“The Crucible”, by Arthur Miller

95 pages, Dramatists Play Service, Inc., ISBN-13: 978-0822202554

Alright, alright, alright, settle down, you; I know that, officially, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is a play and not explicitly a book, but I’ve never seen the play but I have read it in the form of a book, so, y’know, it counts, okay? Okay. Alright, then. Like many of you, I’m sure, I read The Crucible in a high school English class and was exposed to its message about intolerance and hysteria, highlighting especially how both can lead to one being illogical and inhumane towards people Not Like Us. In the play, people lose their freedom and lives because they do not conform to norms and because people are swept away by fear and anxiety. Ostensibly, The Crucible dramatized and partially fictionalized the story of the Salem Witch Trials that took place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony during 1692–93, but in reality it was a critique of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA) hearings then chaired by Senator Joseph McCarthy, and served as a none-too-subtle criticism of the same.

Well then, what to make of this thing? There can be no doubt that Miller’s masterpiece is a powerful counterblast to what he saw as the draconian and dangerous Congressional hearings that sought to expose and root-out Communists from the Federal Government, something that Miller and all the other East Coast Intellectuals were certain didn’t exist. Never mind that McCarthy was right, that all sorts of pinkos had indeed infiltrated our institutions and were working to undermine their own country in service to the Red Beast of Moscow (looking especially at you, Alger Hiss). But just as bad is the distortion of fact that Miller undertook as stated by the man himself in the autobiographical, Time Bends, when his play first premiered in New York:

 

What I had not quite bargained for…was the hostility in the New York audience as the theme of the play was revealed; an invisible sheet of ice formed over their heads, thick enough to skate on. In the lobby at the end, people with whom I had some fairly close professional acquaintanceships passed me by as though I were invisible…Business inevitably began falling off in a month or so.

Perhaps your audience, Art, knew of the 20 to 40 million or so souls who had perished trying to give birth to the New Soviet Man, seized from their families, imprisoned without cause, tortured into making blatantly false confessions before being subjected to a show trial the outcome of which was preordained by the Powers That Be. How many of our Woke darlings learn any of this in their leftist PoliSci classes? If I were King of the World one of my many decrees would be that anyone would be free to read The Crucible only on condition that they also read Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon and/or anything by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Or maybe they should just sit through a screening of On the Waterfront, instead.

Because the play is a useful political tool to silence all critics and prevent what our founding fathers called eternal vigilance in protection of constitutional government. Miller not only slandered the Puritans, he went on to wrap himself in John Proctor’s saintly mantle, as well, and proceeded to make millions and transform himself into a martyr for The Cause. Miller and the Best & Brightest detested HUAC because it exposed their holier-than-thou bullshit to the world, and his hit piece is, for many, the last word on the subject. Mores the pity, for this play tells only that part of the story its author wants you to hear while covering up those icky bits that blows a hole in his narrative. In other words, The Crucible is nothing more than well-written lefty propaganda.