We have now come to my final post on Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible. There are no real hysterical fireworks that happen in Act 4. The conclusion is straightforward. Allow me to summarize the events in Act 4. After that, I’ll share more over-arching comments on the play as a whole.
An Overview of Act 4: Confessions, Lies, Integrity
Three months have passed since the conclusion of Act 3. It is the morning of what is going to be the hanging of John Proctor, Rebecca Nurse, and Marthy Corey. What we learn is the following:
- Reverend Hale had left Salem in disgust, but is now back, trying to convince the prisoners to just lie and confess they are witches so they can save their lives.
- In Andover, a neighboring town, there had been a witch scare, but the people of Andover quickly put a lid on the hysteria.
- Reverend Parris tells Judge Danforth that his niece, Abigail Williams, has not only run away from Salem, but she broke into his safe and stole all his money.
- Because of what has happened (Andover and Abigail skipping town), Parris is afraid the people of Salem will soon turn on him and the judges. He tells Danforth that Rebecca Nurse, Martha Corey, and John Proctor are all upstanding citizens, and if they are executed that day, the town might rise up in rebellion against him and the court.
- Danforth, though, refuses to postpone the executions. Then, as a last-ditch effort to try to get at least one of the three to confess (and thereby save the reputation of Parris and the court), they send Elizabeth Proctor to talk to John.
Long story short, in their conversation, John asks for Elizabeth’s forgiveness. Elizabeth asks John to forgive her for being a “cold wife.” If she had been more attentive to him, he wouldn’t have gone off to commit adultery. He then agrees to confess to save his life.
But that turns out to be not good enough for Danforth. Just for John Proctor, they demand a written confession, so it can be nailed to the church door. They use his confession as a way to try to convince Rebecca Nurse and Martha Corey to confess. They refuse, so Danforth asks John if he had ever seen Rebecca or Martha with the Devil. John, though, says no.
After John signs the confession, though, the snatches it up and doesn’t want to give it to Danforth. He doesn’t want it to be nailed to the church door. He is instantly remorseful for lying about all this because he realizes Rebecca and Martha are willing to die than to lie about doing something they didn’t do. When Danforth asks John why he won’t hand over the confession, John says, “Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!”
And with that, he tears up the confession. He, Rebecca, and Martha are then taken off to be hanged. John acknowledges he is a sinful man (because of the adultery), but he also sees he still has some shred of goodness in him because he has chosen to not lie to placate the witch-hunting courts, whom he refers to as “dogs.”
Comments and Thoughts
In the end, the main point the play is trying to get across is a good one: it is a good and important thing to cling to the truth and to maintain your goodness and your reputation in the face of those who are “pushing their own witch hunts” for their own vain, selfish purposes. And, as Arthur Miller made it abundantly clear at the beginning of his play, his play really is a commentary on the McCarthyism and Red Scare of the early 1950s. In the face of Joseph McCarthy’s fear-mongering and pressuring people to try to “name names” of supposed Communists, one should maintain one’s integrity and not play McCarthy’s game.
Fine. Good point. There are only a few problems with all this, though.
First, in reality, there is very little in common between the actual Salem witch trials and the Red Scare of the 1950s. In the 1950s, there really was a legitimate Communist threat. Indeed, throughout the Cold War, there was a real threat of the Soviet Union infiltrating and overthrowing the United States. Alger Hiss really was working for the USSR and really was in the government. To be blunt, Joseph McCarthy didn’t just “make the whole thing up.” What he did that was wrong was manipulate and amplify the Communist threat for the purposes of his own political aggrandizement. Simply put, he was doing what many politicians routinely do. As unethical and sleazy as it was, (A) there really was a Communist threat, and (B) sadly, it tends to be par for the course with many politicians. (People still fall for outrageous, politically motivated “witch hunts” all the time). And oh, McCarthy’s committee never executed anyone. Reputations were damaged and there was a “blacklist” in Hollywood—and that’s bad—but it never rose to the morbid executions that happened in 1692 Salem.
Now, with the Salem witch trials in 1692, no one believes there was a real threat of witches running rampant in Salem. On top of that, despite the fiction in Miller’s play, there is no indication that Parris or Danforth cooked the whole thing up to try to make a name for themselves. Simply put, in The Crucible, there are real, clear villains who pushed the entire hysteria. In Salem in 1692, there were no villains—it was simply a village that was overcome with paranoia and fear.
Second, as I just alluded to, in order to try to make it seem that the 1950s Red Scare was just like the Salem witch trials, Miller has to make up an entirely fictional story that bears very little resemblance to the actual Salem witch trials. Abigail Williams was actually an 11-year-old girl, not a 17-year-old young woman who (a) had sex with John Proctor, (b) drank blood in a ritual in the woods as a charm to kill Proctor’s wife, and then (c) sparked the entire witch hysteria as a way to cover up for her fornicating. In historical reality, Abigail Williams was not a 1692 version of Glenn Close’s psychotic character, Alex Forrest, in the 1987 film Fatal Attraction.
Third, in order to push that ridiculous, fictional storyline, Miller ends up having to weave a story that has the many plot-holes I talked about in the early posts. Why would they arrest Elizabeth Proctor after Mary Warren told them she had made the poppet in court that day? When Abigail said it was a lie that she saw Mary Warren make the poppet in court, why did Proctor not ask other people in court if they saw Mary Warren making the poppet? Why did Proctor practice the most extreme form of hyper-skepticism of anything that challenged Abigail’s narrative, but then blindly believed everything Abigail said? When both Proctor and Reverend Hale tell Danforth they heard Parris talk about how he saw the girls dancing in the forest and saw someone naked, and Parris replies with, “No I didn’t…well, okay, yes I did see dancing, but no one was naked!”—and he says this in court—why does Danforth just immediately take Parris’ word for it when he openly just perjured himself in court?
More examples can be given, but the point is already clear. In order to try to make the Salem witch trials seem to parallel the Red Scare, Miller has to make up a fictional storyline with villains who reflect the attitude of Joseph McCarthy—but by doing that, he also has to fictionalize the entire storyline that simply does not hold up to basic storytelling logic. The tragedy and hysteria of the Salem witch trials did not stem from some Puritan version of a McCarthy communist witch hunt. It reflected something entirely different. And the only way Miller could even give the appearance of parallels between the two events is to completely fictionalize both characters and events in such a sloppy manner that the story doesn’t really work.
The McMartin Preschool Trial (1984-1990)
If the Salem witch trials resemble anything, they resemble what happened in California in the 1980s, particularly the events of the McMartin Preschool trial. You can read more about it here or watch this short documentary here. But the facts of the case are these:
- In August 1983, a woman named Judy Johnson reported to police that doctors thought her two-year old child had been sodomized, and that her child said “Mr. Ray” had done it.
- In September 1983, police arrested Ray Buckey, who worked at his grandmother’s preschool, the Virginia McMartin Preschool.
- The police then sent a letter home to the families of the McMartin students, named Ray Buckey, and asked parents to question their children about if they had seen anything going on at the school.
- As a result, hundreds of students and former students (mind you, these are small children) went for therapy at the Children’s Institute International (CII). It was there that the social workers asked the children leading questions like, “Can you remember the naked pictures?” They told the children that other children told about the “yucky secrets” and they should tell too, because they didn’t want to be a “scaredy cat.”
- Not surprisingly, they young children started making the most astounding claims: being abused in tunnels under the school, animal sacrifices, Satanism, digging up bodies in graveyards, preschool teachers flying in the air like witches. All in all, CII said they believed 360 children had been abused. The hysteria grew to where it was believed that 1,400 kids in the area had been abused in Satanic rituals. Even when there was no evidence found to back up any of the wild claims, “believe the children” was the slogan many people clung to.
- Initially, Ray Buckey, his sister, his mother, his grandmother, and three other preschool teachers were indicted. Eventually, only Ray Buckey and his mother went to trial, which began in 1987. In the end, when the trial finally ended in 1990, they were ultimately found not guilty. Ray Buckey was retried on the eight accounts that had been deadlocked, but the trial ended in another deadlocked jury. All in all, the hysteria lasted seven years and the trial cost over $15 million.
- One more thing—Judy Johnson, the woman who made the initial allegation, was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 1985 and died in December 1986 of alcohol-related liver disease. Basically, the original allegation came from an alcoholic who was also a paranoid schizophrenic.
There you have it. In 1980s California, there were young children making wild allegations of witchery, Satanism, and abuse, and the hysteria took hold, not just of the community, but throughout the United States for a time. Despite no evidence being found to back up the allegations, things continued to be pushed forward. No, no one was hanged for being a witch, but Ray Buckey suffered in prison for five years (and his mother for two years). There wasn’t any Joseph McCarthy type figure ginning up hysteria for the gaining of political power. There were only foolish adults who allowed themselves to leave their reason at the door and get whipped up into hysteria.
The more I learn about the Salem witch trials, the more it seems parallel to something like the McMartin Preschool trial, and not Joseph McCarthy and the Red Scare. Yes, the witch trials got so out of hand that 19 people were literally hanged, and that fact alone should make us look back at the Salem witch trials with horror. But the thing to remember is that what happened in Salem was not a result of a “fatal attraction” psycho girl who wanted to kill the wife of the man she had sex with. It was not spurned on by a “villainous minister” who thought nothing of letting people he knew were innocent get hanged, just so he could try to maintain his reputation.
Miller had to invent those things in order to twist the actual history of the Salem witch trials to fit his own narrative about the Red Scare. Yes, the Red Scare was bad; yes, the Salem witch trials were bad—but in reality, the two events are not alike. People only think they’re alike because Miller tells them at the beginning of his play that they’re alike. And then he tells a fictional story that doesn’t reflect the actual historical events all that much.
The only reason why The Crucible is lauded is not because it is a well-written play. It isn’t. It is lauded because people think the linking it to McCarthyism is clever. In addition, it feeds the antagonistic stereotype of not only Puritans, but really Christians in general–they’re all religious fanatics who aren’t “enlightened” and who still believe in the devil, etc. Just look at how people use The Handmaid’s Tale to describe conservative Christians. Simply put, The Crucible is lauded because (oh, the irony!) it feeds into a certain hysteria in modern society that views Christianity (n particular Evangelicalism) as backwards, “Puritanical,” intolerant, and hostile to anything “other.” It plays the victim while spurring on a “witch hunt” all on its own. Now, I’m no longer an Evangelical. I’m Orthodox. And although there certainly are some “bad seeds” within Evangelicalism, I’m distressed by the current mood in a certain segment of this country that tries to paint Evangelicalism as a whole in the worst light all the time.
And that is why I think The Crucible is an awful play.
