How Miller Creates Conflict in the Crucible?
English Controlled Assessment Draft: Conflict in the Crucible
The play I am studying for this essay is called “The Crucible” and I will be focusing on Act 1 of the book. The question I will be answering is what’s the most powerful type of conflict in the opening act of the crucible? The word conflict means a state of disharmony, opposition and or fighting. The conflict portrayed in the Crucible is often described as tools used to describe events in Millers time period. For example, witchcraft doesn’t exist in Salem yet that is the basis of the storyline of the play and many people die as a result of accusations over witchcraft. During the time Miller wrote this book, the cold war was happening and many people in America were accused of communism (including Miller himself), when they were accused they were routinely asked to give names of other communists which is the same as the ‘witches’ in Salem were asked, whether the devil “come-with another person” and many of these people turned out to not be communists in the first place same as the accused ‘witches’. So it seems that Miller uses the fact there were not any witches in Salem as a metaphor suggesting there were not any communists in America.
Miller conveys Putman as a source of conflict as a result of his rivalry for power with Parris. This is demonstrated when Mr Putman is seen as attempting to stir drama over Parris’s daughters situation “No witchcraft! Now look you Mr Parris”. As Parris is so plainly defiant in his denial of “witchcraft” affecting his daughter, this portrays Mr Putman as deliberately trying to annoy Parris to most likely make him look like a loose cannon in the eyes of Salem to steal his job. Which makes sense as Miller tells us that the Putnam’s resent Parris and Mr Putnam wanted his brother in law to have Parris’s position. The directive “Now look you” magnifies this as although Parris has more authority than him, he is already seen as trying to order Parris around. This is then
The play I am studying for this essay is called “The Crucible” and I will be focusing on Act 1 of the book. The question I will be answering is what’s the most powerful type of conflict in the opening act of the crucible? The word conflict means a state of disharmony, opposition and or fighting. The conflict portrayed in the Crucible is often described as tools used to describe events in Millers time period. For example, witchcraft doesn’t exist in Salem yet that is the basis of the storyline of the play and many people die as a result of accusations over witchcraft. During the time Miller wrote this book, the cold war was happening and many people in America were accused of communism (including Miller himself), when they were accused they were routinely asked to give names of other communists which is the same as the ‘witches’ in Salem were asked, whether the devil “come-with another person” and many of these people turned out to not be communists in the first place same as the accused ‘witches’. So it seems that Miller uses the fact there were not any witches in Salem as a metaphor suggesting there were not any communists in America.
Miller conveys Putman as a source of conflict as a result of his rivalry for power with Parris. This is demonstrated when Mr Putman is seen as attempting to stir drama over Parris’s daughters situation “No witchcraft! Now look you Mr Parris”. As Parris is so plainly defiant in his denial of “witchcraft” affecting his daughter, this portrays Mr Putman as deliberately trying to annoy Parris to most likely make him look like a loose cannon in the eyes of Salem to steal his job. Which makes sense as Miller tells us that the Putnam’s resent Parris and Mr Putnam wanted his brother in law to have Parris’s position. The directive “Now look you” magnifies this as although Parris has more authority than him, he is already seen as trying to order Parris around. This is then