Pre-Reading Activities
The Crucible Final Test Answer
| Lesson 1| Lesson 2 | Lesson 3 Literary Elements Review | Lesson 4 | Lesson 5 |
Lesson 1 Persecution and Ignorance
Aim: The Crucible exemplifies persecutions/discriminations during the Salem Witch Trials. But has the witch hunt ended? Why does one group people persecute the others? Is history doomed to repeat itself again and again?
Do Now:
Make a 3 column grid on your notebook with the columns headed: (1) Group (2) Reasons (3) Result. Individually, list under "Group" those sections of society (in US or elsewhere) who are the subject of prejudice or who tend to be blamed for social, economic and moral ills; under "Reasons", list your understanding of the reasons why that group is subject to blame or prejudice ;and then under "Results", list some of the ways that the prejudice/blame is expressed socially. Share our journals in our Internet classroom..
Procedure:
Do research on the following subjects and find out the group persecuted, the reasons and its result. Determine whether the world is still the same or it has changed. Explain your answer.
Select a site listed in the resources and read the information. Then jot down the following in your notebook--
Religious Persecutions | Salem Witch Trials |
Rome's Persecution of the Christians | The
Salem Witch Trials 1692 Link 1 Site contains historical facts about the event. The Salem Witch Trials 1692 Link 2 |
The
Witches at Salem Site is home of the Salem Museum. |
1. Select a topic of your interests and click on the links listed under the topic. You may read all the links or just focus on one link.
2. Read the article and jot down the information relating to What, Where, and
Who in the articles.
3. Study the elements in a short story by viewing the
page of Short Story Elements.
4.Choose a point of view and put the information you have collected into a short story.
5. Most stories are told from the third person point of view, but you may tell the story from a character's point of view, or pretend to be the neighbor or a friend of the victim in the report, or even a descendant of the persecuted Christian or a survived Jew from Holocaust to retell the story.
6. You can use the narrative form or a diary or a memoir or a narrative poem, etc.
7. Be creative but truthful to the historical facts.
8. You may use your imagination and logical judgment to fill in the gaps.
Go to the site of Point of View Writing for more information on how to use a different point of view when creating a narrative.
Homework :
Use your notes and turn them into a historical short story containing all the necessary elements (setting, characters, plot, theme and point of view).
Evaluation:
Please use the peer review sheet when reading your buddy's story and evaluate it or comment it accordingly. Your work must be first reviewed by a classmate before it is handed in.
Lesson 2 Background Information of the Play
Aim:
You will be assigned a group to do research on one of the following topics ,and together with your group members, generate a self-explanatory report on the topic. We'll share our reports online.
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Each group needs only to submit one report that represents the group's collaborative work. Please put your group report in the Discussion Forum including all group members' names.
Evaluation / Assessment:
Lesson 3: Literary Elements Review
What is Social Drama? A social drama is more or less directly social and political in orientation. This does not mean it is blatantly didactic or does not concern itself with the more subtle and personal aspects of human relationships. It simply focuses on man in his social and political context. Arthur Miller attempts to found his art on themes centering around what he has called "the right way of living". What is a tragedy? K. W. Krutch And yet nevertheless the idea of nobility is inseparable from the idea of tragedy which cannot exist without it. Its action is usually calamitous, because it is only in calamity that the human spirit has the opportunity to reveal itself triumphant over the outward universe which fails to conquer it. Tragedy is essentially an expression of despair, but of the triumph over despair and of confidence in the value of human life. The Crucible - The essence of drama is conflict. This play abounds in conflicts which tend to arise from human failings. These human failings result in a lack of responsibility to oneself and to one's society. Tragedy - a consequence of a man's total compulsion to evaluate himself justly, his destruction in the attempt posits a wrong or an evil in his environment. And this is precisely the morality of tragedy and its lesson. Tragedy enlightens - and it must, in that it points the heroic finger at the enemy of man's freedom. The trust for freedom is the quality in tragedy which exalts. Why Miller wrote the play - I wished for a way to write a play that ... would show that the sin of public terror is it divests man of conscience, of himself. I had known of the Salem witch hunt for many years before "McCarthyism" had arrived and it had always remained in inexplicable darkness to me. When I looked into it now, however, it was with the contemporary situation at my back, particularly the mystery of the handing over of conscience which seemed to me the central and informing fact of the time. The central impulse for writing was not the social, but the interior psychological question ... of that guilt residing in Salem which the hysteria merely unleashed, but did not create. Consequently, the structure reflects that understanding, and it centers in John, Elizabeth, and Abigail. Miller had the following to say when asked who the people were at the Communist meetings. "When I say this I want you to understand that I am not protecting the Communists or the Communist party. I am trying to and will protect my sense of myself. I could not use the name of another person and bring trouble on him. I take responsibility for everything I have done but I cannot take responsibility for another human being". "Nobody wants to be a hero... but in every man there is something he cannot give up and still remain himself - a core, an identity, a thing that is summed up for him by the sound of his own name on his own ears. If he gives that up, he becomes a different man, not himself. Miller says: "In Salem these people regarded themselves as holders of a light. If this light were extinguished, they believed, the world would end. When you have ideology which feels itself so pure, it implies an extreme view of the world. Because they are white, opposition is completely black". In the actual Salem trials, Mary Warren (Abigail in The Crucible) convicted Elizabeth, not John. This showed Miller that it was the first of a succession of mordant proofs that the great "issues" which the hysteria was allegedly about were covers for petty ambitions, hard-headed political drives, and the fantasies of very small and vengeful minds. In Proctor's drama, three fundamentals of tragedy are
fulfilled. One of the most important influences on Miller's way of writing is to say why a man doesn't simply walk away and say to hell with it, the moment when a man differentiates himself from every other man. The assumption behind Miller's plays is that life has meaning. Idea is important to Miller. For Miller, the theatre is a place where an audience realizes that its anxiety, hopes, are mutual. Realization of what they already know makes man more human, that is to say, less alone. Two comments by Miller about "McCarthyism" - that so interior and subjective an emotion could have been so manifestly created from without was a marvel to me. It underlies every word in The Crucible - conscience was no longer a private matter but one of state administration. I saw men handing conscience to other men and thanking other men for the opportunity of doing so. Miller believes there are people dedicated to evil in the world, that without their perverse example we should not know the good. Hence Abigail refuses to accuse Proctor, despite the prosecutors' urgings. Themes
(Miller's answer for evil in the world = the need for integrity, the need for a bond between humans.) |
Philosophies on Miller's Themes |
Socrates (before his execution)
'Aquit me or not, but whatever you do, know that I shall never alter my ways
even though I have to die many times'.
Voltaire
'Liberty of thought is the life of the soul'.
Max Beerbohm (Essayist)
'The nonconformist conscience makes cowards of us all'.
Shakespeare (Hamlet)
'This above all: to thine own self be true and it must follow as the night the
day thou can'st not then be false to any man'.
Martin Luther 'It is neither safe nor prudent to do aught-against'.
Shakespeare (Hamlet)
'Whither 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous
fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end
them?....'
John Stuart Mill (Philosopher).
'If all mankind minus one were of one mind and only one person were of the
contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing the one person
than he if he had the power would be justified in silencing mankind. We can
never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle in false opinion;
and if we were sure stifling it would still be evil.
John Milton (Poet) 'Give me the liberty to know, to utter and to argue freely according to conscience above all liberties.
Literary Connections:
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"Justice Denied in Massachusetts" by Edna St.
Vincent Millay |
Lesson 4 Literary Terms , Characters and New Vocabulary
Drama terms
Allegory-underlying meaning may be moral, religious, political, or satire
Allusion-reference to a historical or fictional character, place, event, or to another work that the writer assumes the reader will recognize
Audience-people reading the story
Carpe Diem-seize the day
Censorship-suppressing or deleting portions of plays or other written works
Character-person in a literary work
Climax-crisis or turning point in the play
Conflict-struggle between opposing forces
Drama-literary work written in dialogue to be performed by actors
Genre-type of literary work
History Play-play centered on historical events
Mood-prevailing attitude in a literary work
Setting-time and place of the action
Characters
Reverend Parris | Betty Parris |
Rebecca Nurse | Tituba |
Thomas Putnam | Ann Putnam |
Abigail Williams | Ruth Putnam |
John Proctor | Elizabeth Proctor |
Giles Corey | Reverend Hale |
Mary Warren |
Do you know these word? If not, please look them up using the E-Dictionary.
Abominations/Abyss/Begrudge/Blatant/Conjure/Corroborate/Dallied/Deference/Ideology/
Innate/Motif/Falter/Paradox/Theocracy/Lechery/Vile/Deposition/Callously/Perjury