On _The Crucible_

I’ve appreciated the many thoughtful comments to the discussion forum. Some have written impassioned justifications for the use of poetic license; others have pointed out that the film may be less useful as a learning tool in discerning causes and effects. Here are some additional thoughts on the matter.1) One post argued that we don’t really know what happened historically with Richard II or any of Shakespeare’s other historical figures. This is misinformed–there is a very large body of historical scholarship devoted to tracing the exactness of his representations of characters. However, the spirit of this comment was interesting, because it suggested that literature is not identical to factual history, but rather more of an interpretation of history and perhaps even an exaggeration of the essential details to reinforce their meaning. One might conclude that literature is essentially mythological at its core and that its purpose has nearly always been more symbolic than literal. Metaphors and fictional scenarios all breathe life into inanimate facts. But, lest we forget, even histories that claim to stick to the bare bones of the facts, such as Mather’s discussion of Salem, are at work on their own mythologies. I find the relationship between myth and history to be extremely fluid–both are forms of storytelling and both are concerned with different approximations of truth.

2) Some argued that the love interest between Proctor and Williams clouds the true causes and effects of the Salem event. I agree with this view, in part. Abigail Williams becomes a kind of caricature in the film, particularly when she is shouting at Judge Danforth. In a society that perceived Jewish law as a basis for theocratic social order, it would not be unthinkable to stone a child for dishonoring his/her parents, so the insolence that Williams shows in the film, as well as her open contentiousness with Elizabeth Proctor is, I think, an unnecessary historical gloss on Salem. Compare this with the extremely effective dramatization of land disputes as a catalyst for witchcraft accusations. This plays out extremely well as a story and is also very consistent with the documentation of the period. Giles Corey was, indeed, pressed to death in the fashion depicted. His arguments with Thomas Putnam are both gripping and historically authentic. Likewise, Miller does an excellent job of showing how contraversial something like dancing might be and how linked this may be to suspicion.

Where the love interest gains the most power as a literary exaggeration is in its symbolic power for the fraudulence of the court. Miller gives John Proctor some extremely weighty lines, such as his claim that the accusations amount to “a whore’s vengeance” and that by believing Abigail Williams the court is “pulling down heaven and raising up a whore.” Through the despicable manipulation of spiritual literalism that Abigail Williams enacts in the film (highly exaggerated from her historical prototype, who may have been dramatic and disturbed, but could hardly have been as bold as Wynona Ryder’s character and so willfully exploitative of adults), we get a more metaphorical representation of Puritan hypocrisy.

Miller tries to drive this point home when Judge Danforth says, of those about to hang, ”Who weeps for these weeps for corruption.” The irony, of course, is that the court is most corrupt. Danforth’s insistence in the film on “legal proof” of Proctor’s confession indicates that his concern is less with truthfulness and more with legal ass covering in order to preserve the integrity of the proceedings. Admitting error would be admitting to spiritual relativism, and the literalistic Puritan mind was so convinced of its uprightness that it could not budge, even when faced with overwhelming evidence.

The message of the film, as I see it, is summed up well in John Hale’s admonition to Elizabeth Proctor before she speaks alone with her husband about whether or not to confess to what he has not done. Hale suggests something to the effect that “no principle, however weighty, can justify the taking of [life].” Throughout the film, we watch Hale’s transformation from a fundamentalist Puritan (who believed that the marks of witchcraft were as “definite as stone,” when he first arrived in Salem) into a rational thinker who can see the human motivations leading up deliberate falsehoods and can distinguish between these falsehoods and devilry. Hale gains a more metaphorical view of the world. He becomes something much more like a Deist, like those who were influenced by the Enlightenment, and that transformation from conservative stubbornness to a more fluid understanding of human nature is, perhaps, a change that Arthur Miller hoped to see in the American culture of the 1950s. He got the 1960s as an answer, but that is another subject.