Question

In at least 150 words, discuss Miller’s literary purpose for writing The Crucible. Use details from the play to support your answer.

Answer 1

he most obvious reason Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible (or anything else, really) is because he had a story to tell. Without that, he would not have been inspired to write. It is true, however, that what inspired him to write this particular story is quite personal.

As a Jewish man, Miller was a political advocate against the inequalities of race in America, and he was vocal in his support of labor and the unions. Because he was such an outspoken critic in these two areas, he was a prime target for Senator Joseph McCarthy and others who were on a mission to rid the country of Communism.

Miller was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities because of his connections to these issues but refused to condemn any of his friends. This experience, a rather blind and sweeping condemnation of anything even remotely connected to Communism without sufficient (or any) evidence, is what prompted him to write about the Salem Witch trials. 

In a later interview, Miller said the following:

It would probably never have occurred to me to write a play about the Salem witch trials of 1692 had I not seen some astonishing correspondences with that calamity in the America of the late 40s and early 50s. My basic need was to respond to a phenomenon which, with only small exaggeration, one could say paralysed a whole generation and in a short time dried up the habits of trust and toleration in public discourse.

However, the more he began to study the tragic events in Salem, the more he understood that McCarthy's hunt for Communists was nothing compared to the fanaticism which reigned in Salem in the 1690s.

Answer 2

Arthur Miller is the author of the play "The Crucible," which describes the Salem Witch Trials in a dramatized and fictionalized way. The play was intended to serve as an allegory for McCarthyism. McCarthyism is the name of a doctrine named after senator Joseph McCarthy. This doctrine advocated persecution of communist sympathizers, often without evidence and when the accused had not committed a crime. Miller himself suffered as a result of this doctrine, as he was questioned by the House of Representatives' Committee on Un-American Activities in 1956, and convicted of contempt of Congress. He believed these trials were a "witch hunt" similar to that of Salem hundreds of years earlier. Therefore, the purpose of writing this play was to bring attention to these issues and force people to reflect on the morality and legality of this persecution.