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.
