Artistic Liberties in Literature
Donavon Burton
2nd hour English Artistic liberties in literature today can be both beneficial and harmful. In The Crucible there are many liberties taken by the author that are unacceptable, and go too far. Artistic liberties are only acceptable if a disclaimer of some sort is made, because an account of the past becomes fictitious if you change the facts. A lesson cannot be taught without using the facts. Even more than just using the facts, it must contain only the facts, and nothing more. It becomes extremely unethical when a person tries to teach a group of people history, when the history is false. For example in The Crucible it was said that Tituba was from Barbados, and performed "voodoo magic" on the children. This could hurt the image of anyone from Barbados, and people could become scared of them. However every report that was made of Tituba said that she was an Indian using "magic" she learned from her white neighbors. These accounts of Tituba could cause people to mistrust, and shun the people of Barbados, because they believe that history could repeat itself. However, they would be misinformed, because there is no proof as to if she was from Barbados, so no evidence points to voodoo magic. This would however change the story, and force the audience to realize just how ridiculous these accounts were. Since there was no "devil's work" actually being done. The Freedom of expression, does create a better story, but at what cost. Arthur Miller falsified accounts from the witch trials just so that he could make a good story that would relate to the current “red scare.” Since his account is not completely true, it might as well be