Three Essays Critiquing Miller S Crucible

¶ … Crucible and What I Have Learned

Arthur Miller's The Crucible is a dramatic, engaging work that challenges the reader/viewer to see beneath the "black and white" dichotomy by which the world is simplistically characterized via such "venerable" institutions in America as the "right" and the "left," the "conservative" and the "liberal" establishment, and the "patriot" and the "traitor" conception. In this play, Miller brings to the fore the fact that there can be and often are conflicting motives within every single human heart, a phenomenon that colors the way people act, interact, think, speak, and -- yes -- betray. At the heart of The Crucible is a drama of sexual tension and spite -- a girlish revenge twisted into something much more heinous by the cruel paroxysms of a community going mad with suspicion, condemnation, and holier-than-thou syndrome. It is a play that reflects one of the sinister secrets of the American experience -- the Puritanical roots of the New World society in which truth, love and mercy have no place and where fear, mob rule, and irrationality dominate. However, it is also a controversial play, which has been interpreted in many different ways by various critics. This paper will explore these criticisms and interpretations and how they have shed light on the play for me.

I chose The Crucible as a work to investigate because of its dramatic power and its sense of immediacy and relevancy. There is something powerful about it and haunting that causes it to linger in the back of the mind. It is as though there were some important truth or message buried inside the text that continues to knock at the door of one's consciousness long after the text and the reader have parted ways. As it is a work that has continued to present itself before my mind, like a mystery imploring a detective to solve it, I have decided to investigate it and attempt to come up with a coherent and justified interpretation of it.

From reading the essays on this play, I have learned to approach it with a number of things in mind: first, history; second, politics; third, society/culture. History is important because the play is set in a specific historical time (which gives the play a specific historical context regardless of the underlying motives of Miller in writing it); and yet at the same time Miller's motives are important (and this plays into the theme of politics) as the play acts as a commentary on modern times (McCarthyism was a genuine issue at the time Miller wrote the play); and then there is the fundamental notion of humanity -- of society and culture -- that has a role in the meaning of the play: what are people about; what is human nature; how has society organized itself; how has the author himself defined this organization, this categorization -- these are all important questions that the essays raise in their own way. From the essays, therefore, I have learned how to approach literature in a much more thorough manner, with an eye to various theoretical perspectives and to various nuances that can facilitate or alter an interpretation. Mostly, I have learned, however, that the play is a method of exploring human nature as Miller understands and apprehends it -- and while it may not be considered a perfect representation by all, it is one that can inspire a reader or viewer to probe ever more deeply into the question that philosophers for centuries have asked -- "Who are we?" and "Who am I?"

The Essays

Edward Murray's essay entitled "The Crucible" examines the origins of the play in Miller's mind -- the intertwining of McCarthyism and a discovery made by Miller of the historical personage of Abigail Williams, whom Miller saw as the "prime mover of the Salem hysteria" (Murray 4). Just as Senator McCarthy was the prime mover of the fever pitch hysteria surrounding Communist infiltration in the U.S. at mid-century, Abigail figured in Miller's mind as the pivot upon which the Salem witch trials turned -- and the underlying motive of Abigail Miller discerned as sexual in nature. This, Murray writes, is the "intention" of Miller -- to locate the nexus of the matter and to draw a parallel between it and the modern era. Murray then proceeds to assess the way in which the drama develops by analyzing a portion of each of the four acts of the play.

Murray discusses criticisms that the play develops too slowly in the opening act and defends the act's movement in terms of pace and structure, showing that Miller uses "subtle foreshadowing and exposition" to set the parameters of the drama's dynamic (Murray 8). He notes that the middle acts are the best at maintaining the essential feeling of conflict in the drama as a "thrust and counter-thrust" style of writing ratchets up the tension from page to page (Murray 9). Murray defends the play against the attack of sentimentality aimed by critic Gerald Weales, arguing that "Elizabeth prepares the reader for her behavior at the turning point" and that "her response is part of the thematic thrust of the play, one 'answer' to the question: How should a man -- or woman -- act in the face of evil?" (Murray 9).

Murray admits that the final act fails to deliver any further confrontation between John and Abigail, transferring the drama over to the soul of John, where he now faces external forces largely set in motion by Abigail. Nonetheless, she does not appear beyond Act Three, and her absence seems to leave the play as a whole unbalanced (Murray suggests "a scene to balance the one in the 'Overture'") but Miller is apparently not inclined to give it (Murray 10). However, this missing element is remedied in the later production of the play, restructured by Miller and appearing in print in 1953, but then subsequently dropped from the Collected Plays edition less than half a decade later.

Throughout the second half of the essay, Murray attempts to address the question of Miller's motive in writing The Crucible. He identifies the central theme as "How should one act in the face of evil?" (Murray 15) yet as critics note there are several thematic strains pushing and pulling throughout the play and, so it appears to me, identifying one as Murray does seems a simplistic attempt to reduce the drama to something more tangible than its many influences should understandably allow. Part of the problem of the play is that it does not offer a simplistic way in or way out. It is presented as a drama and therefore resists interpretation. The effect is what matters -- the feeling of catharsis. Is this effect achieved? Murray is silent on this matter. While Murray's approach to the drama is helpful in understanding the way it performs as a dramatic work, I think that he misses the quintessential element -- the cathartic experience. Is catharsis achieved in this play? That is the question that Murray's essay inspires in my mind -- which is odd considering he never once brings it up as a matter of course.

The essay by Henry Popkin entitled "Arthur Miller's 'The Crucible'" also explains the interaction between history and the modern era, citing the situation with Senator McCarthy in America as the underlying impetus for the dramatic conflict of the play. Popkin elaborates on what was happening under McCarthy at the time and describes the era as one in which "public investigations had been examining and interrogating radicals, former radicals, and possible former radicals, requiring witnesses to tell about others and not only about themselves" (Popkin 139). The parallel between the Salem witch trials and the McCarthy hearings is evident, as Popkin makes clear.

However, it is this parallel which, in Popkin's opinion, robs the drama of a universal appeal that would otherwise elevate it to a greater thematic and dramatic height than it currently enjoys. What I believe Popkin means by this is that the material presented by Miller does not strive to identify any grand universal theme or moral, as might a tragedy by Sophocles or Aeschylus, and because of this it suffers from a too narrowed focus on the minutiae, the petty melodrama of sexual love/betrayal played out on the stage of a 17th century Salem Puritanical setting, mirroring in its character the events of the McCarthy era politics. Popkin asserts that the play is successful in "furnishing exciting crises, each one proceeding logically from its predecessor," (Popkin 143) but this is not anything that a daytime television soap opera cannot do. Thus, Popkin's main point is that the play works as a kind of allegorical or parallel picture of the dangers of McCarthyism, but beyond this the drama lacks necessary aesthetic qualities needed to move it to the sphere of the greats (presumably that sphere inhabited by the likes of Shakespeare et al.).

I find Popkin's comments to be interesting and rooted in a classicalist approach to the drama. Whereas Murray's interpretation of the play was based on a Literary Theory critique, Murray's stems from the desire to compare it to more richly, thematically structured works of the classical period, from which universal themes could be generated and moral principles elucidated. The implications of Popkin's argument are that Miller's play succeeds as a moderate example of drama but is no way in league with the more compelling fare of the past; that Miller's play lacks genuine insight into human nature, though it succeeds at developing characters and conflict out of what is essentially a one-dimensional cast, in spite of the cast's inner conflicts; that while Miller sought to describe the dangers of a "black and white" world, his play is divided between good and bad characters and thus gives the audience the same simplistic orientations that it simultaneously seems to be warning against.

These assessments seem valid to me. In the play I discern Miller's own preoccupation with sexual tension and find myself wishing that there had been more of a focus on the religious tension inherent in the historical situation. Such a focus, I feel, would have provided more of the universal appeal that Popkin says is missing from the drama. This leads me to want to investigate the worldview of Miller: perhaps he did not view religion as something of significance or as something worthy of being explored in drama, preferring the more immediate and sensual effect of sexual tension to the more cerebral and philosophical tension of a religious quandary. Perhaps Miller viewed the religious theme as ridiculously as he did the politics of McCarthyism. These speculations are ones that could certainly stand to be researched more fully in order to develop a better understanding of why Miller wrote the play the way he did and what he (perhaps unconsciously) wanted to express.

The third essay is by Wendy Schissel entitled "Re (dis)covering the witches in Arthur Miller's The Crucible: A feminist reading," and as the title suggests the author takes a Feminist Theory approach to the play. Schissel's main point is that the drama by Miller is similar to that of Death of a Salesman in which a tragic "common man" hero suffers from a human temptation and pays a price in a world that seems to have lost its humanity. The tragedy, thus, is not really centered on the protagonist so much as projected on the whole of humanity. Schissel's approach to the play suggests that such a reading is unfair to women and that Miller's own creation of the female character of Elizabeth suffers from a stilted, "phallologocentric sanction" which she notes is "implicit in Miller's account of Abigail's fate, Elizabeth's confession, and John's temptation and death" (Schissel 461).

Schissel's argument is convincing and gives expression to some of my own misgivings about the play. For instance, I had found the sexual tension inherent in the play to be more likely the result of some familiar struggle within Miller's own purview than in line with the actual historical subject depicted on the stage. This is not to say that an affair between Abigail and John could have happened (it surely could have) but given the actual ages of the historical characters, this seems unlikely. Moreover, the expression of this tension in the drama seems more akin to a modern melodrama than to an authentic, genuinely historical experience. Thus, from Schissel's perspective, it makes sense that the characters should be depicted in this way: they are modern representations of a "phallologocentric" in which the protagonist is a "cathartic male character who has enacted their [Miller and his critics] sexual and political fantasies" (Schissel 461).

Most interesting about Schissel's essay is her point that if Abigail is meant to be a seductress, "no critic has asked how a seventeen-year-old girl, raised in the household of a Puritan minister, can have the knowledge of how to seduce a man" (Schissel 463). The logical inference is that her seductive capabilities are inherent in her sex -- but this seems to let John Proctor off the hook, so to speak. In short, Schissel's complaint is that there is too much attention given to making John Proctor into the sympathetic character and not enough sympathy shown to Abigail. This makes me think that if Euripides had written this play, it would start off with Abigail giving a heartfelt and impassioned speech ala Medea and arousing in the audience the fullest and deepest sympathy possible against the Jason/John antagonist. Yes, what Schissel argues for is a new play -- which perhaps is the best way to criticize a work of art.

I agree with Schissel's assessment that the characterization of Proctor is meant to arouse sympathy in the audience. However, I am not necessarily one who feels that sympathy. Perhaps that is one of the reasons the play is so troubling. To some extent, I want to explore more deeply the character and motives of Abigail and develop some sort of sympathetic approach towards her -- but that is not the play that Miller has given us. Thus, it becomes all the more necessary to understand Miller the man in order to better understand the play that he has written. At the same time, the fact that there is so little in the way of empathy shown to Abigail (instead she is reduced to the role of antagonist), suggests that there is some merit to Shissel's reading of the play.