Miller’s purpose to include this excerpt in the opening narrative was B. to compare the Salem Witch Trials with the political atmosphere of his time.
This introduction in the play signals a foreshadowing of what is going to happen as the events are recalled. However, Miller’s purpose throughout the play is to compare those historical events to what was happening at the time he wrote it. Arthur Miller sought to criticize Senator McCarthy’s prosecution of presumed communists US citizens by comparing it with the Salem Trials, in which innocent people were accused of witchcraft and later hanged.
A) "On the threshold of the prison-door, she repelled him, by an action marked with natural dignity and force of character, and stepped into the open air, as if by her own free-will."
