Reading about the Salem witch trials and the paranoid frenzy going on at the time is one thing, but witnessing the trials first hand is quite another experience. Miller permits the audience to do just that by transforming the faceless names from history into living, breathing characters with desires, emotions, and freewill. Miller did make adjustments to the ages, backgrounds, and occupations of several of the individuals mentioned in the historical records, however. For example, he lowers the age gap between John Proctor and Abigail Williams from sixty and eleven, respectively, to thirty-five and seventeen, enabling the plot line of an affair between the two. Proctor and his wife Elizabeth ran an inn as well as a farm, but Miller eliminates this detail. Proctor’s friend Giles Corey was actually pressed to death a month after Proctor’s execution; however, Miller juxtaposes his death and Proctor’s. Finally, Miller chose to omit the fact that Proctor had a son who was also tortured during the witch trials because he refused to confess to witchcraft.
Although no one can know for certain what the actual individuals thought, felt, or believed, Miller’s incorporation of motive into the play’s characters provides his audience with a realistic scenario that is both believable and applicable to society. For example, when the play was first produced during the 1950’s, as McCarthyism submerged America in paranoia and fear, audiences could relate to the plot because Americans were turning in their friends so they would not be labeled as Communists. Although today’s society may not be engaged in so-called “witch hunts,” stories of an individual attempting to reestablish a relationship with a former lover by eliminating what he or she perceives to be the only obstacle — the person currently involved in a relationship with the former lover — are not uncommon. This classic love triangle appears repeatedly in literature, not to mention the supermarket tabloids.
