The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts by Arthur Miller

• HSC Year 12 Prescribed Texts
• Common Module: English Standard, English Advanced and English Studies
• Texts and Human Experiences
• Drama

Arthur Miller’s classic parable of mass hysteria draws a chilling parallel between the Salem witch-hunt of 1692 – ‘one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history’ – and the McCarthyism which gripped America in the 1950s. The story of how the small community of Salem is stirred into madness by superstition, paranoia and malice, culminating in a violent climax, is a savage attack on the evils of mindless persecution and the terrifying power of false accusations.