The Crucible The Crucible, a historical play based on events of the Salem witchcraft trials, takes place in the small Puritan village in the colony of Massachusetts in 1692. The witchcraft trials, as Miller explains in a prose prologue to the play, grew out of the particular moral system of the Pur...

The story of Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible, revolves around the witchcraft hysteria and human vengeance that plague Salem and split the town into those who use the trials for their own ends and those who desire the good of the society. It is this paradox that Miller finds to be a major the...

What makes us humans different from elephants, snakes or chimps besides our shape? We have consciences, of course. Conscience is the awareness of right and wrong. In the Crucible, the idea of conscience in strongly emphasized. Miller himself said, "No critic seemed to sense what I was after [which w...