The Crucible: Actual Vs. Literary Essay, Research Paper

Arthur Miller? s celebrated play The Crucible, a narrative of how accusals and prevarications

ruinously impact a whole community, is really competently titled. By definition, a? crucible? is? a

terrible trial, ? and the challenges faced by Miller? s characters are many. The historical

events dramatized in the drama reflect how core human values, including truth, justness and

love, are tested under life and decease conditions. The tests of the characters and the values

they hold in a heartfelt way come when their simple, ordered universe ceases to be black and white and

easy deciphered, and is turned upside down in the grey shadiness of ambiguity.

A major trial in The Crucible is found in how the family of John Proctor

responds in state of affairss where difficult picks must be made between prevarications and award or truth

and shame. Early in the play, it is revealed that Proctor has been unfaithful to his married woman,

Elizabeth, indulging in an extra-marital matter with a servant miss, Abigail. Suspecting the

matter, Elizabeth dismisses Abigail amid rumour and insinuation, and Proctor confesses to his

married woman. The value of truth in their matrimony is sorely tested when Elizabeth can non happen it

within herself to forgive him. As the concatenation of events environing Abigail and the dance

misss in the forest leads to mounting self-protective prevarications about their activities, many adult females

in the community, including Elizabeth, are accused of the pattern of witchery. When the

magistrate comes to collar Elizabeth, the charges revolve around a doll made by retainer

miss Mary Warren and Abigail? s claim that the doll is Elizabeth? s diabolic instrument of

anguish. Mary Warren? s rousing to the truth about Abigail? s lies causes her to inquiry

her experiences and the curiously domed topographic point she holds in the community as one of the

bewitched. When Mary can non defy the force per unit area of the teasing misss in the face of

her truth, she crumbles. Even though Proctor realizes that coming Forth and confessing to

his lechery with Abigail will convey shame and dire effects upon himself and his

household, he steps frontward to salvage the repute and life of his married woman. Proctor calls upon the

tribunal to cite his married woman to verify his falseness, cursing? there are them that can non

sing and them that can non cry & # 8212 ; my married woman can non lie. I have paid much to larn it. ? The

sarcasm of his confession of criminal conversation to salvage his bride comes full circle when she denies his

criminal conversation to salvage him. Ultimately, Proctor chooses to denounce the prevarication of? making the

Devil? s work, ? cognizing that the pick of truth will intend his decease.

The value of justness in the ordered society of Salem is besides put to the trial. When

Betty Parris, the girl of the self-seeking Reverend Parris, falls ailment, ? the whole

state? s talkin? witchcraft. ? Parris, to salvage his tenuous place as curate of the flock,

calls in an expert in throw outing devils, the Reverend John Hale. Reverend Hale is an

rational, full of desire to set to pattern the tools he possesses that are? weighted with

authority. ? As Reverend Hale responds to the supplications of parents to step in on behalf of

their girls, the fraudulence of

Abigail and the dancing misss takes on a life of its ain,

ensuing in the formation of a court to judge the concerned enchantresss. The clergyman finds

himself caught up in a system of justness where confessions of associating with the Devil are

rewarded with forgiveness and life, while denial of dross and witchery are harshly

punished with decease. Repeatedly, he tries to asseverate the value of justness, protesting that

Elizabeth Proctor is unjustly arrested and recommending that her hubby be allowed a

attorney. ? I may close my scruples to it no more, ? he cries as the tribunal turns their focal point

on Proctor, and finally he leaves the tribunal in the name of justness. The trial of

Reverend Hale? s sense of justness subsequently takes an dry bend, when he returns to curate to

the condemned. As he upholds the value he places on justness, he supports Proctor? s

ultimate determination to decease an honorable adult male.

In the play, the value of love is besides challenged. The love that John and

Elizabeth Proctor have is first put to the trial by Proctor? s unfaithfulness and subsequently as they try to

uphold their values as their community succumbs to the craze of the accusals of

witchery. They struggle to mend and keep their matrimony as they care for their farm

and kids and to assist their friends and neighbours who are falsely accused and at hazard of

decease as Salem is swept with paranoia. As Proctor and Elizabeth take bold stairss to talk

up for what is right and true for their community, their best qualities come to the head

and they come to acknowledge all that is good and digesting about their love. In their concluding

minutes together, when political force per unit areas have taken such a bend that the tribunal finds it

expedient to come up with a manner to save Proctor? s life, the captive, pregnant

Elizabeth is asked to carry her hubby to squeal to associating with the Devil so that

he may populate. As they agonize over the despairing picks confronting them, Elizabeth tells him

? allow none be your justice. There be no higher justice under Heaven than Proctor is! . . . I

ne’er knew such goodness in the universe! ? Proctor at first chooses life, for her and their

kids, but can non bear the forfeit of his psyche to the prevarication. Her love for him and esteem

for his basic demand to be true to himself and his values gives him permission to take to

decease an honorable adult male.

Throughout the play, The Crucible, the characters are faced with cooling picks

as they maneuver through a universe that has lost its moral compass. The melting pots, the

serious trials, of their dearly held values set them in the place of holding to calculate out

what is right and true in a universe turned upside down. The value of truth is tested when

prevarications are rewarded and truth brings enduring, shame and the scaffold of the gallows. The

value of justness is challenged by a system that comes to be based on coerced confessions,

uncorroborated charges and self-seeking political scheming. The value of love, be it of

hubby and married woman or of friends and community, is put to the trial where true love is

exemplified by fatal picks.

Bibliography

& # 8220 ; The Crucible & # 8221 ; & # 8211 ; Arthur Miller

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