This year is the first year I have ever had to teach Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Up until this year, I had never read it. It is set during the Salem witch trials of 1692 but is really Miller’s artistic commentary on “McCarthyism” and “The Red Scare” in the early 1950s. I knew the basics of what happened in Salem (and the Red Scare), yet, I just had no desire to read the play. I feared it would just be a presentation of a stereotyped Puritan community just screaming “She’s a witch!” for the entire play.
This year, though, The Crucible was in the American Literature textbook, and there was no getting around it. I’d have to teach it…and that meant I’d have to read it, which I did over Thanksgiving break.
I hated it. I mean, I really hated it. It wasn’t like I have any desire to somehow defend the Puritans of 1692 who succumbed to the hysteria. I hated it because the play was so badly written on so many levels. In fact, I am convinced that if Arthur Miller had not said in the introduction to the actual play that his play about the Salem witch trials was really about the Red Scare, no one would have considered it to be a good play. Why? Because it is basically four Acts of hysterical Puritans screaming, “Everyone is of the Devil!”
And so, what I thought I’d do, mostly for some fun, is to write a blog post or two on it. Whether one likes the play or not, it is a famous play after all. I just think there are some things that are publicly celebrated that really just need to be taken down a few notches, because they really aren’t that good…things like The Crucible, Bad Bunny, Eli Manning, the Backstreet Boys, and the Twilight series.
First, Let’s Get Some Historical Context
The Salem witch hysteria began in early 1692, when two girls (Betty Parris, 9; Abigail Williams, 11) started having strange fits that no one could explain. Betty was the daughter of the Reverend Samuel Parris, and Abigail was his niece. Parris was the local minister of Salem village but wasn’t exactly beloved by many people.
Soon, two other girls (Ann Putnam Jr. and Elizabeth Hubbard) started experiencing the same thing, and eventually three women were initially accused of being witches: Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osburn. Tituba was a slave from Barbados, and both Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn were pretty much outcasts in the town. Over the course of the year, though, the hysteria took hold, many upstanding men and women (like Rebecca Nurse, Martha Corey, and John Proctor) were accused and executed. Martha Corey’s husband, Giles Corey, refused to answer the charge of being a witch, and so, since they couldn’t officially hang him for being a witch, they instead crushed him with rocks, trying to make him confess.
All in all, 19 people ended up being executed that year. Hundreds were accused, and many confessed and named others to get out of being executed. To this day, no one really knows what caused the young girls to fall into fits. It is a mystery. Ultimately, nothing made sense. For whatever reason, those young girls made the accusations, and for whatever reason, the adults in Salem Village blindly believed them and let hysteria and paranoia take over their senses.
Obviously, what happened during the Salem witch trials was insane. But for me, whenever there is a play or movie based on historical events (or a movie based on a novel, for that manner), I want that play or movie to be largely faithful to the actual historical events in question. I understand the need for artistic license to turn historical events into a coherent story that must be told within a 2–3-hour time frame. But when things are changed so much that the history (or story) is completely skewed, it irritates me.
The Crucible: An Overview of Act One
Such is the case with Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Not only that, but there a plot holes bigger than those in the most recent Star Wars trilogy…and yes, I’ll say it again, the writing is just horrible. So, what is the storyline of the play, you ask? Let’s start by hopping on our brooms and doing a fly over of Act One in this initial post.
Act One: Let’s Immediately Break the Fourth Wall
Act One opens with the Reverend Samuel Parris praying over the bed of his daughter Betty, who is asleep and won’t wake up. Something is wrong and he’s worried. But we don’t get to any dialogue in the first four pages of the play, because Arthur Miller decided to “break the fourth wall” right off the bat to give us his opinion of both the Reverend Parris and the Puritans in general. In fact, the very first thing Miller says is this: “At the time of these events, Parris was in his middle forties. In history he cut a villainous path, and there is very little good to be said for him.” He then goes on to tell his audience that the Puritans were no-fun religious theocrats who were parochial snobs, paranoid of danger (since they, at the time, lived on the edge of the wilderness), insistent that any other sect be denied its freedom, and used the trials as an excuse to settle personal grudges. The trials, Miller states provided those guilt-ridden Puritans an “opportunity…to express publicly his guilt and sins, under the cover of accusations against the victims.”
Now, some of that is partly true. But here’s the thing. One of the most basic rules of good writing, be it of a novel or a play, is to show, don’t tell—meaning, if you’re going to show a character to be good or bad, don’t tell the reader, “Hey, this guy is a good guy! That guy is the bad guy!” No, you show the goodness/badness of a character through his/her actions. You let the reader figure that out through the course of the story.
But Miller doesn’t do that. He tells you upfront, “Hey, the Reverend Parris is the bad guy!” Secondly, he tells you up front the supposed “real reason” for the Salem witch trials. He paints the Puritans in a solely negative light, to the point of oversimplistic caricature. So, before the first word is even spoken in the play, the audience is told, “You need to hate these people—they are villainous, repressed, and vengeful.” Whether or not they really were those things is beside the point. When the author/playwright tells you this ahead of time, that’s a sure sign it’s not a well-written work.
Oversimplistic Immediate Reactions…and Breaking the Fourth Wall…and Lies
But let’s get to the story itself…back to the Reverend Parris praying over his daughter’s bed.
Right when his servant Tituba comes in, Parris yells at her and tells her to get out. Then his niece, Abigail Williams (who is 17 in the play, not 11 according to actual history) along with another girl comes in and tells Parris that the doctor can’t find anything wrong with Betty…and that he thinks it might be a result of witchcraft. That’s right, right from the start, that’s the first thing they jump to. Parris, though, denies that is even a possibility. In fact, he says he has already sent for the Reverend Hale, who is an expert in investigating claims of witchcraft, to check things out—and Parris says he is convinced Hale will find no witchcraft in Salem.
After that, Parris has a conversation with Abigail in which we learn that he had seen Tituba, Abigail, Betty, and the other girls in Salem out in the woods and night, dancing…and he had seen a girl naked. Abigail admits to the dancing but denies anyone was naked. Parris then asks her if they were “conjuring spirits,” and tells her he is worried that if they were, and if word got out, then his reputation would suffer, because he doesn’t like the people of Salem, and because there is a faction in Salem who wants him out.
That’s right, Parris saw girls dancing in the woods, one girl naked, is worried they were conjuring spirits, and now his own daughter is lying seemingly comatose…and all he can worry about is his reputation.
He then proceeds to ask Abigail why she was fired from working at the house of John and Elizabeth Proctor seven months prior. They don’t come to church too often anymore. Elizabeth Proctor said she didn’t want to sit near “something soiled.” Parris then asks Abigail if her name (i.e. reputation) is entirely “white” in the town. He also wonders why no one else in town will hire Abigail. Clearly, Parris suspects that perhaps Abigail got fired because she was fooling around with John Proctor. [Spoiler alert—that’s exactly what happened].
In any case, when the Putnams show up, we learn that their daughter, Ruth, is also in the same state as Betty. Ann Putnam immediately claims that the Devil is loose in the village. At that point, Arthur Miller decides to “break the fourth wall” once again by telling us about Thomas Putnam—he looks down on everyone in town, has a lot of grievances, is the richest man in town, is resentful, vindictive, greedy, bitter, and is upset that Parris got the job as minister, not his brother-in-law. And so, the audience is not shown Putnam’s character through his actions; Miller decides to tell them, “Putnam’s a bad guy too!” right from the start.
Well, as it turns out, we learn that Ann Putnam had lost seven children in infancy, and now since her daughter Ruth was acting strange, she did what any Puritan would do—ask the slave woman from Barbados (Tituba) to conjure up the dead and ask her dead babies if they were killed by witches, because Mrs. Putnam knows that there is a witch in town murdering babies! Parris turns to Abigail and says, “I thought you said you were only dancing in the woods!” To which Abigail says, “I didn’t conjure spirits! Tituba did!”
The Psycho Abigail…and Breaking the Fourth Wall…and Barry White?
Once the adults go downstairs to pray and sing a psalm, Abigail and the other girls try to wake Betty up. They know she’s faking. When she does wake up, Abigail tells all the girls not to tell anyone what they did in the woods. All she told Parris was that they were dancing and that Tituba conjured spirits. But Betty screams out, “You drank blood, Abby! You drank a charm to kill John Proctors’ wife!” At that point, Abigail threatens all the girls and says she’ll kill anyone who tells what they really did.
Now, you might be asking, “Why would Abigail drink blood in a charm to kill Elizabeth Proctor?
I think we all know the answer to that question. But just in case anyone is too dense to understand, it is then that John Proctor shows up in town to find out what all the hub-bub is about. And on cue, Miller “breaks the fourth wall” once again to tell us about John Proctor. He’s a good man, doesn’t like hypocrites…but ah, he still is a sinner! Miller even says that even though Proctor is respected in town, he sees himself as a fraud.
Why? The forthcoming conversation between Proctor and Abigail makes it obvious—it almost sounds like a Puritan-esque version of a really bad porn movie. Allow me to paraphrase:
Proctor: What’s this I hear about the town mumbling witchcraft?
Abigail: Oh, we were just dancing in the woods last night and my uncle leaped in on us. Betty is just faking it because she got scared.
Proctor: Oh, you’re a wicked, naughty one, aren’t you?
(Cue the Barry White music!)
Abigail: Oh, gimme something, John!
Proctor: No, that’s over with!
Abigail: I’m waiting for you every night!
Proctor: No, I’m no longer going to be coming for you.
Abigail: Oh, but I remember “how you clutched my back behind your house and sweated like a stallion!” You still love me! I’ve seen you outside of my window at night! Admit it!
Proctor: Okay, maybe I have looked up at your window a few times, but it’s over!
Abigail: But you’ve given that sexy knowledge, and I can’t go back! I can’t stand all these Christian men and women in Salem anymore! You love me!
At that point, Betty starts shrieking when she hears them singing the psalm downstairs. The adults come to her bed. Then Rebecca Nurse comes in and calms Betty down. Who is Rebecca Nurse? Allow Miller to “break the fourth wall” once again to tell you that she is a good, Christian woman. But Thomas Putnam has a problem with Rebecca and her husband over some land claim. And, surprise, surprise, it is Ruth Putnam who is going to end up accusing Rebecca Nurse of being a witch. That’s right, Miller has put a spoiler alert in his own play.
And, at the fear of being redundant, eventually the Reverend Hale shows up…and Miller “breaks the fourth wall” yet again for four pages to tell us about him. He’s an intellectual who specializes in investigating witchcraft claims.
A Veritable Sermon…Directly from Miller About the Middle Ages, Communism and Capitalism
But that’s not all. Miller then decides to do a little “preaching to the audience” himself by giving his own highly-flawed sermon about the supposed war between science and faith. According to Miller, in pagan times, “all gods were useful and essentially friendly to man despite occasional lapses.” They just came to be seen as evil and bad with the rise of Christianity. In reality, demonization of anyone really is politically motivated, be it Communists demonizing capitalism or McCarthy’s “Red Scare.”
Needless to say, Miller has no idea what he is talking about when he claims that gods and spirits in pagan times were seen as useful and friendly. Has he even read any Greek mythology? The gods were not “good”—they were violent, vengeful, petty deities. The reason you sacrificed to them wasn’t because you loved them; it was because you needed to pay them off, like a mob boss. And although it is true that demonization of others often carries with it political motivations, why in the middle of Act One, in the Reverend Parris’ house in 1692, does Miller step in to lecture about the modern-day Cold War?
Miller ends his “sermon” by saying that sometimes in Europe, the daughters of a town might assemble for a “magical night” and orgy in the forest with a selected young man. The Church rightly tried to put an end to them, but ever since then, “Sex, sin, and the Devil were early linked, and so they continued to be in Salem, and are today.” Communist fashion for women are as “prudent and all-covering” as any American Baptist. But when the Communist relaxed Russian divorce laws, those Victorian prudes in America interpreted it as Russia was promoting lasciviousness! The Devil is trying to break up the family with sexual sin! I’m sorry….what????
And….SCENE! The End of Act One
Well, to put an end to Act One, the Reverend Hale shows up and is ready to investigate the witchcraft claims. Another man in town, Giles Corey asks Hale if it means anything that when his wife reads “strange books” in the house, he can’t pray, but as soon as she closes them and leaves the room, he can pray. [Spoiler Alert: His wife, Martha Corey, is going to be accused of witchcraft!] Then Miller “breaks the fourth wall” AGAIN to tell us about Giles Corey.
Parris tells Hale he saw the girls dancing in the woods. They soon find they danced around a kettle, someone was naked, Abigail drank chicken blood…then Abigail claims she didn’t but Tituba tried to make her drink it. So, they go get Tituba and beat her until she confesses she works for the Devil. She claims she saw names written in a book; Ann Putnam says, “Sarah Good? Sarah Osburn?” And Tituba says, “Yes indeedy!” Then the group of crazy Puritans all shouted, “Hallelujah!” And then all the girls started saying they saw virtually every woman in Salem with the Devil!
The end… of Act One.
Pardon me if I cannot hide my utter distaste for this play. The constant breaking of the fourth wall, the telling not showing about the utterly flat characters, the needless sermonizing of Miller, not to mention turning Abigail Williams from an 11-year-old girl into a horny 17-year-old who puts Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction to shame—it all makes the entire play laughable.
Miller might as well have just taken out an advertisement in the New York Times that read, “I married Marilyn Monroe, Joseph McCarthy thinks I’m a communist! That’s just like the Salem witch trials—because Puritans are prudish about sex and obsessed with the Devil!”
