Controlled Assessment

Task: Explore the ways Arthur Miller presents ideas about injustice in
The Crucible.
The Crucible is a play centered on the theme of injustice. Arthur Miller captures
the quintessence of an unjust theocracy and artfully exposes its ramifications as
an allegory for the Red Scare of the mid-20 th century.
Miller makes use of the motif of empowerment as a catalyst of injustice. The
whole system gets turned upside down when the intelligentsia of Salem hand the
reins to a group of children. Naturally, this leads to a number of injustices. In
order for us to understand how this came to be we must realize the authoritarian
nature of a theocracy and its implications. A theocracy relies on an inflexible,
unchanging and relentless set of ideals that dictate all aspects of life in a
community. These ideals can either be religious or manmade but can also be a
combination of both - much like in The Crucible. The Salemites therefore
exhibit but a morsel of freewill and conform to the assertions of those in
authority. Judge Danforth is in a position of authority and in the context of a
theocracy we can easily see how his logic on the nature of witchcraft and
prosecution thereof is unchallenged despite the misgivings of characters like
Reverend Hale.
Witchraft is, on its face and by its nature a hidden crime. Therefore, who may
possibly be witness to it? The witch and the victim. None other. Now we cannot
hope the witch will accuse herself. Therefore we must rely upon the victims
version of events
Miller presents the destructive course of injustice with a strict adherence to
Freytags dramatic structure. Act One contains the exposition: it allows the
audience to learn through reported speech what has sparked the hysteria
(ABIGAIL: Uncle, we did dance). Act Two presents the rising action where
accusations abound. Act Three is the climax wherein the Proctors are accused
and John Proctor makes a futile attempt to save both his life and goodness. The
end of Act Four is the denouement in which we witness Proctor put through the
eponymous and metaphoric Crucible that restores his name at the cost of his
life.
Throughout the play, Miller implies that it is only human nature to abuse power
for personal gain -gluttony has time and again proven itself as a catalyst of
injustice. In the First Act of the play, Reverend Parris exposes his own gluttony
when he says Mr. Corey, you will look for a man of my kind at sixty pound a
year! I am not used to this poverty.... What is remarkable however is how this
gluttony proliferates unchecked, this can be explained by the oppressive nature
of a theocracy but can also be a ramification of the seemingly benign nature of
theocracies. Greed is a driving force behind such unjust systems of rule and it is
consequently imperative to mask this truth with slanderous promises leaving the
townspeople blind to the greed of those in power. Given Parriss position as a
reverend, his greed is unequivocally ironic and critical of theocratic implications.
Omar Al Khatib

Miller presents Judge Danforth as a manifestation of the rigidness of the law. He

follows the commandments of the Puritanical society with unwavering precision
and consequently believes that entities are either good or bad: ...a person is
either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road
between.... This narrow minded system of thought is inherently unjust as it
leads to circumstantial pieces of evidence being deemed incriminating as a
result of the fear that its adopters have of a person being in the fabled road
between. To the Salemites, an individual who has a mere blemish on their name
must be inherently evil. This is clearly exemplified when Cheever spies a
poppet in the Proctors house drawing him into a puerile frenzy as stage
directions indicate he was wide-eyed, trembling. In this case, the ambiguity as
to Elizabeths innocence leads Cheever to look for reassurance that she is
punishable and to him the poppet provides that. The Crucible takes full
advantage of the play format by exploiting stage directions in order to add
semantic meaning to the play, this is essential when writing a political allegory
as it is required to invoke empathy and catharsis within an audience who lived
within and conforms to the laws of the very society the play criticises.
Furthermore, the stage directions sophisticated language coupled with the use
of third person omniscient address for the stage directions implies that the
narrator is an observer of the events and that any commentary on the characters
is to be taken as fact; we are meant to despise the parochial snobbery of these
people and the fact that they preferred to take land from heathens rather than
from fellow Christians which suggests an inherently unjust nature. Moreover,
the orthography of the stage directions is juxtaposed with the ungrammatical
dialect of the characters implying their obstinate ignorance.
Another way that Miller presents injustice is through the theme of xenophobia.
The fact that the rest of the world follows a more democratic system of rule leads
the intelligentsia of a theocratic society to encourage a sheer resentment of
outsiders to oppress any insurrection. Miller exemplifies this dark nature through
Tituba being the first to be accused. Furthermore, Miller presents this esoteric
system of thought by the symbols of the forest representing the devils last
preserve and Salem being the domain of God. The exiled Salemites sensed an
imminent threat from the outside world to which they were oblivious and instead
looked within themselves for an enemy - much like cold war America with its
laissez-faire attitude. The purges are a manifestation of the mass hysteria that
plagued the Salemites and the consequent injustice that it inculcated.
Miller presents the injustices inherent in both Salem and cold war America
through the parallelisms he draws between the Salem microcosm and American
society at the time. An example of this is the role that psychosomatic behaviour
and mass hysteria played in obnubilating the truth and consequently causing
injustice. Arthur Miller uses Betty Parris as a model for this psychosomatic
behaviour as she genuinely believes herself to be witched and carries on
pretending despite Abigails threats. Likewise, Americans at the time were
unable to see the implications of the HUAC trials and adhered to Joseph
McCarthys manning the watchtowers conceit. Furthermore, the
disproportionate power that an unsubstantiated accusation was given is a mutual
Omar Al Khatib

catalyst of injustice in both scenarios. Abigails accusations were seen as fact

and so were the HUACs.
Indeed, the ultimate symbol of injustice in the play is Abigail Williams who
ruthlessly spearheads the purge and systematically incriminates individuals by
starting with those at the pit of the societal hierarchy (Tituba, Goody Osborn and
Goody Good) and then moving on to those closer to the top (Proctor himself).
There are several ways in which injustice manifests itself within this character;
the first injustice is quite obviously her abuse of her newfound power in killing
innocent townspeople as a means by which to mask her nefarious intentions.
Secondly, is the fact that she is able to condemn others for being sinful despite
herself being far from purity (PROCTOR: (breathless and in agony): It [Abigail] is
a whore!). Finally, she uses her power to incriminate those whom she has
grudges against most importantly Proctors wife ultimately leading to the
destruction of Proctor himself which may be a wry remark on the way that justice
only manifests itself after the damage has been done, often in ways that are
unjust to the innocent. Proctors death is a punishment for Abigail yet it has left
Elizabeth without the husband she loved.
The message here is that injustice is inescapable in a theocratic society.
Furthermore, Proctors death may be interpreted as a selfish and unjust act in on
itself when considering that he is placing his own self-image above the good of
his family. Indeed, Hale seems to unwittingly realise this pride and vanity in
the penultimate line of the play. However, he is still unable to understand
Proctors motives perhaps highlighting human nescience as to such fine
idiosyncracies and our subsequent blindness to injustice.
Woman! It is pride, it is vanity. Be his helper! What profit him to bleed? Shall
the dust praise him? Shall the worms declare his truth?

Omar Al Khatib