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How does predestination relate to The Crucible?

This is a somewhat complicated question because Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible, was an historical drama. Miller was interested in the psychology of fanaticism, and wrote the play as a way to analyze the phenomenon of Joseph McCarthy's "witch hunt" for communists in the 1950s, which Miller saw as having parallels with the Salem witch trials. Miller himself saw the theocracy of Salem and the ideology of anti-Communism as both inevitably leading to certain types of injustice in the form of scapegoating and purging of heretics. While the events Miller is describing in The Crucible occurred in a deeply religious environment, Miller's version of the events focuses on the psychology of the characters; Miller himself was a non-observant Jew with no significant interest in Calvinist theology. Proctor's final choices echo Miller's own decision not to cooperate with McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee. Thus, while predestination was an important part of the belief system of the original participants in the Salem witch trials, it doesn't have a significant role in the play. 


The most significant ways in which the Calvinist interpretation of predestination would have affected the people living in Salem would be the belief that whether one is elect or damned is predestined and thus that those who are elect are unconditionally so, independent of their actions. Outward success was seen as a sign of election. This could lead those who believed themselves to be elect to become arrogant or complacent. Also, since misfortune might suggest that one was not elect after all, it could lead to crippling self-doubt.

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