Anvilicious: A common accusation of many Miller plays, then and now is that his messages about not pointing the finger and the danger of mob justice were obvious and repeated incessantly throughout his scripts. This is no different in The Crucible, where John Proctor spells out the moral and tells the audience whenever another audience is doing something wrong.
Alternate Character Interpretation: The usually-omitted Act 2, Scene 2 provides a lot of additional material for some people who interpret Abigail as being completely insane, rather than coldbloodedly telling lies and playing the court to get what she wants.
Some people feel that Act 2, Scene 2 actually makes it easier to understand Abigail, since even though her reasons are messed up, at least she has a reason to accuse so many people. Omitting this scene and she (and the other girls) will appear to accuse these people to death for almost no reason at all other than to win over Proctor's bed. Though the scene would have averted from empathizing the extent of the coldblooded cruelty that occurred in history.
Act 2, Scene 2 can also be played as Abigail deliberately "believing" her own lies and playing to Proctor's doubt and pity in an attempt to make even him find her sympathetic or at least deluded, rather than ruthless — her plan, such as it is, relies on him not completely despising her, and it wouldn't be any less far-fetched than what's going on in the courtroom.
Did Mary condemn Proctor simply because she was so terrified of Abigail (which, let's be honest, is completely understandable)? Did she, on some level, believe what she was saying? Or was she simply biting back?
Applicability: When the play was staged in China in the early 1980s, people had just recovered from the pains of the "Cultural Revolution" (1966-76). In the play, they found the similarities between history and The Crucible. This explained why the play received such a warm welcome at that time.
Mary is also a contentious figure. While she is a tragic character who's constantly beaten and manipulated, she's so weak and prone to switching sides (and is eventually the one who dooms Proctor) that for many she's an annoyance.
Those who dislike the girls for their sentencing innocent neighbors to death may get some satisfaction from the the epilogue revealing that Abigail ran out of the money she stole from her uncle and had to become a prostitute, dying before she turned 18 due to lower health standards in the former colonies. It also helps that in real life, karma eventually caught up to Ruth/Ann Putnam: her parents died, leaving her to raise all of her siblings while in poverty, and she was unofficially excommunicated for her part. She never married, owing to the extra responsibility and lack of finances whatsoever. It took a public apology at her church for her to be welcomed back, and even then, historical records imply the apology was only accepted on principle because people's memories were still fresh of loved ones who had died or lost their livelihoods because of her.
The witch trials are shown as fraud and a sham in the epilogue. It's revealed that thanks to Abigail stealing all his money and vanishing as the prime witness to witchcraft, her uncle Samuel Parris is forced to resign in disgrace and goes into exile. Elizabeth is the only one who gets a semi-happy ending, where it's revealed she lived, as did her baby.
Judge Danforth doesn’t show up until Act 3, but from that point on he’s an extremely dominant force for the rest of the play, being a strong and terrifying individual against the protagonists, making him one of the most popular characters in the piece.
Giles Corey is the least important member of the main cast, but he’s well liked for adding some much needed comic relief, turning out to be quite The Woobie, and his Dying Moment of Awesome.
Evil Is Cool: Two examples that also count as subversions.
Abigail is thoroughly despicable, but her ability to manipulate those around her is impressive. Of course, in doing so it backfires on her, as she loses her shot with John and will go on to die as a young woman in exile.
Thomas Danforth is a legal force of nature, constantly thwarting the plans of the heroes against his trials. At the same time though, he's being played by a bunch of teenage girls and his actions actively make everything worse.
Fridge Logic: John doesn't know his wife is pregnant. Assuming they're telling the truth, how exactly would that work? Either she had been in prison long enough that she didn't know herself when she was arrested, or she simply hadn't told him she suspected she was. There were no pregnancy tests back then, and bad nutrition can make you skip periods. Until recently, a woman wasn't positive she was pregnant until she was probably five or six months along.
Harsher in Hindsight: Miller puts the self-loathing statement in Elizabeth Proctor's mouth that adultery is always the woman's fault; that men only cheat when their wives have sharp tongues and cold beds. This isn't entirely crazy in the context of an heated emotional moment in Puritan culture that has a dim view of women and emphasizes guilt and repentance, but it smells a bit worse in the context of Miller's personal life. The play came out in 1953, and in 1951 Miller was already having an affair with Marilyn Monroe; he'd outright leave his first wife for her in 1956.
Abigail in some productions, especially ones that portray her as being utterly, terrifyingly insane rather than pure evil. There's no excuse for what she did, and she becomes far worse than anyone who ever hurt her, but you can't deny that she's been given a rather raw deal by fate, and that she's had a rough life.
Mr. and Mrs. Putnam fit into this as well. They're quite abrasive, worsening the witchcraft situation, and Thomas winds up trying to take advantage of it to murder his neighbors and gain their land. But, they also lost seven children on the very days of their births, and their only daughter now seems to have been horribly bewitched to the point of having no appetite.
Mary Warren is one of the accusers whose sent plenty of innocent people to their graves. But she also starts to break down and show guilt for doing so, and it's also clear that she's endured plenty of abuse from Proctor. And even when she betrays him and goes back to her fellow fraudulent witnesses, it's after all the other witnesses turn on her and start to set her up to take the fall herself, at which point she can't take anymore.
Life Imitates Art: Three years after the play was produced, Miller was summoned before HUAC; he refused to name names, and was sentenced to prison for contempt of Congress, though this was overturned on appeal. The best part was how they took offense at the play being compared with their investigations, and grilled Miller on whether this had been intentional (it had, of course). His reply? "The comparison is inevitable, sir."
Judge Danforth may play a key role in screwing our heroes and sending many good men and women to their doom, but his powerful presence and opposition against coupled with just enough depths makes for a highly entertaining and intimidating antagonist.
Just where Abigail crosses this is hard to tell, but her lowest point might be when she accuses Mary of witchcraft to save her own hide, and more or less drives the poor girl completely insane with fear. She then has the gall to feign sympathy for her when she completely breaks down.
Thomas Putnam falsely accuses his neighbors of witchcraft just so he can inherit their land. This already makes him irredeemable, but he comes across as especially despicable in the film when you see him soullessly watching poor George Jacobs' protests of innocence fall on deaf ears, and Putnam shows absolutely no sign of remorse.
Nightmare Fuel: For some, Abigail’s scene where she and the rest of Salem’s youth pretend a bird is attacking them and begin repeating everything Mary says could be this.
The ending is already a massive tearjerker, but the film makes it even worse: not only do they show John, Rebecca, and Martha getting hanged, but they all begin reciting the Lord's Prayer as their last words. Rebecca and Martha both get hung as they're speaking, and John gets hung right before he can say "Amen." And then it just ends.
Abigail manipulating Mary by accusing her of witchcraft, making her break down. If you didn't have a reason to hate Abigail already, you definitely will after that.
Tituba's depiction in the play is fairly racist, with her speaking in broken English despite the real life woman having lived in an English colony since she was a child, meaning her English should be as fluent as everyone else's. Modern renditions of the play tend to remove this aspect for this reason.
Modern audiences have become more critical of the play's portrayal of the events of the Salem witch trials as they pertain to John Proctor and Abigail Williams, with some pointing out the questionable decision to age up Abigail from 11 to 17 while portraying John as a troubled but good man and depicting Abigail as evil and manipulative.
Similarly, Elizabeth Proctor openly blames herself for John's infidelity and claims that he only cheated because she was too cold and shrewish towards him. This kind of works in the context of the character and the world she inhabits, but it also reflects an older view of marital infidelity that's fallen out of favor.
Proctor, Elizabeth, Hale, and Mary. Also Rebecca, who was originally believed to be the nicest person in Salem.
Tituba stands out as the only one who didn't really lose anything after the Trials, because she didn't have anything to lose after becoming slave and having her life ruined.
Poor, poor Betty. She's only nine, she most likely was sick from being driven mad out of fear or guilt after being caught practicing witchcraft, which could have also been traumatic for her(it's also implied that she misses her late mother badly). Her father doesn't even care about helping her. Hell, she's only seen in the first act and one scene in the second one!
George Jacobs is an unseen figure in the play, but appears in the movie where his role is quite sad. He’s shown to be a perfectly decent an unsuspecting man who gets accused of witchcraft solely so Thomas can steal his land. Poor George is taken to court where he tries to appeal to Putnam’s daughter how he’s never done anything wrong to her, but nevertheless is found guilty. The look on his face and his overall demeanor just screams innocence so much that you can’t help but cry for him when you see him realize just how screwed he is.
Elizabeth is a rather tragic figure. A genuinely good woman who winds up going through a world of hurt because of the actions of her unfaithful husband. After discovering John is sleeping with Abigail, she retaliates by firing her. But the damage is done and her life with John is now a distant and highly uncomfortable one. Even worse, Abigail turns out to be much more than a lech, and is desperate enough to win John back by trying to remove Elizabeth from the equation, fatally. First through attempted witchcraft, then by accusing the cuckolded Proctor of that very same crime, resulting in her staying imprisoned for months, all while pregnant. During this time, due to unclear circumstances, by trying to vouch for John's faithfulness, Elizabeth dooms his attempts to stop the trials and save her from her imprisonment, something she realizes right afterwards when it's too late. This decision also leads to her husband's imprisonment, and eventual Heroic Sacrifice, with the only silver linings for Elizabeth being that she knows John died a good man, and that her pregnancy would prolong her capture for long enough that she'd outlast the trials and be released.
Fridge Brilliance: Though it's more "Fridge Irony", as, prior to/during the (actual) Salem Witch trials, someone wrote a book which stated that witches couldn't recite the Lord's Prayer. One would think that would convince the town of Salem of Rebecca, Martha, and Proctor's innocence. (In Real Life, some of the accused actually did try to use this defense, but such was the hysteria that even the slightest stumble over a word or having a noticeable accent was counted as "failing", so it didn't help. Even reciting it literally perfectly didn't help poor George Burroughs—his accusers declared the Devil was dictating the prayer to him and hanged him anyway.Yes, really.)
Nightmare Fuel: The scene in the forest. Originally, Tituba was creating a love spell so that the men the girls chose for the ritual would fall in love with them, uttering an eerie chant to go with it. Then Abigail kills the chicken Tituba was using and drinks some of its blood. Those other girls go crazy and start screaming and dancing around.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: While the adaptation was penned by the original playwright, it comes across as much more choppy compared the deliberately slow paced stage play, which means it doesn’t have the same strong building tension present in the original story.
of the play's portrayal of the events of the Salem witch trials as they pertain to John Proctor and Abigail Williams, with some pointing out the questionable decision to age up Abigail from 11 to 17 while portraying John as a troubled but good man and depicting Abigail as evil and manipulative.