An American Tragedy: Comparing "The Crucible" and "The Scarlet Letter" Two American authors, of two distinctly different time periods had one very similar task, to turn a piece of American History into a believable tragedy. Arthur Miller with The Crucible and Nathaniel Hawthorne with The Scarlet Letter. Perhaps one might wonder which author did a better job in doing so, but with such different pieces of work, this is hardly a question that can be answered. Miller's the Crucible was written in the nineteen-fifties, with a definite purpose, to remind Americans of the hor