The Crucible | The Crucible's Relevance to Modern Society

In this essay, Joanne Woolway proposes that while Miller's play was aimed at criticizing a specific period in American history—the McCarthy trials of the 1950s—the work has relevance to modern society on a number of levels, particularly the topic of child abuse.

The theater critic Robert A. Martin wrote in Modern Drama that The Crucible "has endured beyond the immediate events of its own time. If it was originally seen as a political allegory, it is presently seen by contemporary audiences almost entirely as a distinguished American play by an equally distinguished American playwright." His comments are misleading because they imply that a play cannot be "distinguished" if it is also political. What Martin seems to be assuming is firstly that a play must, in some sense, be "timeless" in order to be "distinguished," and...

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