:19)Before man, nothing had a name. A man's name is a symbol of his unique position in God's creation. Take away John Proctor's name, and he is nothing.So he rips up his confession. Between Elizabeth's great love and the judges' intolerable demands, John Proctor has found himself. His guilt, his doubt, his nihilistic rage are gone. What remains is...some shred of goodness in John Proctor. Not enough to weave a banner with, but white enough to keep it from such dogs.He kisses Elizabeth, and goes out with Rebecca to be hanged. Hale pleads with Elizabeth frantically, but she knows she has won:He have his goodness now. God forbid I take it from him!I speak of "sin." It is an unfashionable word nowadays and Miller rarely uses it. He is... sufficiently imbued with the skepticism of modern thought to shy away from the presumptions implicit in it. But that Miller is willy-nilly a moralist--one who believes he knows what sin and evil are--is inescapable.-Harold Clurman, Introduction toThe Portable Arthur Miller, 1972Despite its realistic form, The Crucible is less dramatic realism than a modern morality play, in which the characters are intended to be dramatized symbols of good and evil. My only reason for doubt... is that [George Bernard] Shaw was even more devastating about intolerance in Saint Joan by giving its representatives a sound logical case and making them good and conscientious men, and then showing the horrifying results of what they did.-Richard Watts, Jr.,Introduction to The Crucible, 1959In my play, Danforth seems about to conceive of the truth, and surely there is a disposition in him at least to listen to arguments that go counter to the line of the prosecution. There is no such swerving in the record, and I think now, almost four years after writing it, that I was wrong in mitigating the evil of this man and the judges he represents. Instead, I would perfect his evil to its utmost and make an open issue, a thematic considerati...
