Few dramatic works of the twentieth century have proved as enduring — or as urgently relevant — as Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Drawing a chilling parallel between the Salem witch-hunt of 1692, which Miller described as ‘one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history’, and the anti-communist purges led by Senator McCarthy in 1950s America, the play transforms a historical episode into a timeless parable of mass hysteria.
When superstition, paranoia and malice take hold of the small community of Salem, the consequences spiral toward a violent climax in which innocent men and women are destroyed by malicious rumour and false accusation. A savage indictment of mindless persecution and the terrifying power of mob conviction, The Crucible stands simultaneously as a fierce critique of McCarthyism and the ‘frontier mentality’ of Cold War America — and as a warning whose force has never diminished.
ISBN 13: 9780141182551
Author: Arthur Miller
