Navigating the Waters of Salem

I started reading Arthur Miller's The Crucible in that kind of random, magic way that books find us when we need them, without us having realized or consciously participated. I had learned about the witch trails before and I'd been interested in them because of the extremes of belief that they'd revealed: I was interested in the way that religion and guilt had overlapped into hysteria. The Crucible takes the Salem Witch Trails and re-writes them to draw parallels to another set of trails, this time McCarthyism, which Miller lived through. I'm drawn to The Crucible because of the way it plays with religion and belief and truth or whether two things can be true at the same time. I feel like I can connect to the way the story talks about betrayal and forgiveness. Edward Albee said that Arthur Miller's work ''teaches us a lot about how to fight evil.'' and I think that's what The Crucible does for me. It's about belief in an idea of yourself, it's about fighting and sacrificing and forgiving. Stories are what we take from them.

I wanted to write three different essays on my thoughts after reading The Crucible. The first is about characters and the moral themes of the play and what the play means to me. The second will be about exploring the historical backdrop of the play (I want to research and write about both the Salem Witch Trials and McCarthyism). The third will be about Arthur Miller's life and times (he's been called America's social critic. His writing really inspires me). Below is the first essay. I didn't really explain the story of The Crucible in the essay itself (because I wanted to focus on expressing my thoughts), so I'll give a brief summary here. But the essay is about universal themes and identity, so hopefully people who haven't read the play can still connect to it.

The Crucible begins in 1692 with Reverend Parris's household. Parris's daughter, Betty, can't get out of bed and suffers from a strange silence. New spreads quickly in the community, and the Parris household is visited by several neighbors and doctors. Suspicion builds and the visitors argue as the town begins mumbling about witchcraft. Parris has taken in his orphaned seventeen year old niece, Abigail Williams (seven months ago Abigail had an affair with John Proctor, a prominent member of Salem). It's through Abigail that Parris finds out that the girls of Salem (his daughter included) had spent the last night dancing in the woods and making wishes over a fire with Parris's salve from Barbados, Tituba (one of the first women to be accused of witchcraft).

The Crucible is a marvel of a storm, but Miller centralizes the story. This is accomplished through the human emotions--the dawning little vengeances and jealousies. The winter and tensions of a marriage, the cracks and gossips that make up a society. The violence of a love affair, the guilt at the death of babies. These are the real invisible worlds knotting over Salem, the out of body spirits that bring a town to its boiling point. This essay will explore the ideas of self definition through honor and forgiveness.

Fires within Fires, the Waters of Salem
Arthur Miller’s fable burns into a new climate: It’s through a weaving of oral histories, insinuation and tension racing like footnotes underneath the exchanges between neighbors that Miller builds a society. In a Salem sectioned off by its beliefs, the community survives by familiarity.

“The American continent stretched endlessly west, and it was full of mystery for them. It stood, dark and threatening, over their shoulders night and day, for out of it Indian tribes marauded from time to time, and Reverend Parris had parishioners who had lost relatives to these heathen. The parochial snobbery of these people was partly responsible their failure to convert the Indians. Probably they also preferred to take land from heathens rather than from fellow Christians. At any rate, very few Indians were converted, and the Salem folk believed that the virgin forest was the Devil’s last preserve, his home base and the citadel of his final stand. To the best of their knowledge the American forest was the last place on earth that was not paying homage to God.”

Here community means survival, just as to the Puritans God meant saviour and society meant an identity as a whole. The church and Reverend made up a persona and the people lived under it as their title. United, under God. Miller makes arguments for belief and maybe part of his point is that unwavering, powerful belief in anything stirs up hysteria. The Puritans had fought for their place under belief, and to keep it steady they needed to establish a common ground. Religion became a mapkey for navigating the waters of Salem. Miller explains Salem as it was bordering on friction, surrounded by what was largely unknown. “To the European world the whole province was a barbaric frontier inhabited by a sect of fanatics who, nevertheless, were shipping out products of slowly increasing quantity and value.”

Abigail warns Proctor in Act One: “I have a sense for heat.” So goes the play. It is ever present, settling over each linger of hysteria as it swells to magnitudes.

Now Heaven and Hell Grapple on Our Backs
Even the timing of the story makes a point--it’s a kind of post love-affair confessional, all interrogation and past tense and guilt. It teaches us that the action is not what matters, but the judgement that comes after. So much of our lives are working backwards from an action that seems skyward, an act of God, others’ mistakes shambling into us. It teaches us that our reactions are the challenges that make or break, they are justice. Miller wrote a lot about regret in his plays.

“A character is defined by the kinds of challenges he cannot walk away from. And by those he has walked away from that cause him remorse.”

Proctor is action, he storms through and articulates; grasps and expresses his conflict and struggles. With stories before, I would pay attention to metaphor or themes. But Miller is all dialogue, all force and gust, contrast and character. It’s humans in detail and society at large. He teases relationships to their height, his plays are immediate and urgent and unforgiving. I read an interview where Miller talked about creating stories with meaning, stories as parables and arches. “I think it depends primarily on the writer's orientation. There is a lot of work being done today which is very sharp, but there doesn't seem to be a moral dimension to them. In other words, they are not looking out beyond the personal story. That is a difficult thing to trace in a work. I suppose if you took Moby-Dick, he could have written that as an adventure story about a whale and hunting it. Instead it became a parable involving man's fate and his struggle for power, over God even. The intensification of a work generally leads in the direction of society if it is indeed intense enough.”

John Proctor is fully human simply because of the range of his character. In one play we see all sides of him striving, he hits all the notes in his search for self definition against the backdrop of his society. Miller wrote, “Everything we are is at every moment alive in us.” In The Crucible stories and personas are constantly being resown and altered. But the past is so clearly a blueprint, a biography, footsteps echoing behind every saving grace. Proctor is poled to his sins, his past and his guilt struggle with his search to define himself through his present actions. Proctor says, “Now Hell and Heaven grapple on our backs, and all our old pretense is ripped away--make your peace! Peace. It is a providence, and no great change; we are only what we always were, but naked now.”

Forgiveness is not always something that is earned and it’s not always given for the sake of the wronged. Proctor’s need for forgiveness isn’t subjective, it’s an element that weighs down on him and his house.

It’s energy that twists and navigates his present. Proctor wrestles with his own devils, and believes that he cannot redeem his honor because Elizabeth’s judgements weigh him down. He says he lives under her eyes, that she mistakes herself for God and that she thinks her justice is law. Elizabeth tells him that she isn’t what holds him at this standstill. “The magistrate sits in your heart that judges you. I never thought you but a good man, John--only somewhat bewildered.”

Proctor needs to restore his idea of honor, and that can only be done through Elizabeth’s eyes. It’s a bargain, a compact of betrayal.

“Betrayal is the only truth that sticks.” Miller wrote. Just as forgiveness, maybe, is the only justice that lasts.

The Crucible trades in the unseen--the elements of lies, and trust and hysteria. The unseen is made simple. Some rights and wrongs can’t be undone and negotiated. It doesn’t matter what actions were sparked between the ‘victims’ and the ‘accusers’ (at moments in the play, the two are interchangeable). We cannot lose sight of ourselves or take morality into our own hands. In The Crucible that sense of morality is overshadowed by a belief in God. Proctor makes an argument against judgement that translates into a humility. Stories (as illustrated in a town as close knit as Salem) are constantly evolving in all directions, actions are striked or broken.

We only know our own stories. We can’t trace or track the reasons behind another’s actions. Just as Proctor needs to know only his name: Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!



The Crucible patterns faith and belief with responsibility. The characters (Puritans) believe in higher, impersonal forces that rack their lives. Abigail is a hysteric, a prophet, an angel whose divinations are accusations.
Sins and stories collide into a mirage, a dizziness and hysteria. Proctor and Abigail are both on the brink of a break in faith, and they fight or sacrifice to keep that faith.

Abigail gambles to keep her standing on that edge of a world, to keep God in her eyes. She spins a tangle and sails it off away from her, pinning blame on innocents.

Proctor struggles under his own striving for resurrection, his rebirth. He maintains his idea of God, of honor, of faith. Both start the story as guilty, both battle to be baptized. The Crucible is a religious story, simple in its play of fear and redemption.