The_Crucible

The Crucible In the past, the word Salem has always been somewhat synonymous with the infamous witch trials. Thanks to works such as Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible”, many people find it hard not to envision a community torn apart by chaos, even though Miller’s play was not so much about the witch trials but instead a commentary on the rampant McCarthyism going on at the time he wrote it. Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, however, see a very different picture when the Salem witch trials are mentioned. Rather than overlook the “ordinary” people living in the towns in which they write about (in the case of Salem Possessed, the town of Salem, Massachusetts), they instead take the instance of the witch trials of 1692 and springboard from them into a detailed inquisition into the entire history of the small village of Salem; or, in their own words, Boyer and Nissenbaum have “exploited the focal events of 1692 somewhat as a stranger might make use of a lightning flash in the night: better to observe the contours of the landscape which it chances to illuminate” (xii). That is to say, the authors strive to show how the witch trials were not simply a salem, trials, witch, one, village, witchcraft, somewhat, been, 1692, possessed, people, nissenbaum, events, end, boyer, book, authors, town, porters, perhaps, make, however, while, villagers, time, though, social, simply, rather, point, own, out, order, new, miller’s, history