Crucible Aspects Essay, Research Paper

Language in the crucible – one of the most remarkable aspects of the crucible is

miler’s creation of believable dialogue for his 17th century puritans although

partly based on what he found in salem records, most of it is his own invention

it is convincingly old-fashioned without it being hard to understand the

language carries echos of the king james bible; but word by word, apart from a

few achatic terms – such as ‘harlot’ and ‘poppet’ – the vocabulary is mostly

modern miller achieves his effects by linking words in an unusual way, using

double negatives, chnging verb tenses, and other devices of the same kind here

are some examples : pg 9 : he cannot discover no medicine for it in his books pg

10 : i know you have not opened with me pg 59 : seeing i do live so closely with

you, they dismissed it pg 95 : i am thirty three time in court in my life pg 114

: you wonder yet if rebellion’s spoke ? with this shared language miller varies

the way his characters speak to suit their background and personality ministers

and judges naturally use more elaborate phrases than the villages giles is blunt

and coarse : pg 96 – a fart on thomas putnam, that is what i say to that john

protor usues some of the most poetic lines, whether he is describing his delight

in the massachusett’s countryside (pg 51) or crying out in despair at the end of

act 3 (pg 119) there is an element of comedy in the language between protor and

mary in the scene where he told her to go to bed and she said she would not have

him order her around but when he gave her a choice, she decided to go to bed

after all this particular comic scene heightens the horrors of the situation as

influential people like proctor are at the mercy of silly girls accusing

everyone of witchcraft most characters use similie and metaphor example as

follows pg 20 : there be no blush about my name pg 102 : a very augur bit will

now be turned into your souls until your honesty is proved pg 10 : my daughter

and my niece i discovered dancing like heathen in the forest pg 29 : i know how

you….sweat like a stallion whenever i come near! on pg 132 where hale is

speaking to elizabeth, he uses elaborated language and he talked a lot about

himself before coming to the point his language reveals who he is as he was very

full of himself when he first came to salem that he was blinded to the truth and

when he finally came to the ‘point’ (turth) it was too late.