Title Acceptation to the Crucible :: Essay on The Crucible

Title Acceptation of The Crucible "A vessel of a very refractory material used for melting and calcining a substance that requires a high degree of heat." "A severe test." "A place or situation in which concentrated forces interact to cause or influence change or development." All of these definitions lead up to one word. Crucible. Author Miller incorporates this word in his play, The Crucible. The aforementioned definitions play a large part in The Crucible's symbolism, characters, and plot. "A place or situation . . . " is the definition mostly used in the play's plot. The change of the village is shown when Danforth states that ". . . a person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between. This is a sharp time, now, a precise time--we live no longer in the dusky afternoon when evil mixed itself with good and befuddled the world."(94). This comment shows that the village has indeed gone through a change and that good and evil are, from this point forward, seen as black and white. There is a distinct separation Bremmerman 2 between the two that has not been there before. The concentrated forces at the center of this change are the young girls led by Abigail Williams. The closeness of the girls is played out at the end of Act One. Abigail onsets the anarchy when she cries "I want to open myself! . . . I want the light of God . . . I saw Sarah Good with the Devil! I saw Goody Osbourne with the Devil! I saw Bridget Bishop with the Devil!"(48) The other girls then mimic her cries of accusation by screaming out the names of those they had seen with the devil. With all of these accusations the chaos begins and Salem Village will never be the same. Among the characters in the play the most prominent meaning for crucible is "A vessel of a very refractory material . . ." After the questioning of the Proctors Reverend Hale points out to John that "no crack in a fortress may be accounted small."(67) This observation may also be made in reference to John Proctor's crucible. The crack in his crucible is Abigail Williams and she will, in the end, be the reason that Proctor can no longer take the heat. Just as a crack in a fortress will lead to the tumbling of the building a crack in a crucible will lead to an inability to contain heat.