The Crucible: Critical Essays on Miller's Drama Explored

Introduction: Why The Crucible?

Arthur Miller's The Crucible is a dramatic and engaging work that challenges the reader or viewer to see beneath the "black and white" dichotomy by which the world is simplistically characterized through such "venerable" institutions 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 far more heinous by the cruel paroxysms of a community going mad with suspicion, condemnation, and holier-than-thou judgment. It is a play that reflects one of the sinister secrets of the American experience — the Puritanical roots of a 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 explores three of those critical interpretations and how they have shed light on the play.

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 and haunting about it that causes it to linger in the back of the mind — as though some important truth or message were buried inside the text, continuing 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 decided to investigate it and attempt to develop a coherent and justified interpretation.

Murray's Dramatic Analysis

Edward Murray's essay entitled "The Crucible" examines the origins of the play in Miller's mind — the intertwining of McCarthyism and a discovery Miller made about the historical personage of Abigail Williams, whom he 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 United States at mid-century, Abigail figured in Miller's mind as the pivot upon which the Salem witch trials turned — and the underlying motive Miller discerned in Abigail was 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 play's four acts.

Murray discusses criticisms that the play develops too slowly in the opening act, and defends that 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, 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, who now faces external forces largely set in motion by Abigail. Nonetheless, Abigail 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 was apparently not inclined to provide it (Murray 10). This missing element was partially remedied in a later production restructured by Miller and appearing in print in 1953, though it was subsequently dropped from the Collected Plays edition less than half a decade later.

Throughout the second half of his 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 other critics note, there are several thematic strains pushing and pulling throughout the play, and identifying just one seems a simplistic attempt to reduce the drama to something more tangible than its many influences should reasonably allow. Part of the problem of the play is that it does not offer a simple way in or way out; it is presented as a drama and therefore resists easy interpretation. The effect — the feeling of catharsis — is what matters. Is that effect achieved? Murray is silent on this matter. While his approach is helpful in understanding how the play performs as a dramatic work, he appears to miss the quintessential element: the cathartic experience. That is the question Murray's essay inspires in my mind — which is striking precisely because he never once raises it.

Popkin's Classicalist Critique

The essay by Henry Popkin entitled "Arthur Miller's 'The Crucible'" also examines 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 very 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. What Popkin means is that the material Miller presents 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 too narrow a focus — the petty melodrama of sexual love and betrayal played out on the stage of a seventeenth-century Salem Puritanical setting, mirroring in its character the events of McCarthy-era politics. Popkin asserts that the play succeeds in "furnishing exciting crises, each one proceeding logically from its predecessor" (Popkin 143), but this is not a distinction beyond the reach of a daytime television soap opera. Thus, Popkin's main point is that the play works as a kind of allegorical parallel picture of the dangers of McCarthyism, but beyond this the drama lacks the aesthetic qualities needed to move it into the sphere of the greats — presumably that sphere inhabited by Shakespeare and his peers.

I find Popkin's comments interesting and rooted in a classicalist approach to the drama. Whereas Murray's interpretation was based on a literary theory critique, Popkin's stems from the desire to compare the play to more richly and 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 in no way in league with the more compelling fare of the past; that the play lacks genuine insight into human nature, though it succeeds at developing characters and conflict from what is essentially a one-dimensional cast, despite their inner conflicts; and 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 it simultaneously seems to warn against.

These assessments seem valid to me. In the play I discern Miller's own preoccupation with sexual tension and find myself wishing there had been more 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. This leads me to want to investigate Miller's worldview: perhaps he did not view religion as something worthy of dramatic exploration, 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 ridiculous in much the same way he viewed the politics of McCarthyism. These are speculations that could certainly stand to be researched more fully in order to develop a better understanding of why Miller wrote the play as he did and what he may have unconsciously wanted to express.

Conclusion: What the Essays Taught Me

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 and culture. History is important because the play is set in a specific historical time, which gives it a specific historical context regardless of Miller's underlying motives in writing it. At the same time, those 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 when Miller wrote it. Then there is the fundamental notion of humanity — of society and culture — that has a role in the play's meaning. What are people about? What is human nature? How has society organized itself? How has the author defined this organization and categorization? These are all important questions that the essays raise in their own way.

From these essays, I have learned how to approach literature in a much more thorough manner, with an eye to various theoretical perspectives and nuances that can facilitate or alter an interpretation. Most of all, I have learned 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 questions that philosophers for centuries have asked: "Who are we?" and "Who am I?"

Works Cited

Murray, Edward. "The Crucible." In Arthur Miller's The Crucible. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism.

Popkin, Henry. "Arthur Miller's The Crucible." College English vol. 26, no. 2 (Nov. 1964): 139–46.

Schissel, Wendy. "Re(dis)covering the Witches in Arthur Miller's The Crucible: A Feminist Reading." Modern Drama, vol. 37, no. 3 (Fall 1994): 461–467.