The Crucible

I didn't have to read The Crucible in high school like so many, and in my small southern town it seemed most adults had strong opinions on this book anyway. The Crucible is a play written in 1953 by Arthur Miller. It recounts the events of The Salem Witch Trials in the 1690s. It is partially fictional, but yeah, they really did kill people becasue they thought they were witches.

I was a little obsessed with the history of The Salem Witch Trials during this time. I had dove into religion and was figuring out how felt about it after being raised in the Christian church for the first 18 years of my life. I was open to the history and the critiques of it by this point.

Safe to say I loved this story, It really resonated with me after seeing how some avenues of the Christian religion were going in 2024. The dangers of blending religion and authority. The mass panic and superstition that can so easily get out of hand. The cult like thinking and othering of people. Wow, I could go on.

In my depiction, the young girls dancing around a fire here and what happened in the 1600s may have been different. I saw it as, whether they were having fun being silly or practicing some other occult, the church was always watching. The ominous rope hanging from the tree forshadows eventual punishment.