Today I finished reading a book for university which, unlike many of the books I have to read for the uni at the moment (restauration comedies in particular), I found really very intriguing.
It is a play actually, "The Crucible" by Arthur Miller. The play is based on the Salem witchhunt of 1692 and while some details were changed (the age of a character, and some characters picking up the roles of several historical people) it is mostly true to historical events. However it is not primarily history which impressed me so much about this book, but really the way it is written. Especially the way the character Proctor is presented is really excellent. A person who with many faults, not the hero type of guy, nobody who wants to be a martyr, but ultimately making a right decission which made him one. The pathos is not so overstressed though as in most similar cases I'm aware of in literature.
The main "villain" (for lack of a better word. She is very viscious, so villain may actually be pretty close to the mark) is just terrifiying in her ruthlessness and with her cold blooded calculating on how to doom anyone she doesn't like or else whose doom will ehance her own credibility as a wittness to the court.
There are many mare character neither just black or white but of very interesting grey shades.
While in almost every case I prefer books over movies the latter are more likely (and that means not very likely) to actually move me to tears (I suppose it is mostly the music that can have this effect). I couldn't spontaneously recall any book having that effect on me so far, but especially the last two acts of this play really came very close to move me to tears.
The historical authencity of most of the play enhances the effect as far as I'm concerned. Also, it was written in the early 1950s undoubtedly not so much as a play about events in history, but rather as a piece of social criticism of what was going on by the time the play was written. It was the time of the second red scare, better known as the McCarthy era, when the suspicion of any ties to communism could land a person in jail, or worse. It seems really perverse, that the author Arthur Miller, when interogated about his alleged ties to communism, was asked to denounce anyone he knew whom he thought had communist ideals or connections, to improve his own situation. This is exactly the same proceeding as was commited during the Salem witch trials were people accused of witchcraft just had to "confess" and denounce others to be send to jail rather than being executed.
