Crucible

Rating:
Summary: hysterical history
Review: All you people who think this work accurately represents the historical context of the "Red Scare" really need to join the rest of us in the 21st century. Earth to readers - the Communists were invading our government. All this hysteria against those who sought to keep that invasion from happening is so misplaced it would be funny if it weren't so dangerous.

Try catching up with what has been learned since the 1950's. A good place to start would be learning what the Venona Intercepts were and what they showed. They proved conclusively that the Communists were highly infiltrated into the US State Department and that many knew they were at the time the so called "Red Scare" was taking place. That was the reason there was so much effort put in to rooting out these influences.

Then you could read up on what was learned from the KGB archives after the fall of the Soviet Union. All the heroes of the left like Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs were guilty as all get out. There is concrete evidence to back this up.

If you are one of the people still railing against the "Red Scare" you are proving you haven't learned a thing in the last 50 years. The left in the US has so much credibility staked on these issues that many refuse to admit the obvious truth but it is the truth anyway. Anyone who continues the hysterical crusade against those who sought to root out communism from the US government might as well be screaming that the earth really is flat. You would be just as wrong as the members of the Flat Earth Society were when they were ignoring mountains of evidence.

Rating:
Summary: Awesome Book
Review: Arthur Millers, The Crucibal, is a wonderfully written dramatic play. It is intersting and absorbing. The history of the play begins from the communist "witch-hunts", which inspired Miller to write the book. An easy reader, but very thought provoking. Worth reading at any age!

Rating:
Summary: Interestingly suspicious
Review: Aurthur Miller's The Crucible is a very interesting and suspenseful book. While I was reading it I was never really sure what was truthfully going on. This book takes place in a small town where everyone goes to church and nothing ever goes wrong. Then one day something terrible is brought upon their little town. There is believed to be witches living among them. Everyone who is thought to have done anything wrong is put to trial and most of them then put to death. The witches would set people up to look like they were witches. There was no true way of finding out who was really a witch. In some ways it was annoying because you couldn't tell who was telling the truth and who was lying. Overall this book was of average reading material. If you like this kind of material then you will like it but I didn't really care much for it.

Rating:
Summary: High School students SHOULD read this book!
Review: First off, the way the Crucible relates to the post-war era and the 1950 McCarthy trials make it a prime choice of reading material for high school students. As a high school student myself, I found the book very interesting as a psychoanalysis of human nature. Arthur Miller has explored the concepts of guilt and hypocrisy in a very unique fashion.

The theme of how a repressed society reacts to hysteria is perused in this drama. My personal belief is that people who entrust their lives to unproven dogma find themselves trapped in a form of repression. This includes the conservative outlook posted by the former reviewer of this book.

Lies, hypocrisy, and lust are themes that teenagers begin to encounter in high school. To refuse them the liberty to have complete access to literature is to lock down the developing, free and independent thinking mind. Thus, the banning and removal of books deemed "inappropiate" by biased standards results in the formation of a repressed society much like the Puritans in the early 1600's.

Ignorance may be bliss for you, but don't punish others because of your biased, uproven religious dogma. Our society will succeed if the next generation is given a chance to use their BRAINS. Our society will fail if the conservative coalition destroys independent thinking.

Conformism is your enemy.

Rating:
Summary: Crucible: Slow in parts, Great in the rest
Review: I just got done reading this book for my English III Honors class (in high school), and I have to say, that for this book I payed so much attention to in class while we read, mostly because it is interesting and exciting. If you like witches, religion, or even anything about Puritan history, I strongly recommend this book. I'm telling you, when a high school student actually can stay awake and pay attention while listening to the book being read from a tape, it is a winner! (unlike the scarlet letter which I just read in class...)

Rating:
Summary: Useful, concise, and worthwhile
Review: I started using Maxnotes as a beginning teacher, a few years back, so that I could catch up on some novels that I had never read in college. I was under the gun and had to provide lesson plans in 3 days on 5 novels I didn't know. Maxnotes saved me.

Now, some time later, I find myself referring back to those books and buying more of them. Am I still under the gun? No. These books, unlike like those charming ones from my college days, are well organized, insightful, and show a clear understanding of literary device.

I have found them so useful that I recommend them to teachers (both new and experienced). They provide perspectives I had never thought of, helpful questions, and practice essays I find myself using again and again.

This series is simply the most helpful and concise tool I have ever found. I have even taken to recommending this book to my students. I know bad teacher. However, using this text breakdown and summary along with side by side texts my students have improved their short and long term understanding of literature by remarkable amounts.

Dollar for dollar you can not go wrong with any of these books.

Rating:
Summary: Witch Hunt
Review: I surprisingly enjoyed this book though it was assigned reading for school. The obvious parallels of the play's setting, in the time of the Salem Witch Trials, to the Red Scare of Arthur Miller's time actually add to how one may reflect what they've read in this play. In place of Abigail pointing her finger and crying "Witch! Witch!" at anyone who crosses her, one can easily see McCarthy pointing his finger in every direction and crying "Communist! Traitor!"

My favorite thing about this work though are not the parallels to the 20th century Communist scare. It is the realationship between John Proctor and his wife Elizabeth. They suffer the most at Abigail's whims, Proctor having had an affair with the girl and Elizabeth dismissing her from serving in their household when she suspected as much. Even through Proctor's unfaithfulness and the accusation of Elizabeth practicing witchcraft, the couple holds a certain tenderness to each other and maintain it even through tenser scenes. I loved the ending though it was quite sad. It added to the melancholy of the theme.

Rating:
Summary: I Respect Miller's Motives Most of All
Review: I understand that "The Crucible" serves as an allegorical attack on McCarthyism and Black Listing and I praise Arthur Miller for his wonderful use of allegory in the Salem Witch Trials. I personally, had a hard time reading this piece of drama. It was forced reading for English class and I may have found it more interesting if we, as a class, read it aloud with different students reading different parts, etc. However, my English teacher felt it best to assign an act a night leaving me confused and tired. I didn't find the story that interesting.

Rating:
Summary: a great recording
Review: I used this recording this year while teaching "The Crucible". My students loved it!! The emotion conveyed by the cast is SO much better than the typical monotone voice that students use while reading out loud. Even though there were some small parts that are skipped when following along with our textbook, it was completely worth it (and the parts skipped were very small - it was very easy to read it aloud if necessary).

Rating:
Summary: i wouldn't recomend this book for a monkey to read.
Review: I was first assigned the Crucible to read in my English class, and every single page was torture. I hated this book with the intensity of a thousand suns. From the get-go the book is more caught up in describeing the situatin than the characters and often gets way off subject. Also many of the characters are so far-fected it is hard to take this book seriously. Many of the characters, like Abigail Williams, are so caught up in their lies that they are believe them and the play is more about a mentaly unstable, oversexed girl, and a guy who dosen't know how to keep it in his pants.

Also durring the play, many of the characters, like Tituba, just drop out and you don't know what happened to them. I also found the plot to be extermly dull and lacking real thought. The main idea of the play is the main character, Abigail Williams, is so caught up in revenge on the wife of the guy that she got into bed that she goes crazy. The entire village of Salem say that her madness is caused by the devil, and Abibail uses that to her advantage and manipulates them to believe her far-fecthed story about being bewithed by the devil and her lies got nineteen people and two dogs hung. Even though this play was meant to mirror the Red Scare that was going on when Miller wrote this and represent the real Salem Witch trials, I found this play boring and had a lack of plot and characters.

I would not recomend this play for a monkey to read, and the main reason I held it together when reading this was my English grade was depending on that book, and it was short. Don't waist your money.