism in the Soviet Union on the heels of World War II. The witch-hunt provided the perfect opportunity for the settlement of old scores. What caused them? For many of them the witch-hunt provided an opportunity to release themselves from their own guilt and vent their impure thoughts under the cloak of seeking absolution. eNotes Editorial, 6 June 2016, https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-reasons-miller-gives-salem-witch-hunts-360670. Latest answer posted April 17, 2020 at 1:25:04 AM. Tituba is depicted in Miller's drama as initiating witchcraft as play among the girls of Salem Village. As Headley points out, he cites his relationships as instrumental to his writing of The Crucible in an essay he wrote about his process for The New Yorker: I visited Salem for the first time on a dismal spring day in 1952; it was a sidetracked town then, with abandoned factories and vacant stores. Tituba was among the first three people accused of being a witch during the Salem witch trials of 1692. What is it about this particular tragic segment of American history that appeals to the creative imagination? Indeed, Miller uses witchcraft and the Salem witch trials as a metaphor for situations wherein those who are in power accuse those who challenge them of suspect behavior in order to destroy them. Throughout the story people accuse others of being witches or being involved with witchcraft so they could be hanged. ThoughtCo, Jan. 5, 2021, thoughtco.com/tituba-salem-witch-trials-3530572. The process began with suspicions and, occasionally, continued through rumours and accusations to convictions. Arthur Millers play The Crucible, which forms the basis of many Americans knowledge of the trials, takes liberties with the story. Widely influential, it was reprinted numerous times. In the gloomy courthouse there I read the transcripts of the witchcraft trials of 1692, as taken down in a primitive shorthand by ministers who were spelling each other. from University of the Western Cape, South Africa. As Miller puts it: 'Land-lust which had been expressed before by constant bickering over boundaries and deeds, could now be elevated to the arena of morality; one could cry witch against one's neighbor and feel perfectly justified in the bargain.'. Witches: Real Origins, Hunts & Trials - HISTORY In the spring of 1692, two young girls from a seemingly inconsequential village in the Massachusetts Bay Colony began to display increasingly disturbing behavior, claiming strange visions and experiencing fits. Because of the continuity of witch trials with those for heresy, it is impossible to say when the first witch trial occurred. Explanations of the witch hunts continue to vary, but recent research has shown some of these theories to be improbable or of negligible value. The legal use of torture declined in the 17th and 18th centuries, and there was a general retreat from religious intensity following the wars of religion (from the 1560s to 1640s). ", In their book Salem Possessed, Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum remark upon the prominent place the Salem witch trials have in America's cultural consciousness. Some may say it was just a part of war; however, it's much more than that. How Long Will Joe Goldbergs Rampage Be Left Unchecked? The Devil was deeply and widely feared as the greatest enemy of Christ, keenly intent on destroying soul, life, family, community, church, and state. At first, this lead society to a poor place of illogical reasoning and punishments, but overall gave a lasting lesson of how to deal with conflicts in the future. The emphasis on personal piety exacerbated the rigid characterization of people as either good or bad. It also aggravated feelings of guilt and the psychological tendency to project negative intentions onto others. These witch hunts warn against collective thought and unjust persecution and even to this day provide a useful and relevant metaphor for all those who believe themselves victims of unjustified outrage. A witch hunt is seen as an intensive effort to discover and expose disloyalty, subversion, dishonesty, or the like, usually based on slight, doubtful, or irrelevant evidence. I hear the boot of Lucifer, I see his filthy face! Educators go through a rigorous application process, and every answer they submit is reviewed by our in-house editorial team. The differences between inhabitants were expressed as a battle between good and evil. They believed in short that they held in their steady hands the candle that would light the world. My basic need was to respond to a phenomenon which, with only small exaggeration, one could say paralyzed a whole generation and in a short time dried up the habits of trust and toleration in public discourse. It investigated whether the charges resulted from personal animosity toward the accused; it obtained physicians statements; it did not allow the naming of accomplices either with or without torture; it required the review of every sentence; and it provided for whipping, banishment, or even house arrest instead of death for first offenders. The settlers of New England faced innumerable struggles and hardships. Emailus. However, many were guilty of caving into their own weaknesses and only feared to be caught in their acts of hypocrisy. Although the proportions varied according to region and time, on the whole about three-fourths of convicted witches were female. Lewis, Jone Johnson. Two of the accused women confessed to being witches and were reprievedparadoxically, if you admitted to being a witch, you were freed. ThoughtCo. In pointing out this paradox, Miller suggests that the witch hunts exposed the failure of the Puritan theocracy. Indeed, the vivid and painful legacy of the Salem witch trials endured well into the 20th century, when Arthur Miller dramatized the events of 1692 in his play "The Crucible" (1953), using . According to author Carol F. Karlsen . It might have been as simple as one person blaming his misfortune on another. These accusations would also be made by the Romans against the Christians, by early Christians against heretics (dissenters from the core Christianity of the period) and Jews, by later Christians against witches, and, as late as the 20th century, by Protestants against Catholics. Conventional wisdom has it that mankind has evolved so far that the idea of targeting innocents is no longer an issue; however, Senator McCarthy and targeting of innocent Muslims after 9/11 remind us that witch hunts still exists in modern times. It was also believed that they rode through the air at night to sabbats (secret meetings), where they engaged in sexual orgies and even had sex with Satan; that they changed shapes (from human to animal or from one human form to another); that they often had familiar spirits in the form of animals; and that they kidnapped and murdered children for the purpose of eating them or rendering their fat for magical ointments. Miller completely discounts the idea that these events are caused by supernatural forces, and instead seeks to show how everyday difference between the members of the Salem community and the all-common emotions of anger, envy and greed are responsible. When Samuel Parris moved to Boston from New Spain, he brought Tituba,John Indian, and a young boy with him as enslaved persons forced to work in a household. Witchcraft | Definition, History, Varieties, & Facts | Britannica How Rye Bread May Have Caused the Salem Witch Trials. Its the fact that one person didnt like a certain group of people besides their own so; they felt like they had the right to take away their lives. Lewis, Jone Johnson. Miller presents the idea that vengeance ruins peoples lives or reputation so that you can get what you want and be satisfied. The witch trials offer a window into the anxieties and social tensions that accompanied New Englands increasing integration into the Atlantic economy. We have been advised by some Credible Christians yet alive, that a Malefactor, accused of Witchcraft as well as Murder, and Executed in this place more than Forty Years ago, did then give Notice of, An Horrible PLOT & against the Country by WITCHCRAFT, and a Foundation of WITCHCRAFT then laid, which if it were not seasonably discovered, would probably Blow up, and pull down all the Churches in the Country. In the Near Eastin ancient Mesopotamia, Syria, Canaan, and Palestinebelief in the existence of evil spirits was universal, so that both religion and magic were thought to be needed to appease, offer protection from, or manipulate these spirits. According to Cotton Mather, what are the immediate and long-term goals of the Devil? The current preoccupation with men being falsely accused of harassment or assault, like so many other accepted truths can be traced to a moment in time during which a version of the idea was created and then absorbed into the culture. Yet, following the Protestant Reformation, such persecution was widespread. Malleus Maleficarum, first published in 1487 by Heinrich Kramer, was a major influence on this attitude shift. In 1374 Pope Gregory XI declared that all magic was done with the aid of demons and thus was open to prosecution for heresy. The story of that peripheral village is one that has lodged itself into the cultural mindset of people everywhere as a cautionary tale against the dangers of extremism, groupthink, and false accusations, perhaps calling to mind Arthur Millers The Crucible or Cold War era McCarthyism. John Proctor, as Miller portrays him, is a good man whos made a bad, but human, mistake. Weakness, hypocrisy, vindictiveness: only few of the many words that describe the guilty desires and revenge that lingered among the town of Salem. The accusations were usually made by the alleged victims themselves, rather than by priests, lords, judges, or other elites. Successful prosecution of one witch sometimes led to a local hunt for others, but larger hunts and regional panics were confined (with some exceptions) to the years from the 1590s to 1640s. Three-fourths of European witch hunts occurred in western Germany, the Low Countries, France, northern Italy, and Switzerland, areas where prosecutions for heresy had been plentiful and charges of diabolism were prominent. What are the reasons Miller gives for the Salem witch hunts? A crucible can mean either an instrument of heating or a severe trial. *** Beyond Arthur Millers The Crucible, numerous dramatic presentations offer insights into irrational human fear. Secondly, Miller states that 'The witch-hunt was a perverse manifestation of the panic which set in among all classes when the balance began to turn toward greater individual freedom.' Three women and two infants died while imprisoned. During the examination of Elizabeth Procter, Abigail Williams and Ann Putnam the two were afflicted teen-age accusers, and Abigail was Parriss niece both made offer to strike at said Procter; but when Abigails 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 Procters hood very lightly. In the 16th and 17th centuries, they left Britain for the New World to establish a society that, they believed, reflected their religious beliefs. Both the Catholic and Protestant churches, striving to maintain a tight grasp on their clergy, each made clear that they alone could offer a priceless, invaluable commodity; Salvation. In the final analysis, the witch-hunt was nothing more than an eruption of the tensions and fears which had been repressed by a society which believed that suffering was a virtue and that the expression of one's dissatisfaction with one's lot was a sin. For The Crucible, Miller aged Abigail up from her actual age of 11 to a more easily sexualized 17, while aging down John Procter, who was historically 60 at the time the trials went down to 35. Similar to The Crucible , a majority of the characters reacted the way they did out of fear. In The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, he shows us four ingredients that create a mass hysteria. And its this body of work, which students have been instructed to read at school for decades, that has permeated the culture and contributed to our modern version of blaming womens desires for societys ills. Nevertheless, the reasons for the decline in the witch hunts are as difficult to discern as the reasons for their origins. As competition flared up following the Reformation, churches turned towards offering salvation from sin and evil to their congregations. Though the Salem trials took place just as. Because we are all taught that if we listen to women too closely, that way lies the unraveling of the fabric of society. Miller wrote. Accessed 4 Mar. To fully understand what caused the witch-hunt, one must analyze the triggers behind these feelings. Many teachers use The Crucible alongside their discussion of McCarthyism. According to Edinburgh Live's Hilary Mitchell, Scotland experienced four major witch hunts between roughly 1590 and 1727, when Janet Horne, the last Scot to be executed for witchcraft, was . Those who were unhappy with their lot and envious towards of who were not now had the chance to voice their suspicions and take revenge against them.