Arthur Miller the Crucible

Intolerance to Difference: Social Realities and Norms in the Crucible, The Guest, And the Old Chief Mshlanga

Human societies have, throughout the years, established norms, values, and artifacts that are collectively agreed-upon by its members. The culture of a society can be both advantageous and disadvantageous to its people. Norms and values held important by members of a society can be advantageous in that it provides people with social structure and order. It is disadvantageous when members of the society become intolerant to individuals or groups that deviate or differ from the majority in the society. When cases like this happen, social conflicts and destabilization occur, leading to the marginalization and eventual displacement of some members from their society.

Intolerance to social deviation and differences are the main themes discussed in three works of literature. The Crucible by Arthur Miller, The Guest by Albert Camus, and The Old Chief Mshlanga by Doris Lessing are examples of literary works that reflect on the issue of rigidity of social norms among some members of a society or culture and illustrate its detrimental consequences not only to the 'deviant,' but also to the welfare of the society as a whole. Miller, Camus, and Lessing's works center on the situation where an individual is confronted in deciding whether to conform to the norms dictated by the society or not. Camus and Lessing's written works discuss the issue of racial differences, while Miller's center on the dominance of the Christian religion against the taboo rituals and tradition of non-Christian practices, which the characters refer to and symbolize through witchcraft.

A character analysis of the protagonists in the three authors' works show that all of them share the same internal conflict: whether or not they should conform or deviate from the strict rules and norms imposed by their society. This is explicitly shown in the short story by Lessing, The Old Chief Mshlanga, where the protagonist, a young girl belonging to the European society living in South Africa. In the story, the young girl experiences internal conflict when she was exposed to two worlds within one country/territory: her place as a member of the dominant and powerful class of the whites, while co-existing (non-peacefully) with the Africans, original inhabitants yet displaced and oppressed from their native land. The story ends with an indefinite resolution, as the protagonist fails to reconcile within her the conflicting situations she is in. A contrasting portrayal of Camus' main character in The Guest, Daru, illustrates how he chose to let his 'guest,' his Arab brother, to decide on his own as to what fate he is going to take. Daru's decision to let him choose between life in prison or with the nomads and the Arab's decision to go to the police shows how, unlike his townsfolk, the Arab knows the weight of the crime he had committed. Furthermore, he is willing to pay for it, making him an honorable man at the end of the story just like Daru, despite the townsfolk's condemnation of Daru's decisions regarding "the guest." Finally, John Proctor in Miller's The Crucible shows the rigidity of Puritan society, not tolerating deviant behavior, such as the accusation of committing witchcraft that the main characters of the play had experienced. Proctor, after being imprisoned for being punished for an accusation that he did not commit, finally realized that the Devil resides not within those who had committed witchcraft, but to those people who are willing to kill other people's lives just to preserve the norms and status quo of the society. In sum, the characters in Miller, Camus, and Lessing's works provide an overview of the different consequences that happen between the individual and society when intolerance of differences happen.