Miller achieve emotional intensity Essays

Miller achieve emotional intensity Essays Miller achieve emotional intensity Essay Miller achieve emotional intensity Essay The Crucible is a highly emotional play, especially at the end of Act One and beginning of Act Two. Arthur Miller integrates many dramatic techniques including: interesting poignant characters, a great deal of dramatic and literacy devices, powerful language and themes of envy, power, hysteria and dignity. Miller also draws upon contextual significance; he uses the Salem witch trials as an allegory for the communist trials of McCarthyism. These techniques contribute to the overall emotional intensity at the end of Act One and the beginning of Act Two. The Crucible can be read by different audiences in varying ways; the original audience would have been more emotionally involved therefore finding it more emotionally intense. Nowadays, the audience may be more detached from the story finding it less emotionally intense. The Salem witch trials in The Crucible can be seen as a parallel to the McCarthyism era in which the play was written. To that audience many things that an audience today may not notice, would be deeply significant and emotional. The first similarity between the two eras is the way that the characters accuse other people of being involved with the devil to save themselves from punishment. This happens when Abigail says I saw Goody Sibber with the devil. Abigail is one of the many characters who is thought to be a witch, she then accuses someone else as being a witch thus, saving herself. This also happened in McCarthyism, if you accused someone else, you got a lighter sentence. This parallel with McCarthyism would have evoked great emotions at the time the play was first performed. The second parallel is the way the court would be more lenient if people pleaded guilty. This is shown at the beginning of Act Two when Elizabeth says The deputy governor promise hangin if theyll not confess. This not only evokes emotion because innocent people were not given a fair trial but at the time the play was first performed would have been seen as a parallel to McCarthys trials where if people did not confess under little or no evidence they would face a greater punishment. People would have been deeply moved by this significance. When the play was first performed during McCarthys times, Senator McCarthy believed that communists were going to spoil their way of life, the American dream. In The Crucible Salem is a theocratic society in which the law and the church are the same; they are worried that the devil is trying to ruin their way of life. The theocracy in the play is endorsed by the power that Reverend Parris has in the village, when he says you will confess yourself or I will take you out and whip you to death and when he says the devil can never overcome a minister. Both show the authority and power the church had in their society. Again this parallel would have a deep impact on the audience of millers time. A modern audience may relate the persecution of differences in Salem similar to the modern persecution of Islam and the middle east. Salem was perhaps a more extreme version of Senator McCarthys trials however their allegorical significance would still increase the emotional intensity of the play for its original audience.