Beyond Plays of 'Foolish' Passions and Sympathies: "The Crucible" as Marxist Drama

Author(s): Joshua E. Polster

Source: The Arthur Miller Journal , fall 2012, Vol. 7, No. 1/2 (fall 2012), pp. 43-61
Published by: Penn State University Press

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 Beyond Plays
of
'Foolish' Passions and Sympathies:
The Crucible as Marxist Drama

Joshua E. Polster

At the age of sixteen, Miller, in the thick of the Great Depression,

discovered Marxism. He was watching a handball game when a
college boy, who stood beside him, randomly explained to Miller that
"although it might not be evident to the naked eye, there were really
two classes of people in the world, the workers and the employers.
And that all over the world, including Brooklyn, of course, a
revolution that would transform every country was inexorably
building up steam. Things would then be produced for use rather than
for someone's personal profit, so there would be much more for
everyone to share, and justice would reign everywhere." Miller
recalled understanding the college boy instantly, and excitedly
responded, "Everything is upside down" ( Timebends 111).
For the teenaged Miller, Marxism became a viable way to
explain the disastrous conditions of the United States during the
Great Depression. According to Miller, instead of blaming the
capitalist system, people - such as his father - blamed themselves for
losing their fortunes in the stock market: "We were not accustomed,
in those days, to think of the thing [capitalism] as a system anyway. I
never heard the word used, frankly - the word 'system'. You weren't
in the system. You were in some sort of free arena where each person
went out to test himself' ( Arthur Miller and Company 20). Marxism,
therefore, provided a theoretical context and means for Miller, along
with the American public and the leftist movements in particular, to
disclose, critique, and attempt to overthrow the capitalist system that
had naturalized its own presence:

For me, as for millions of young people then and since, the
concept of a classless society had a disarming sweetness that
called forth the generosity of youth. The true condition of man, it
seemed, was the complete opposite of the competitive system I
had assumed was normal, with all its mutual hatreds and

The Arthur Miller Journal Volume 7, Nos. 1 and 2 Fall 2012

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44 Joshua E. Polster

conniving. Life could be a comradely embrace,

one another rather than looking for ways to tri
( Timebends 111)

When Arthur Miller first learned of Marxism dur

game, his eyes radically opened to what Marxism
"The order of society has [...] melted and the o
shown its incompetence and hollowness, the w
radicalism. All that is falsehood and waste, and the
for the symmetrical new structure, the benign r
shackled powers" (115). As the years continue
increasingly Marxist. He felt that a person had th
become entirely cynical about the world, or "to g
building a new world: "[That] creation of the new
rejection of absolute cynicism has really been the
my work" {Arthur Miller and Company 20). Twen
handball game, with "a passionate moral certai
Miller went to the Salem Historical Society to stu
the 1692 witch trials ( Timebends 408): "I could fai
of those hanging judges, whom it was only p
understand if one had known oneself the thri
absolutely right. In fact, I would probably not hav
all had I not found Marx in the midst of tha
( Timebends 115). Though many of Miller's play
thought, The Crucible (1953) is one of the stro
Miller's Marxist ideas in practice.
When Miller wrote The Crucible , the America
gone through a significant ideological shift. As h
the 1930s and early '40s, Marxism was, for ma
mankind and of the survival of reason itself' ( Tim
the solution for the Great Depression, and it "wa
stand against fascism abroad and at home [...] in th
liturgy - to be Red was to embrace hope, the hope
( Timebends 408). In the post-war economic bo
capitalism regained its footing as well as trust fr
public, and reestablished its power in U.S. society.
II, Marxism once again became the Red menace to
as the country moved into the Cold War and the
McCarthyism. Miller, though, failed to be manipu
considered, these capitalistic scare tactics, whi
reinforce its place of dominance, and he refused

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 The Crucible as Marxist Drama 45

capitalist myth that individual economic prosperity would bring

economic prosperity to all. Instead, he continued through Marxist
ideology to oppose capitalism's repressive and ideological structures;
this opposition is seen in The Crucible.
Miller gave the stage events of The Crucible an economic
determinism that revealed his critique of the economic power
structure operant in historic Salem as well as in his postwar nation.
Landowning, for instance, strongly reverberates throughout the play
as the motivating force behind the actions of many of the accusers - a
Marxist critique on private property. For example, in Miller's play
notes, he comments that Thomas Putnam, in history, was the eldest
son of the richest man in Salem and that "many accusations against
people are in the handwriting of Thomas Putnam, [...] as a witness
corroborating the supernatural testimony, or that his daughter led the
crying-out at the most opportune junctures of the trials" ( Crucible
13). In the play, Putnam's motives are revealed by Giles Corey, a
poor landowner, who claims that land-lust prompted Putnam to
accuse townspeople of being witches: "If Jacobs hangs for a witch he
forfeit up his property - that's law! And there is none but Putnam
with the coin to buy so great a piece. This man is killing his
neighbors for their land!" (92)
The socio-political disharmony in The Crucible illustrates how
alienated people have become in the capitalist construct. Significant
fractures have emerged between the Salem townspeople, and concern
for humanity has been replaced with hatred, deviousness and
competition. This is an obvious parallel to the capitalistic society in
which Miller saw alienation among friends and strangers as they
turned on each other to save their professional careers from the
communist blacklists.
Throughout the play, Miller demonstrates the class struggle for
economic, social, and political power. For example, the first
"witches" to be imprisoned and hanged by the dominant order were
from the lower class - Sarah Good, who "sleep[s] in ditches, and [is]
so very old and poor," and Goody Osburn, who is also poor, "drunk
and half-witted" (59). The killing of townspeople only becomes a
problem for the upper class when those with a more substantial
means of living - such as Rebecca Nurse who had three hundred
acres - start being executed. "It were," according to Parris, "another
sort that hanged till now" (122).
This emphasis on class struggle - the violent clash between the
privileged and the oppressed - is an example of Hegel's theory of the

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46 Joshua E. Polster

dialectic. According to Marxists, this class struggle

progressive movement toward revolution and the
society. In the play, Reverend Hale, who has awake
of the Salem Witch Trials, alerts the Deputy Govern
revolution: "Excellency, there are orphans wanderi
house; abandoned cattle bellow on the highroads, t
crops hangs everywhere, and no man knows when
will end his life - and you wonder yet if rebellion
you should marvel how they do not burn your pro
Miller, perhaps, never directly intended to inc
with The Crucible , but he did intend to awaken
about the current dangers of the political climate
however, did have an adverse effect on the U
McCarthyism dominating the media and fueling th
the generally apprehensive public moved itself to t
being too closely associated with this supposed Red
be a critique of McCarthyism. Miller recalled that "
opening, a time when the gale from the Right w
fullest fury, [McCarthyism] inspired a part of it
unsettling fear and partisanship" ( Theatre Essays
parts of the leftist movement also distanced itself fr
The Marxist critical responses to the 1953 pr
Crucible demonstrate the general split in Marx
which two different groups of thought emerg
degree of influence the economic base has on art.
critics hold the idea that art needs to be committ
causes of the Left, while Engelsian Marxist cri
Miller tended to agree - free art from direct politi
Marx and Engels' letters on drama, they both agre
of interpretation [and] a general avoidance of open
propagandistic writing" (Carlson 256). Engelsian M
art the power to not only reflect the economic b
factors to reveal, critique, and intervene in the statu
An example of Engelsian Marxism is Bertol
theatre. Brecht - an opponent of the Leninist and
of Socialist Realism - used Verfremdungseffekt (
and juxtaposition to bring the attention of the aud
and to expose his productions - and, in exten
technical, socio-political, economic constructions
creations. Epic theatre does not attempt to move
the bourgeois theatre; instead it attempts to show

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 The Crucible as Marxist Drama 47

aims to distance the actors from the audience in order to create an

objective and didactic theatre - a theatre that illuminates the various
historical factors, and sociopolitical and economic constructions and
contradictions in society. The work of Brecht does not just reflect,
but exposes, challenges, and attempts to disrupt the economic
substructure.
Eric Bentley, the Marxist critic of the New Republic and
translator and scholar of Brechťs work,1 gave voice to the
"confusion" within the leftist movement of the period, as it relates to
Miller and The Crucible :

Political antagonists of Miller have suggested that he is a Marxist

who, consciously or unconsciously, lacks the courage of his
convictions - or is it that 'Stalinism' today welcomes a
sentimental haze? [...] Or is Miller a 'tragic' artist who, without
knowing it, has been confused by Marxism? There is no need to
make of any criticism of The Crucible a special accusation
against its author, for its confusions are those of a whole class, a
whole generation. (82)

Bentley actually made several "special accusations" against the

author when he attacked The Crucible's deviation from the party line:

Mr. Miller says he is attempting a synthesis of the social and the

psychological, and, though one may not see any synthesis, one
certainly sees the thesis and the antithesis. In fact, one never
knows what a Miller play is about: politics or sex [...] You may
say of The Crucible that it isn't about McCarthy, it's about love
in the seventeenth century. (Bloom 86)

For Bentley, the psychological conventions obscured the

playwright's political critique of the substructure. In order for
Miller's play to be socially significant, Bentley implied that Miller
would have to focus only on the political. This critique is congruent
with the Leninist Marxist criticism based on its belief that a work of
art must strictly follow the party line. Miller's published plays -
different from some of his unpublished plays, such as You 're Next
(1939), which were hard-line Marxist - did not strictly follow a
particular party policy.
Miller was wary of such propagandist techniques. He seemed to
follow a more Engelsian Marxist perspective, which gave greater

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 48 Joshua E. Polster

autonomy to the artist. In his autobiography, M

Marxist approach to playwriting:

If Marxism was indeed a science of society,

could not warp social probability and his own honest
observations to prove an a priori point of political propaganda
[...] art, at least good art, stands in contradiction to propaganda
in the sense that a writer cannot make truth but only discover it.
(237)

The Crucible is a type of Marxist play that shows a number of

historical forces and economic factors that reveal the absences and
contradictions of the ideological structures used to create, rehearse
and maintain the status quo. Salem is presented as a society
inundated with the images, myths and ideas of those in power that
use repressive and ideological structures within the courtroom,
political parties, churches and families to suppress divergent thought
and action. This, in turn, brings the townspeople to be dominated by
consent, where they govern themselves and, thus, help maintain the
status quo. Reverend Hale, for example, carries " half a dozen heavy
books" books that are "weighted with authority" (33-34):

Here is all the invisible world, caught, defined, and calculated. In

these books the Devil stands stripped of all his brute disguises.
Here are all your familiar spirits - your incubi and succubi; your
witches that go by land, by air, and by sea; your wizards of the
night and of the day. Have no fear now - we shall find him out
if he has come among us, and I mean to crush him utterly if he
has shown his face! (36)

These books contain the rules that instruct Salem's perceptions,

thoughts and ethics. Instead of being skeptical of Hale and his books,
the townspeople consent to his authority. Parris, for instance, says to
Hale, "It is agreed, sir - it is agreed - we will abide by your
judgment" (35). Salem, Miller reminds his readers in the play notes,
was "an autocracy by consent, for they [townspeople] were united
from top to bottom by a commonly held ideology whose perpetuation
was the reason and justification for all their sufferings" ( Crucible 4).
Despite these Marxist concepts in The Crucible , not all theatre critics
saw Miller as a Marxist playwright, or at least a good one.

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 The Crucible as Marxist Drama 49

In addition to Eric Bentley' s aforementioned critiques of The

Crucible , Bentley dismissed The Crucible as a naïve allegory and
poor melodrama because, in his opinion, the villains were too evil
and the heroes too good (Martine 48). Bentley is not alone in his
opinion of The Crucible. The Marxist philosophy of the play is often
ignored or disputed, and the play is usually considered to be nothing
more than melodrama and dramatic theatre, a replication of an
individual's view at one point in time and space that disguises its
subjectivity and materiality into an illusory world.
For instance, Herbert Blau, who directed The Crucible at The
Actors Workshop of San Francisco in 1954, agreed that "there is a
melodrama in the fervency [of The Crucible ]," and that one might
"wish [Miller] were more inventive in form" because the play
"pretends to describe in realistic terms" (62). The Crucible is
commonly regarded as an example of conventional realism, a style of
dramatic theatre. New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson wrote, "As
a piece of dramatic writing, The Crucible is closer to [...] the realistic
form of All My Sons " ("The Crucible " XI). These understandings of
The Crucible were displeasing to the playwright. Conventional
realism, according to Miller, is:

A play representing real rather than symbolic or metaphysical

persons and situations, its main virtue verisimilitude, with no
revolutionary implications for society or even a symbolic
statement of some general truth. Quite simply, conventional
realism was conventional because it implicitly supported the
conventions of the society [... it is] the perfect style for an
unchallenging, simple-minded linear middle-class conformist
view of life. {Plays: Five xii)

Bentley and Blau' s opinions of The Crucible , though overstated, do

have some truth, but more for the productions of Miller's play than
for the play itself. The 1953 and 1954 productions, for instance, used
illusion and realism as a way to rouse emotion, and, as a result, the
spectators for these performances seemingly had less agency of
interpretation. "Miller's play," according to Blau, "[made] the
choices for you" (64). For Blau's production, he saw and utilized
only the conventions of realism and dramatic theatre, and, thereby,
created a more conventional production. Blau felt that Miller's
dramaturgy smoothed out any contradictions in the play and created a
Gesamtkunstwerk , a complete work of art that synthesizes all its signs

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50 Joshua E. Polster

with no apparent juxtapositions. The text of The

some characteristics of the dramatic theatre,
structure of a well-made play, but the whole
greater than any of its parts.
In addition to the elements of dramatic theatre
has qualities of the epic theatre. These inhere
pronounced in productions by utilizing epic thea
opposed to suppressing the epic characteristics w
the case in Blau' s production. Epic theatre, as pre
was Brechťs attempt to bring the theories of Mar
stage. If one can remove The Crucible from
subsequent realistic productions, then one can m
epic characteristics. The Crucible , in many ways
Jean-Paul Sartre's call for a new type of drama -
dramatic and epic in form - to challenge bourgeois
In Beyond Bourgeois Theatre , Sartre discusses
bourgeois theatre, a form of dramatic theatre tha
the "action of man" but the action of the
constructing events (52). Bourgeois theatre is sub
aims to represent an image of itself according to
is, furthermore, a strategy used by the dominant
power by controlling and rehearsing its represen
authority. In order to maintain this hierarchical s
theatre replaces change or action with "foolish"
emotion that is "blindly sufficient unto [oneself] a
Sartre then recognizes the value of Brechťs epic t
the bourgeois theatre and, consequently, to disru
paradigm the bourgeois theatre upholds. Accordi
difference between the epic and the dramatic theatr
who creates dramatic theatre speaks in his own n
with his own interpretation, while the other is dem
not speak in his own words. He effaces himself at
he effaces the audience before the play he present
Sartre believes that in order to create an effecti
the bourgeoisie, one must recognize the inherent p
dramatic and epic forms. In the dramatic form,
part of a social group and, as a result, is overly
trying to understand the individuals and events wi
the epic form, the playwright is, theoretical
critiquing a system of which he/she is not a
actuality, the epic playwright, like the drama

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 The Crucible as Marxist Drama 5 ļ

sympathetic to his/her own social group, which creates a subjective

critique when he/she tries to objectively explain "what one doesn't
understand" in a foreign social group (57). For instance, according to
Sartre, Brecht is sympathetic to his socialist group and this, in turn,
affects Brecht' s objectivity when critiquing the bourgeoisie. "The
error here," according to Sartre, "lies in believing that one can
present a society-object to the audience, while the form, if
uncorrected, would go too far in the direction of sympathy with the
aim of objectivity, and thus would risk falling to the bourgeois side"
(57).
The solution to these inherent problems of the dramatic and epic
forms, according to Sartre, is to find the point "between these two
forms of theatre" and unite "all the forces [...] which we now have"
(57). One must create a form of theatre that is both apart from and a
part of a society in order to create a more critically aware and
balanced perspective. Miller's The Crucible is an example of theatre
that has struck this Sartrian balance and combines both the dramatic
and epic form. The play is - despite Bentley and Blau' s critiques -
more than just dramatic theatre; it is a play that strongly utilizes the
Brechtian techniques of epic theatre that challenge the bourgeois
theatre.
The most apparent example of epic theatre in The Crucible is the
Brechtian technique of historification to make a contemporary point.
Miller in The Crucible , like Brecht in The Resistible Rise of Arturo
Ui (1941), critiques the contemporary socio-political climate of the
HUAC hearings by moving the critique to a historical distance, to the
new space and time of the Salem Witch Trials. The past, for Miller, is
not finished; it is a means to understand the present. He gives The
Crucible an epic-consciousness of the major events and historical
forces of both spaces and times, in order to critically illuminate their
social and political conditions. By defamiliarizing what is shown,
Miller is able to critique the past and the making of history, and, at
the same time, show how the past - and the present - could have
occurred in different ways. Miller sees the socio-political events
occurring in both times and spaces not as natural but as arbitrary
theatrical productions played out by the dominant order in each
society. By creating a dialectical production of historical reality,
Miller is able to expose this power structure and present history as
changeable. "If theatrical means," writes theatre scholar Sarah
Bryant-Bertail, "were used in gaining real political power, then the

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 52 Joshua E. Polster

epic theatre could reveal the working of this mach

(3).
Miller's multi-layered approach in The Crucible of combining
two dimensions of historical time and geographic space - the HUAC
hearings and the Salem Witch Trials - into one, disrupts the linear
narrative of space and time. Each spatio-temporal dimension
simultaneously reveals itself and speaks to the other from its own
constructed socio-political didactic space; they become metaphors for
each other. This interweaving of texts - of visual and aural signifiers
- does not conceal but rather reveals space and time as constructs.
As the spectator travels within this construct of space and time,
linearity and unity are broken. The spectator can imagine a larger
expansion of space and time that is not just in one moment, but is part
of a continuum going backwards and forwards. According to Bryant-
Bertail:

[...The subject] does not hold itself intact. Instead, it is dispersed

between the stage [events] and [historical events], thus
fragmenting into what Julia Kristeva calls a subjectivity in
process , which relinquishes sovereign control over language and
can no longer be contained within rigid spatial and temporal
bounds. A sense of 'traveling' between the two dimensions of
consciousness [occurs...] The spectators [are] not sure which of
the two stories to take as the 'real' one. (Bryant-Bertail 157)

For example, in The Crucible , when the needle in the poppet is

found, the poppet becomes what Brecht calls a gestic object, "a nexus
where contradictory spatio-temporal dimensions and their ideological
valuations cross paths at one material object" (Bryant-Bertail 22).
Finding the needle in the poppet immediately disrupts the spatio-
temporal dimension of the Salem Witch Trials, for it also refers to the
Alger Hiss Trials, when a secret roll of microfilm (the needle) was
found in a pumpkin (the poppet) on the property of Hiss, who was
convicted of Soviet espionage activities. In this brief gestic moment,
the spatio-temporality of each dimension is intertwined. However,
this does not blur the dimensions to the degree in which each space
and time cannot be distinguished from the other. Instead, each
dimension maintains itself, and reveals itself to the other as a similar
construction of the dominant order.
This spatio-temporal correlation seen in epic theatre, in turn, also
disrupts the dualistic mode operating in both dimensions. The

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 The Crucible as Marxist Drama 53

seventeenth-century colonial society of the Salem Witch Trials

believed in the invisible world of the spirit (God) and in the material
world of flesh (Devil). Similarly, twentieth century U.S. society
believed in the world of capitalism (God) and the world of
communism (Devil). In addition, where historic Salem believed in
the actual presence of witches, the modern U.S. believed in the
presence of communists.2 The constant traveling of the spectator
between space and time reveals, emphasizes and, consequently,
upsets this arbitrary construct of binary oppositions.
Comparable to Brechťs Lehrstücke (learning plays), The
Crucible demonstrates a clear political agenda that simultaneously
speaks to both spatio-temporal dimensions. "In America," according
to Miller:

[...] any man who is not reactionary in his views is open to the
charge of alliance with the Red hell. Political opposition,
thereby, is given an inhumane overlay which then justifies the
abrogation of all normally applied customs of civilized
intercourse. A political policy is equated with moral right, and
opposition to it with diabolical malevolence. Once such an
equation is effectively made, society becomes a congerie of plots
and counterplots, and the main role of government changes from
that of the arbiter to that of the scourge of God. The results of
this process are no different now from what they ever were.
{Crucible 31-32)

Miller uses The Crucible as a political weapon, a means to scrutinize

ideology and transform society by arousing the spectators' capacity
to make decisions and take action. "When [The Crucible]" Miller
recalls, "gets produced in some foreign country, especially in Latin
America this has been true, it's either that a dictator is about to arise
and take over, or he has just been over-thrown. I'm glad something of
mine is useful as a kind of a weapon like that. It speaks for people
against tyranny" (Martine 14).
The audience of The Crucible , therefore, is not intended to be
passive, as is the case in dramatic theatre, but to be an instrument of
social change. They are epic spectators capable of altering not only
themselves but their society. The epic techniques in The Crucible
create a defamiliarization effect that allows the spectators to bring the
subliminal to the surface, to gain an epic consciousness that
recognizes society as an unnatural alterable construct. Miller's

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54 Joshua E. Polster

dramaturgy does not, as Herbert Blau claims,

contradictions in society and "make the choices
Crucible , Miller dialectically shows the strategies
available and often contradictory tactics of charact
In the end, it is up to the spectators to choose the
spectators are not, as Brecht said of dramatic the
thick of [the story]" (Willett 37). They are, instea
agents of interpretation.
In addition to Brechtian historification, Miller
historical materialism - an important concept in ep
inherent in all of Brecht' s plays - to connect The
context to its economic context. Miller relates the s
play to the economic situation of the characters. T
way, demystifies the social, economic, and politica
in a society and demonstrates how they are const
and perpetuated. As mentioned earlier, in The Cruc
is seen as the motivation for many of the actions
example, when charged with not attending churc
reacts to Reverend Parris - who was previously
saying that the church is more of an auction hou
God:

PROCTOR: Mr. Parris, you are the first mi

demand the deed to this [meeting] house -
PARRIS: Man! Don't a minister deserve a house to live in?
PROCTOR: To live in, yes. But to ask ownership is like you
shall own the meeting house itself; the last meeting I were at you
spoke so long on deeds and mortgages I thought it were an
auction. (27)

Another example of Marx's historical materialism is when Elizabeth

Proctor explains to her husband that Corey, eventually sentenced to
death for being a wizard, denied Putnam the chance of seizing his
property: "[Corey] were not hanged. He would not answer aye or nay
to his indictment; for if he denied the charge they'd hang him surely,
and auction out his property. So he stand mute, and died Christian
under the law. And so his sons will have the farm" (129). Economic
factors, such as these, were strongly present in historic Salem. When,
for instance, the actual John Proctor was hanged, the sheriff quickly
went to Proctor's home to illegally seize his property:

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 The Crucible as Marxist Drama 55

The sheriff come to his house and seized all the goods,
provisions, and cattle that he could come at, and sold some of the
cattle at half price, and killed others, and put them up for the
West Indies; threw out the beer out of a barrel, and carried away
the barrel; emptied a pot of broth, and took away the pot, and left
nothing in the house for the support of the children. (Gragg 129)

Throughout The Crucible , Miller's use of historical materialism

also demonstrates the contradictory treatment between the different
economic classes. The hangings, again, do not become a problem for
the townspeople until the wealthy are the ones being tried and
sentenced for witchcraft.
Miller avoids solely presenting his characters and events in the
framework of psychology, naturalism or universalism, by exposing
the economic forces underlying the historical and staged events.
"Land-lust," Miller explains, "which had been expressed before by
constant bickering over boundaries and deeds, could now be elevated
to the arena of morality; one could cry witch against one's neighbor
and feel perfectly justified in the bargain. Old scores could be settled
on a plane of heavenly combat between Lucifer and the Lord;
suspicions and the envy of the miserable toward the happy could and
did burst out in the general revenge" ( Crucible 6).
In The Crucible , land-lust is also seen in the form of sexual lust.
As Thomas Putnam conquers land, John Proctor conquers Abigail
Williams. Each man's act is presented in the play as lecherous, but
only the protagonist Proctor bears the burden of guilt and, later,
atones for his wrongful behavior. Proctor's adulterous relationship
with Abigail can also be read as an indirect attack on Parris - the
uncle of Abigail and nemesis of Proctor - who attempts to build his
power and land allotment in the community.
Similar to Brecht's Mother Courage (1939), The Crucible
demonstrates how the economy and the social hierarchy are affected
by war. Toward the end of The Crucible , when a great number of
townspeople have either been executed or imprisoned for witchcraft,
Ezekial Cheever, a court assistant appointed to arrest accused
individuals, tells Deputy Governor Danforth that, "There be so many
cows wanderin' the high-roads, now their masters are in the jails, and
much disagreement who they will belong to now [...] there is great
contention, sir, about the cows. Contention make him weep, sir; it
were always a man that weep for contention" (120). As stated earlier,
Reverend Hale, who is now horrified by the witch trials and clearly

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 56 Joshua E. Polster

sees how it as affected the town, continues to a

Governor: "Excellency, there are orphans wande
house; abandoned cattle bellow on the highroads,
crops hangs everywhere, and no man knows wh
will end his life - and you wonder yet if rebelli
you should marvel how they do not burn your
critique of the class structure and the emphasis o
the threat of revolution - the violent clash betwe
the oppressed - are additional themes of epic
Crucible.
Moreover, the events in The Crucible , just as in Brecht' s The
Good Soldier Schweik (1943), are presented from the points of view
of people not in power; there is more emphasis on the anonymous
lower class characters than on the famous and powerful upper class
characters. For example, John Proctor, the protagonist in The
Crucible , was historically a lower class farmer who, at least before
the production of The Crucible , was largely unknown to history.
The Crucible also unveils the ideological discourses of power -
the church and state - and demonstrates their constructed roles in
society. Reverend Hale, for instance, exhibits the church's theocratic
power: "We shall find him [the Devil] out if he has come among us,
and I mean to crush him utterly if he has shown his face" (36).
Deputy Governor Danforth shows the unbending power of the state:
"A person is either with this court or he must be counted against it,
there be no road between" (90). Miller reveals how these discourses
of power try to rationalize, justify, and reinforce their perspective on
what is happening in society, allowing no alternative perspectives.
Reverend Hale, for example, says, "Now let me instruct you. We
cannot look to superstition in this. The Devil is precise; the marks of
his presence are definite as stone" (35).
At the same time Miller presents these dogmatic religious and
political powers, he refutes them by quoting their discourses in
absurd dramatic contexts. This can be seen when the poppet is
discovered in Proctor's house:

PROCTOR: Mary Warren swears she never saw no poppets in

my house, nor anyone else.
P ARRIS: Why could there not have been poppets hid where no
one ever saw them?
PROCTOR: There might also be a dragon with five legs in my
house, but no one has ever seen it.

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 The Crucible as Marxist Drama 57

P ARRIS: We are here, Your Honor, precisely to discover what

no one has ever seen. (99)

The absurdity of the state's discourse is also revealed in Danforth's

response to Reverend Hale's plea to allow Giles Corey to be
represented by a lawyer:

In an ordinary crime, how does one defend the accused? One

calls up witnesses to prove his innocence. But witchcraft is ipso
facto , on its face and by its nature, an invisible crime, is it not?
Therefore, who may possibly be witness to it? The witch and the
victim. None other. Now we cannot hope the witch will accuse
herself; granted? Therefore, we must rely upon her victims - and
they do testify, the children certainly do testify. As for the
witches, none will deny that we are most eager for all their
confessions. Therefore, what is left for lawyer to bring out? I
think I have made my point. Have I not? (96)

An additional instance of the absurdity of the state's discourse

happens toward the end of the play, when Danforth will not consider
pardoning the people he has condemned to death: "I cannot pardon
these when twelve are already hanged for the same crime. It is not
just" (124).
These Brechtian techniques of epic theatre apparent in The
Crucible are commonly suppressed by realistic productions, which
result in poor reception. For instance, the 1953 production of The
Crucible received mixed reviews. Miller blamed this reception on the
realism-trained Broadway audiences who were unable to "believe the
reality" of the characters on the stage ( Collected 44). Critics called
for more pervasive subjectivity, but Miller felt otherwise. To truly
capture his goal of greater objective awareness, he believed that,
"The realistic form and style of the play would then have had to give
away" ( Collected 45). He acknowledged the work of Bertolt Brecht
as a viable "solution [to] the problem of consciousness [... that was]
admirably honest and theatrically powerful" ( Collected 45). In July
of 1953, Miller, himself, directed a more successful epic version of
The Crucible by removing all of the realistic scenery and using
drapes and a light-flooded cyclorama. He also included a narrator
called 4 The Reader' to set the scenes and convey the historical
background.

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58 Joshua E. Polster

Miller's earliest exposure to the epic form had

graduating from the University of Michigan, whe
high-paying job as a Hollywood scriptwriter in ord
Federal Theatre Project, a part of the Works Prog
(WPA). During his time there, he saw the lef
Newspapers, one of the few exceptions to the
theatres of the 1930s Popular Front period. The pu
Newspapers was to stimulate social commentary
by exploring major contemporary social, econ
issues like public ownership of electrical pow
agriculture and medicine. The plays of the Livin
as Triple-A Plowed Under (1936), were perfo
presentational style. The dialogue was taken mos
newspapers, and public documents; also, the
alternated with mechanical devices, inspired by
Vsevolod Meyerhold, that showed film clips a
statistical data to help illustrate the plight of th
corrupt capitalistic society.
A testament to the epic qualities of The C
Piscatori West Germany production of the pl
production, Piscator, the German director famous
Brecht and epic theatre, wrote on stage flats a list
hunts, inquisitions, and other acts of inhumanit
seems that artists outside of the United States we
the innovative epic potential of Miller's plays, but
own country, such as Bentley and Blau, were not.
Another strong testament of The Crucible's po
just epic but also an example of Sartre's call for a
to challenge the bourgeois theatre is Les Sorciere
This film script adaptation of Miller's play was w
himself. The fact that Sartre chose The Crucible dem
felt this play was an example of a dramatic text th
of the dramatic and epic forms, as well as ex
critique. Sartre, though, did make significant re
play to emphasize a stronger Marxist statement.
Leninist version, it is made very apparent that the h
produced by - and only by - a ruling class of
intent is to enslave the poorer farmers and the d
displeased:

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 The Crucible as Marxist Drama 59

I thought it was Marxist in the worst sense, quite frankly. I

thought that anybody who had the least sensitivity to history
would be just embarrassed by it. He gets the simplest things
wrong [...] They were imposing a simplistic class interpretation
so that the witch hunt was supposedly devised by the upper class
against the lower class. Well, for God's sake, probably about
thirty per cent of the victims were people of property. {Arthur
Miller and Company 83)

Miller's displeasure with Sartre's textual changes and political

emphasis in the film further demonstrates the clash in leftist ideology,
and Miller's more Engelsian Marxist approach to drama. He spoke of
how Sartre's adaptation "lacks a moral dimension" because it
precludes "a certain aspect of will" (Huftel 146). The character of
Danforth, for example, remains the same throughout the film. Theatre
scholar Christopher Bigsby develops Miller's argument:

Lacking self-awareness, [Danforth] never confronts and rejects

the possibility of being other than he is. He is implacable, but the
nature of that implacability is different. There is no kinetic
morality, no momentary doubt and therefore no decision. He is a
representative of unyielding power but his evil is less conscious,
seemingly, than a product of historical process. He is a member
of a ruling elite, of an unquestioning ideology. ( Critical Study
156)

Regardless of this clash in leftist ideology, The Crucible can be

understood as a play that challenges and goes beyond bourgeois
theatre. Arthur Miller, like Brecht, attempts to elevate the audience's
sociopolitical consciousness, not simply raise their aesthetic tastes. In
The Crucible , Miller takes a critical stance against the bourgeoisie by
showing how and by whom history has been represented. He explores
the strategies of power, the mechanisms by which society is
constructed and historicized by the dominant order. The Crucible is,
in short, much more than "poor melodrama." If The Crucible adheres
to the Aristotelian model of plot (the structure of rising and falling
action, climax, and catharsis), then it is also an example of Aristotle's
anagnorisis (the movement of drama from the unknown to known),
which, in this play, illuminates society's arbitrary constructions and
contradictions, and the ramifications of its economic order. If there is
emotion, then it is thinking emotion. If there is entertainment, then it

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60 Joshua E. Polster

is instructional entertainment. The Crucible is didactic theatre - a

Sartrian-balanced dramatic and epic form - that challenges the
audience to become more critically aware of and active against
bourgeois attempts to control and perpetuate its representation and
place of authority. The Crucible is clearly one of the strongest of
Miller's earlier published plays that exemplify Marxist thought and
the elements of epic theatre. Once these political and dramaturgical
elements are realized, a reader can move past seeing the play as only
a family drama and locate a greater Marxist significance.

Notes

1 Eric Bentley helped introduce Brecht's epic theatre to the United

States.
Many critics, however, argue that Miller's comparison between
witches and communists is inadequate since there were communists
in the United States but no actual witches in Salem. Miller refuted the
criticism: "This is a snobbish objection and not at all warranted by
the facts. I have no doubt that people were communing with, and
even worshiping, the Devil in Salem, and if the whole truth could be
known in this case, as it is in others, we should discover a regular and
conventionalized propitiation of the dark spirit. One certain evidence
of this is the confession of Tituba, the slave of Reverend Parris, and
another is the behavior of the children who were known to have
indulged in sorceries with her. There are accounts of similar klatches
in Europe, where the daughters of the towns would assemble at night
and, sometimes with fetishes, sometimes with a selected young man,
give themselves to love, with some bastardly results. The Church,
sharp-eyed as it must be when gods long dead are brought to life,
condemned these orgies as witchcraft and interpreted them, rightly,
as a resurgence of the Dionysiac forces it had crushed long before"
{Crucible 32-33).

Works Cited

Atkinson, Brooks. "At the Theatre." New York Times. 23 January

1953. 15.
- . " The Crucible : Arthur Miller's Dramatization of the Salem
Witch Trial in 1692." New York Times. 1 Feb. 1953. XI.
Bentley, Eric. In Search of Theater. New York: Vintage Books, 1954.
Bigsby, Christopher. Arthur Miller and Company. London: Michelin

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 The Crucible as Marxist Drama 61

House, 1990.
Blau, Herbert. "No Play Is Deeper Than Its Witches." Twentieth
Century Interpretations of The Crucible , Ed. John Ferres.
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1972.
Bloom, Harold. Ed. Arthur Miller. Philadelphia: Chelsea House,
2003.
Bryant-Bertail, Sarah. Space and Time in Epic Theatre. Rochester,
NY: Camden House, 2000.
Carlson, Marvin. Theories of the Theatre. Ithaca and London: Cornell
University Press, 1984.
Gragg, Larry. The Salem Witch Crisis. New York: Praeger, 1992.
Martine, James. Ed. The Crucible : Politics, Property, and Pretense.
New York: Twayne Publishers, 1993.
Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. Trans.
Samuel Moore. New York: Penguin Books, 1979.
Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. New York: Bantam Books, 1959.
- . Timebends. New York: Grove Press, 1987.
"Miller Play Hailed in French Version." New York Times. 18
December 1954. 13.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. "Beyond Bourgeois Theatre." Brecht Sourcebook.
Carol Martin and Henry Bial, Eds. London and New York:
Routledge, 2000.
Willett, John, Trans and Ed. Brecht on Theatre. New York: Hill and
Wang, 1964.

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