The Crucible (Penguin Classics) | Arthur Miller

The Crucible (Penguin Classics) | Arthur Miller | moving and thought-provoking

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The Crucible (Peng...

	The Crucible (Penguin Classics) Arthur Miller Penguin Classics, 2003 - 176 pages average customer review:based on 48 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Based on historical people and real events, Arthur Miller's play uses the destructive power of socially sanctioned violence unleashed by the rumors of witchcraft as a powerful parable about McCarthyism.

Introduction by Christopher Bigsby

The Devil is Precise

On my walk through the LoA edition of Arthur Miller plays I bypass The Enemy of the People, the Ibsen adaptation, which I think is a waste of everyone's time, and go straight to the Crucible, which I had never read, nor watched on stage or screen. Very odd. It is a truly gripping piece of modern classic stage writing.
Of course AM needed to educate us always, so this story is not just a story about the witch trials of Salem, when perfectly harmless people, including some citizens of standing in the community, got identified as witches and hanged for it. (Which somehow looks like progress over the burnings in Europe.)
No, this is generally about fundamentalism and totalitarianism and theocracy, and more specifically about McCarthy and I wouldn't be surprised if it was also about the Ayatollah Khomeini, whatever you may say regarding anachronisms, and the Taliban. Let's not forget the Cultural Revolution of China.
If I seem to mock the play just a little bit, I haven't made up my mind yet, not quite. There is something strangely wrong in the tone of the dialogues. Can't quite nail it. Anachronistic for sure; is that all? Have to think about it.
The message that AM put into his morality tale is that power and property interests are behind the maddest manifestations of disinterestedness and righteousness. That was sure true in the other historical witch hunts that we know about. Whether it is an accurate reflection of the Salem case, I do not know. (I will definitely look for the DVD and give DDL a chance for redemption in my eyes.)

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moving and thought-provoking

I really enjoyed reading this classic tale. I found it interesting from an historical and literary point of view. It forces you to think about very real moral dilemmas, like what you might or might not give your life for.

Prompt service

Daughter needed it for a project for an accelerated class. It came in time and she was able to complete her assignments with a new book.

Courtesy of Mother Daughter Book Club.com

The Crucible by Arthur Miller is a great book to read with a mother-daughter book club. It provides an outlet to talk about issues the girls are covering in school, and to find out about how their perspectives differ from those of their moms. The issues of witchcraft and socially sanctioned violence against a targeted group seem eerily relevant to some of the things going on in our world today. This book challenged all of us to think about the most important things in our lives and what we're willing to sacrifice to achieve a higher cause.

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Okay, so all sorts of historical details are altered for the sake of character drama, but so what? It does not change the fact that this is one heck of a great play that offers it all: romance, betrayal, psychology, murder, and more, all set in a sleepy little Puritan town obsessed with witches that has become the victim of the "games" of a few young girls.

While I would hardly recommend it to someone going for deep facts of the Salem Witch Trials, this still draws on historical characters and does an excellent job of portraying them as real people. You feel for them, even the ones you hate.

"The Crucible" is well-named as the pot that heats everything up, and Miller takes minor events and shows how they become the tragedy that was the witch trials.

This is an incredibly powerful and important story that teaches messages as the drama entertains.

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