The Crucible Informative Essay

1.

Miller, Arther. The Crucible. New York: Penguin, 2003. Print.

2. Arthur Asher Miller was born on October 17, 1915 in Harlem, NY, and was the son of two Polish immigrants. His father owned a successful clothing shop and the family was wealthy until the stock market crash of 1929, the start of the Great Depression. The family moved to Brooklyn afterwards. Unable to go college after high school, Miller worked numerous odd jobs until he was accepted into the University of Michigan. There he wrote his first play, No Villain. Miller’s playwright professor was Kenneth Rowe, who taught him various techniques to create intricate plays. Due to a college football injury, he was not in active service during World War II, thus starting his writing career.

He first saw success with All my sons, which helped him earn his first Tony Award

These characters are usually very prideful, but are intelligent and learn something at the end of the story. The tragic hero of The Crucible is John Proctor, whose flaw is that he had committed adultery with Abigail Williams, due to the cold nature of his wife. The events that led to his fall first start when his wife is arrested for witchcraft. He is extremely angered by this unfair arrest and rips the warrant, screaming, “Off with you!” (72) as they try to take custody of her. This put him in a disadvantage when in court. Another disadvantage was when he forced Mary Warren to sign a deposition claiming that everything was “pretense.” This led the judge and the officials in court to be suspicious of him as an abuser. Although Abigail had no intention of letting John die, she changes her mind when he confesses that he had committed adultery with her, and that “she thinks to dance with [him] on [his] wife’s grave” (102). So that she can save her reputation, she starts to act against him, which leads him to be executed and