The Crucible Play Vs Movie Essay

Arthur Miller was an award-winning author, who wrote many plays over the course of his life. In 1953, he wrote a play called The Crucible. His intention in writing this play was to give readers insight into the, “strangest and most awful chapters in human history” (Miller back cover), or in other words, the Salem witch hunts and trials of the seventeenth century. The Crucible is based on real events and historical people and reflects the anti-communist hysteria based around the supposed witchcraft that was happening in Salem at that time. In 1996, a film based off of Arthur Miller’s play, also called The Crucible, was released. Although there are minor differences between the play and the movie, they are greatly outweighed by the vast similarities.

Scene organization throughout the movie is for the most part accurate, however there are a few scenes that are re-arranged or added, probably purposefully to dramatize the movie more. The opening scene in the movie, for instance, starts out with girls around a fire casting spells and dancing. In the play this scene is more of a flashback or recollection that appears later on and the play begins in, “A small upper bedroom in the home of Reverend Samuel Parris, Salem, Massachusetts, in the Spring of the year 1692” (Miller 3), where Parris is sitting at his ailing daughter, Betty’s, bed. Another example is when in the movie, Abigail and John Proctor kiss after arguing, or rather, Abigail kisses him. In the play, this does not happen. One of the larger differences in the movies representation of The Crucible, is the absence of the meta-level that is present all throughout the play. In his play, Arthur Miller draws parallels between the text and modern world issues, goes into further explanation of characters and gives background information and explanations. He does this in large sections called meta-level. This chunk of the play is not present in the movie and is probably the largest and most significant