The Crucible - Arthur Miller - Episode 1 - Witch Hunts In Two Centuries! - Pulitzer Prizes! - Allegories Everywhere!

02/13/21 • 50 min

The Crucible - Arthur Miller - Episode 1 - Witch Hunts In Two Centuries - Pulitzer Prizes - Allegories Everywhere!

Hi, I’m Christy Shriver and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us.

I’m Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit podcast. Today is new book day, and I always love new book day. We are starting our series on Arthur Miller and his timeless classic about human hysteria, The Crucible. I’m particularly excited about this series because it’s both extremely historical as well as psychological, as lots of things are- but in this case- it’s heightened.

For sure, The Crucible is Arthur Miller’s most produced play worldwide becoming one of America’s most popular plays in the 20th century. Ironically, it failed at the box office in its initial production in 1953, so what does that tell you?

Initial box offices don’t always get it right.

Miller would say, almost never. He was very critical to how we organize theater in this country. I watched an interview he did with Charlie Rose later in his life and he talked about the problems he saw with American theater. It was kind of interesting to me. He complained that, as a nation, we could never get good at play writing and acting because of the financing piece. He wished we had a national theater- I’m not saying I advocate for that idea, because I can see a lot of problems in other ways- but he did make an interesting point. He made the analogy that if you took another profession, like plumbing or something, for example you create a plumbing company and hire people to be professional plumbers- they would have security and work continuously- finishing one starting another- seamlessly- and with each new job, they would learn to perfect their craft- obviously getting better and better all the time and the trade itself would progress in technique and so forth. He said today, our theater does things by the job- and he said it would be like the plumbing company going out and hirng new plumbers every time they have a different job to do, and in the between time the plumbers are out of work doing something else, getting out of practice with no time or incentive to work on things that would have a long term improvements. He says, this financial piece keeps actors from getting better, play writes from getting better, and theaters from taking chances on things that might take more than one week to get popular. He said, doing theater project by project makes that initial box office too important because the immediate return on investment is too high. But anyway, I hadn’t thought of it like that. Maybe he’s right. There’s certainly quite a bit of sequels and redundancy in the movie industry.

That is one great thing about researching a person who only died in 2005- which is when Miller died. He was born in 1915 and lived until 2005- there is a lot of video footage of him, especially with his second wife, Marilyn Monroe.

Oh my gosh, I know and I guess this is a good of time as any to get into a little bit of the facts about his personal and professional life, although we won’t spend too much time on that today. We can get into the Marilyn Monroe stuff when we talk about the Mccarthy era stuff. But for starters, Miller was a native New Yorker, originally from a well to do family who owned a manufacturing company. Unfortunately, during the depression, his family went bankrupt and to the poor house they all went, not an uncommon depression era story inAmerica. One fun fact about Miller’s early life for all your burgeoning students out there is that- Miller was a terrible student, which is something I always find interesting. He failed Algebra three time.

So there you go- there’s hope for us all- even the non-mathematical types.

For sure, it took him two years to raise enough money to pay for his college tuition, but He did finally go to a great school- the University of Michigan- all you Blue fans out there- (if you’re not from the US, Michigan is famous not only because it’s a prestigious university but their American football team is very good- although not as good as their SEC counterparts – if you ask me!

HA!! Well, they likely could have beat the University of Tennessee this year.

Ouch- why would you say something like that??

For those who don’t know, Christy and I are big football fans and Christy’s daughters both attend the University of Tennessee which also is a big and good school with a very historically important football team- although not so much recently. Football rivalries never die! Her best friend’s husband attended the University of Michigan- so she has a little personal vendetta!! Anyway, it was at the University of Michigan that Miller started writing drama. By 1947, he was lucky enough, fortunate to use a Machiavellian phrase- to have a play open on Broadway. The name of that play was All My Sons. It was an immediate hit- an...

The Crucible - Arthur Miller - Episode 1 - Witch Hunts In Two Centuries - Pulitzer Prizes - Allegories Everywhere!

Hi, I’m Christy Shriver and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us.

Initial box offices don’t always get it right.

So there you go- there’s hope for us all- even the non-mathematical types.

HA!! Well, they likely could have beat the University of Tennessee this year.

Ouch- why would you say something like that??

Previous Episode

Samantha Sherry Ad

Next Episode

The Crucible - Arthur Miller - Episode 2 - The Witch Hunt and Hysteria Begins!

The Crucible- Episode 2

HI, I’m Christy Shriver and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us.

And I’m Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love lit Podcast. Thank you for listening, and please, if you don’t mind, take a minute right now to forward an episode of our show to a friend who may enjoy it. As you know, it’s hard to grow a podcast, and we rely on you to help us. So, if you enjoy what we do, please share the word. Having said that, today is episode 2 of our discussion of the Crucible, Arthur Miller’s allegorical play about two great American hysteria’s – and no- this not about any current moment- this book is about the Salem Witch Hunt of 1692, written to parallel the Red and Lavender Scare of the 1950s. Last week, we got into the background of the early American settlements and set the stage for what is to come in the play- the brutal murder of 25 innocent people- 19 hung, 5 died in jail, and one crushed- literally. What we tried to impart if nothing else is that the social causes of the events of Salem Village are considerably more complex than Miller could have imagined when he started his investigation or any of us probably think of when we think of this incident.

For sure, I think most of us think of it quite one-dimensionally-,a very religious and chauvinistic people scared of females they call witches target and kill underprivileged innocent powerless victims because of paranoia, fear, superstition simple-mindedness and prejudice- things we modern people know better than to do.

Exactly, and what we discussed last week is that that’s not even the beginning. There are family feuds, bitter rivalries, financial interests as stake, and yes- there is also a fear-but it’s not a ridiculous fear- there is a lot of death in the new world, and fear of death is driving a fear of the devil, of the frontier, of the woods and of the the Native Americans who live here- all of this contributes.

Which is why when commenting on the historical accuracy of the play, Miller wrote, “The play is not history in the sense in which the words is used by a historian...however, I believe that the reader will discover here the essential nature of the events..” And what he means by that is that he wants to get to the heart of the trials- which is not the chronology of names and dates- the heart of the nature of the events- something good artists are always trying to do is in looking at the causes, the humanity, the spirit of the main people- so to speak. Miller said that if you don’t have a very strong moral compass of some kind- you cannot create art. I found that interesting because I have never thought of artists in that way- and maybe it’s dependent on the kind of art you practice- but in his case- He wanted, with his art, for his audience to ask questions about our own individual basic humanity - we are these people – they aren’t so primitive- we are not so evolved- we are them- humans- and as such we too- are capable of great things- great love and sacrifice but also great evil. So, this week, what we’re going to do is step away from the history side of this completely and look at this play- because he is going to juxtapose great love and sacrifice with great evil- and to do this he deviates almost entirely from the facts of history- so today, Garry, we drop history entirely and look at the crucible from the literary perspective- this play is a tragedy with a focus on a single main character, a very traditional tragic hero- John Proctor. This play centers around John Proctor- not because he’s the most influential villager to be hung historically- not because he’s the most innocent- they’re all innocent. In fact, the John Proctor in the play is not at all the John Proctor of history- the historical John Proctor is a 60 year old man who is wealthy; he owns a farm but also several businesses including a tavern, he’s a landlord; he’s an heir to money. Elizabeth, his wife, is his much younger 3rd wife. She’s a working woman, an herbalist. These are not the two we see talking in Act 2- In the play John Proctor is a struggling farmer in his mid thirties, his wife is sickly, but what is most highlighted by Miller is that the John Proctor of the play has committed adultery.

And this twist in the truth has really galled many historians- because that isn’t true- some say it discredits John’s memory, others think it reduces the truth of the hysteria to an oversimplification of revenge instead of the actual complex reality. From a historical standpoint, the arguments make sense, but from a psychological perspective, making Proctor transgress sexually is extremely interesting.

Well, of course those historical points are good points. And I doubt Miller would even argue with that. But by layering the story where it speaks to more than one issue makes the a...