The setting of The Crucible is the town of Salem, Massachusetts. It's a crucial setting for what follows, as it's a very small town where everyone knows each other's business. This creates a stifling, restrictive atmosphere in which it is virtually impossible to lead your life free from prying eyes and wagging tongues. And such an atmosphere provides the ideal conditions for a witch-craze to develop.
Salem's not just a small town, but a Puritan town, a Puritan theocracy governed by a narrow interpretation of the Bible. As die-hard Calvinists, the townsfolk already believe that everyone is utterly depraved, mired in sin. So it doesn't take much for them to suspect that people they see every day and with whom they go to church might actually be practicing witchcraft in secret. All the ingredients of a potential witch-craze are already in place long before Abigail Williams and the other girls start messing with the forces of darkness in the forest one night.
The Crucible takes place in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692. Salem, a city near Boston, was part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which was founded by Puritans. The Puritans ruled the colony as a theocracy, a government in which religious leaders were in control and religion was the law of the land. Puritans saw the world as a battle between good versus evil, and they saw the woods and lands outside their towns as the devil's domain. This establishes the paranoid tone of The Crucible, in which the Puritans believe witchcraft is at work, and establishes an atmosphere in which people still believe in witches' power to control them and wreak havoc in the town. In 1692, a witch hunt actually occurred in Salem, and 20 people were executed. Miller bases his play on some of these real events.
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