Reviews tagging 'Gaslighting'

The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts by Arthur Miller

15 reviews

clovetra's review against another edition

challenging emotional tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

oh the crucible, the crucible. the first book i was ever assigned for in school that i actually enjoyed reading.

i think this book is such a love of mine simply because it has such a strong nostalgia factor. sitting in my year 9 classroom, before i became chronically ill and a pandemic happened, sitting with my friends, listening to an audio recording of this play. reacting to every scene, expressing my hatred of abigail and mary to my friends, rooting for rebecca nurse, truly experiencing the atmosphere. i really think my first read of this was the best reading experience ive ever had.

this book isn’t exactly the next coming of christ. its parallels to mccarthyism sure are interesting, and i always love me some salem witch trials, but this book is what it is - a short play. but i can’t say this book doesn’t enamour me.

even knowing what happens, i was sitting here with my blood boiling, racing to hope proctor would be free and danforth would listen to the pleas of those around him.

i honestly think as more time passes this book ages like fine wine, and is very emblematic of current times. hell it can even be applied to modern day america. you don’t even have to change anything, as when miller wrote this everyone was losing their minds about communists! and republicans still are! maybe add some silly comment about 5G or the vaccines or hathorne rolling up to salem in his cybertruck. 

from a psychology standpoint this book is incredibly fascinating. and from someone who loves reading about the salem witch trials this book is incredibly fascinating. i love witches. fuck abigail and mary. shout out giles corey for being a stubborn prick.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Infidelity, Miscarriage, Religious bigotry, Murder, and Gaslighting

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Physical abuse, Violence, Forced institutionalization, and Pregnancy

Minor: Slavery, Torture, Alcohol, and Colonisation

keelymightread's review against another edition

dark emotional informative tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Miscarriage, Religious bigotry, and Gaslighting

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Infidelity, and Slavery

noellegrace8's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Because it's a classic, there's not much more I can add to the conversation. It kept me on the edge of my seat, wondering how the trials and the issues between the Proctors and Abigail were going to turn out. I must say, maybe it's because people told me I would be surprised, but I wasn't very surprised by the ending. I enjoyed the morally gray status of most of the characters against obviously corrupt, fear-mongering religious and law leaders. It brought to mind something I've been thinking about recently - that it's difficult to make "the correct" decision once someone else has made a poor one. Lastly, the misogyny was a bit difficult to ignore, especially since Abigail was considered a "child" in many ways yet also the seductress, and the end paints her as a harlot, while John Proctor isn't apparently. But this wasn't an uncommon viewpoint, even for the '50s.

I don't factor performance into overall story rating, but I would give this cast 5/5⭐.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Grief, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Gaslighting

Moderate: Child death, Confinement, Infidelity, Sexism, Torture, Toxic relationship, Pregnancy, and Abandonment

Minor: Bullying, Cursing, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Infertility, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Racism, Sexual content, Violence, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Toxic friendship

witchintherain's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse and Gaslighting

Moderate: Death

Minor: Fatphobia, Misogyny, and Racism

planetshelf's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Infidelity, Toxic relationship, Religious bigotry, and Gaslighting

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship and Violence

Minor: Child abuse, Confinement, Sexual content, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Pregnancy

amayapapaya's review against another edition

dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Misogyny, Racism, Slavery, Violence, Murder, and Gaslighting

leehillier's review against another edition

dark sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cursing, Infidelity, Misogyny, Sexism, Toxic relationship, Gaslighting, and Toxic friendship

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Mental illness, Racism, Slavery, and Murder

Minor: Pregnancy

lanternheart's review

dark emotional tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Upon rereading The Crucible for the first time in many years, I was struck anew by Miller's masterful attention to the corrosive, ever-deepening well of his characters' regrets and guilts, spun outward and inflicted on one another as the most poisonous of pins.

The moving, trembling testimony of Mary, the Parris' servant taken into Abigail's confidence only to attempt to cry against her, the echoing call of the mob of accusatory girls parroting in wild power, and the eerie scene with Proctor and Abigail, removed from Act 2 but included in this edition, where he realizes how deeply she's come to needing to believe her own deception — these especially stuck out, but so too the tender, aching distance of the Proctors' marriage that might have been mended if either had forgiven their silent sins in a more gentle time. A stirring, tense landslide of a play showing how the wounds of both ourselves and accusatory societies of little power enable the wounding of others as the only means of individual power.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gaslighting

Moderate: Bullying

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Infidelity, Violence, and Alcohol

bethy_joy's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Misogyny and Religious bigotry

Moderate: Death, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Miscarriage, Toxic relationship, Grief, Pregnancy, Gaslighting, and Toxic friendship

orchidlilly's review against another edition

dark emotional funny tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I actually liked a book school made me read? Wild, I know. But despite the sexism and the raging historical inaccuracies, it was fun to read. Maybe it was made more enjoyable by the fact that I got to watch my classmates read it out loud in horror and shame. The best thing you can do is make a bunch of high schoolers read out the lines of a horned up 17th-century character lol.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Ableism, Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexism, Sexual content, Slavery, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Grief, Religious bigotry, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Gaslighting, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Ableism, Animal death, Bullying, Blood, Antisemitism, Alcohol, and Classism