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Summary The Crucible example essay
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example essay on the crucible covering themes from the common module
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Quality texts illuminate struggles and strengths that are universal to humanexperience.
By focusing on the universal idea of the human identity, including its struggles and
strengths, composers of quality texts allow us to reflect both collective and our own
experiences therefore allowing us to gain insight into the personal anomalies,
paradoxes and inconsistencies we face in our own lives. This concept is explored in
Arthur Miller’s ‘The Crucible’, as he manipulates characters and their relationships
with each other and themselves amid the 1690s Salem witch trials. The universality
of these inconsistencies is proven as it correlates with our own experiences
centuries later.
Miller discusses the impact of the importance of reputation through
paradoxical experience and depicts how its fragility can affect all human
relationships, as well as our relationship with ourselves. Miller’s depiction and
paradoxical characterisation of Proctor throughout the play, juxtaposed to that of
Reverend Parris, displays the importance of integrity and avoidance of motivation
derived purely from the benefit of personal gain seen in the contrast of the
characters’ values and motive. Proctor’s self-awareness regarding his reputation and
values is framed in Act 1, his lust for Abigail is revealed as she exclaims, he
‘sweated like a stallion whenever [she came] near’, the simile revealing and
justifying Miller’s description of Proctor as a ‘sinner’ in prose insert, a ‘common
man’, as well as ‘a sinner… against the moral fashion of the time…’. Furthermore, he
publicly compromises himself as he admits through hyperbole he has succumbed to
a ‘wh*re’s vengeance’, reiterated as he metaphorically compares his honour to a
, bell, exclaiming he has ‘rung the doom of his good name’. The use of simile and
high modality as he states he ‘cannot mount the gibbet like a saint’ symbolises his
acknowledgment of his wrongdoings and the affect it will have on his reputation,
leaving him questioning his morality in final rhetoric assessment, ‘how may I live
without my name?’, highlighting the paradoxes of the human experience as he
questions the cost of compromising his values and integrity. Proctor is juxtaposed to
Parris, whose immorality is exposed in Act 1 as he examines his sick daughter, and
proceeds to turn to Abigail with metaphorical statement, ‘I have fought here for 3
long years trying to bend these stiff-necked people to me… …you compromise my
very character’, highlighting the fragility of his reputation as he prioritises it over the
health of his daughter. He continues explain to Abigail the villagers will ‘howl [him]
out of Salem’, should they find she ‘trafficked with witchcraft,’ the hyperbolic
statement reiterated with repetition as he states his ‘enemies will, and they will ruin
[him] with it’ in Act 1. Contradictory to his noble position as Reverend, he perjures
himself in court as he claims he ‘never found any of [the women] naked,’
symbolising his paranoia of losing his reputation, this paranoia further highlighted in
Miller’s stage direction describing him as a ‘gaunt, frightened man’. The
paradoxical nature of Parris’ actions considering his position as Reverend further
highlights that the fragility of our reputation can impact all human relationships.
Drawing on the second wave of the feminist movement, Miller aligns
representations of femineity with the angel/wh*re dichotomy revealing how
paradoxical behaviour and motivations results in subjugation of gender.
Ironic to its primary purpose as a subversive interrogation of McCarthyistic
principles and virtues, the play becomes a paradox within itself as it inevitably
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