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= = =//"By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of a play is to arouse the passions of its audience so that by the route of passion may be opened up a new relationship between a man and men, and between men and Man. Drama is akin to the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us know more, and not merely to spend our feelings."// --Arthur Miller, from the "Introduction to his //Collected Plays"//=

//Read the following account and then consider what Miller means when he writes "it belonged to me now".//
In writing //The Crucible//, Miller went to the source of the Salem Witch Hunts by reading the recorded transcripts of the trials. After much research, he struggled with the dilemma of how to make this more than an interesting historical play with connections to the House of Un-American Activities Commission Hearings that were ongoing during the time he was writing the play. He was struggling with how to connect the play to his own story in such a way that audiences over time could connect it to their own life. He writes about his struggle in his autobiography, //Timebends//: //One day, after several hours of reading at the Historical Society [...] I got up to leave and that was when I noticed hanging on a wall several framed etchings of the witchcraft trials, apparently made by an artist who must have witnessed them. In one of them, a shaft of sepulchral light shoots down from a window high up in a vaulted room, falling upon the head of a judge whose face is blanched white, his long white beard hanging to his waist, arms raised in defensive horror as beneath him the covey of afflicted girls screams and claws at invisible tormentors. Dark and almost indistinguishable figures huddle on the periphery of the picture, but a few men can be made out, bearded like the judge, and shrinking back in pious outrage. Suddenly it became my memory of the dancing men in the synagogue on 114th Street as I had glimpsed them between my shielding fingers, the same chaos of bodily motion - in this picture, adults fleeing the sight of a supernatural event; in my memory, a happier but no less eerie circumstance--both scenes frighteningly attached to the long reins of God. I knew instantly what the connection was: the moral intensity of the Jews and the clan's defensiveness against pollution from outside the ranks. Yes, I understood Salem in that flash; it was suddenly my own inheritance. I might not yet be able to work a play's shape out of this roiling mass of stuff, but **it belonged to me now**, and I felt I could begin circling around the space where a structure of my own could conceivably rise.// As Miller spent hours pouring over the testimony of the participants in the trial, he tried to catch their speech patterns, reading out loud and listening to old time residents. Then he followed the train of testimony against one of the executed, a farmer named John Proctor. He realized there was a connection between Abigail and Parrish and that they were some-how connected to the Proctor family. There were sexual innuendos throughout the transcript. So in his play he fictionalized the adulterous relationship between John Proctor and the young Abigail. He knew that would create the dramatic energy and a reason for Abigail to attack Elizabeth as a witch. Like many writers, Miller became attached to his characters and to the real people they represented. He wrote the following while standing on the rock at Gallows Hill: //Here hung Rebecca, John Proctor, George Jacobs, people more real to me than the living can ever be. The sense of a terrible marvel again that people could have such a belief in themselves and in the rightness of their consciences as to give their lives rather that say what they thought was false. Or, perhaps, they only feared Hell so much? Yet, Rebecca said, and it is written in the record, I cannot belie myself. And she knew it would kill her [...] The rock stands forever in Salem. They knew who they were. Nineteen.//

=**READ THIS DICTIONARY DEFINITION OF A "CRUCIBLE". **= = = =**HOW DOES IT HELP US APPRECIATE THE TITLE OF MILLER'S PLAY? **=
 * cru·ci·ble ** (krs-bl)

//n. //


 * 1. **A vessel made of a refractory substance such as graphite or porcelain, used for melting and calcining materials at high temperatures.


 * 2. **A severe test, as of patience or belief; a trial.


 * 3. **A place, time, or situation characterized by the confluence of powerful intellectual, social, economic, or political forces.

=READ THESE OBSERVATIONS ABOUT THE CONNECTION BETWEEN TEXT AND CONTEXT.= =WHAT DOES IT ADD TO YOUR UNDERSTANDING?= =DO YOU AGREE WITH THE CONNECTIONS MADE HERE?=

Americans were afraid in the 1950s of losing what they had worked so hard for. They were afraid of Communism and of nuclear weapons. After WWII the Soviet Union was gathering up countries throughout Eastern Europe and it was announced that the Russians had developed their own nuclear bomb. The United States no longer had control over the use of the bomb. Americans feared annihilation. That fear drove them to accept the leadership, and charges made against innocent people by Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who in turn played on their fears.
 * The 1950s** The end of WWII had brought prosperity back to the country. Young families were buying houses and cars and televisions. They were having babies. Weekends were for dancing and going to the drive in movies with the whole family. //Father Knows Best//was the best loved family series. "Gorgeous George" was the prince of wrestling and the Dodgers and the Yankees were the best game in town. Catholic Bishop Sheen and Evangelist Billy Graham were regulars on the family TV bringing church to the home. It was a white world though in TV land. There was another world out there. African American soldiers returned from WWII and moved back into "colored towns." But they had the same GI Bill as the white veterans and they went back to school too. And slowly people's attitudes would begin to change and unrest with the status quo was beginning to rise. In response to the unrest, Congress voted to insert the words under God into the Pledge of Allegiance. Change and disruption was in the air.


 * McCarthyism** Kenneth C. Davis writes in his history, //Don't Know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know About History But Never Learned//: "In the 1950's 'McCarthyism' meant a brave, patriotic stand against Communism. It had the support of the media and the American people. Now it has come to mean a smear campaign of groundless accusations from which the accused cannot escape, because professions of innocence become admission of guilt and only confessions are accept-ed." Many who came before McCarthy, as well as many who testified before the powerful House Un-American Activities Committee (HUCA), were willing to point fingers at others to save their own careers and reputations." (Davis, 326) Another historian of the 1950s, David Halberstam, writes that McCarthyism crystallized and politicized the anxieties of a nation living in a dangerous new era. "He took people who were at the worst, guilty of political naïveté (innocence, gullibility) and accused them of treason. He set out to do the unthinkable, and it turned out to be surprisingly thinkable." (26)


 * The 21st Century** Fear persists. As the old millennium ended everyone who owned a computer had a new one, just in case the old computer lost all of its data because it's built in clock wasn't programmed past the end of 1999. People didn't fly on January 1, 2000, just in case the computers in the plane and the control towers didn't work. And when everything worked, Americans let out a big sigh of relief that another disaster had been overcome with American ingenuity. It was an election year and things were good.


 * Three major surprises of the new millennium.** The country woke up on the day after the November 2000 presidential election and for the first time in recent history, did not know who won the election. This showed that there were major flaws in the American election process and that our system of government might be in danger. oSeptember 11, 2001 revealed America's vulnerability to outside forces. It was a dual loss of innocence and a false sense of safety. oIn November 2001, Enron Corporation suffered a financial and corporate melt down. The stock market that was wheezy after the events of 9/11, came tumbling down after Enron, as did consumer confidence.

**Resources for The Crucible**
 * Visit these websites to build your understanding of the contextual issues Miller was engaging with in his play.**
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Use this site for the Salem museum to explore how America currently represents the witch trials to herself. Especially recommended, is the section named Evolving Perceptions of Witches
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Read this article about //The Crucible// and Belonging.