The Crucible (Penguin Plays) (original 1953; edition 1976)

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I never actually read this in school; however, I was very familiar with the storyline itself. The Crucible. What is there to say that hasn’t already been said?

This story was based on historical people and real events and was a very authentic depiction of paranoid and hysterical people in a tiny village. Despite knowing this was mostly factual, it was still hard to imagine such an unfortunate situation occurring. This village had laws established but it blew me away how everything was handled. These people were accused of crimes that many of them were innocent of yet they were denied a fair trial and the accusers were believed 100%. This is a prime example of what happens when there are gaps in due process and when local governments infringe on an individual’s civil liberties: chaos.

The scene that I will forever remember was where they speak about Giles Corey and the torture he suffered through. Giles had been one of the individuals accused of witchcraft (falsely) but he refuses to admit guilt or innocence as he is educated in the law. The law at the time stated that anyone who refused to enter a plea could not be tried. To force a plea, the townsfolk proceeded to pile large stones on top of his body in an attempt to get him to admit to his ‘crimes’.

At the end of the audiobook I listened to there was an interesting tidbit regarding what followed in future years that I was unaware of.

‘Twenty years after the last hanging, the government awarded compensation to the victims still living and to the families of the dead. However, some people were still unwilling to admit their total guilt. The town was still divided into factions for some of those compensated by the government were not victims at all, but informers.’ ( )

Read aloud in a HS classroom wherein a large subset of the boys snickered any time the name Tituba was pronounced. That aside, I enjoyed it very much. ( )

I started to watch a version of this on Netflix and it was terribly horrible. I should have known better, Kirstie Alley was in it. The book was a thousand times better. ( )

Highschool required reading with a paper. Sure guarantee to make a person not a like book. ( )

In Miller’s play, a group of young girls is caught dancing in the woods of Salem Town late at night; among them are the daughter and the niece of the town’s pastor, as well as Tituba, the pastor’s slave. In Puritan New England, any wrongdoing or misfortune was considered the work of the Devil, and if young girls were found to be dancing in the woods–against all propriety–then surely they must have been influenced by the Devil himself. To avoid punishment and to find an excuse for their actions, the girls–led by Abigail, the pastor’s niece–point their fingers at certain women of Salem Town and accuse them of bringing the Devil into town through witchcraft. Abigail begins the train of events leading up to the trials and hangings by first pointing a finger at Tituba (quite obviously singled out for being a foreign-born slave with different traditions that make the townspeople uncomfortable). Of course, mass hysteria ensues, and society reacts as it always tends to react in the face of hysteria.

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