From now, it is really important you are doing more work than me.

Theoretically, you should be telling me about the text.

The Crucible

Arthur Miller

“I could not use the name of another person and bring trouble on him”

What is the text actually about?

Start/End Point• What does the author want us to:KnowThinkFeelTo considerTo do

What is the text actually about? Is it really just about witches in 17th century America? Is it

really just about McCarthyism?

Layers

• Simple Level = the witch hunts in Salem 1692

• Complicated = McCarthyism in the 1950s

• Complex = How it relates to us. How is this story about you? How is it about society? What does it say about ‘Encountering Conflict?

The Title – A starting point

‘Crucible’ – What does it mean?

1. A container of metal or refractory material employed for heating substances to high temperatures.

2.Metallurgy . A hollow area at the bottom of a furnace in which the metal collects.

3. A severe, searching test or trialwww.dictionary.reference.com

What is the metaphor? How can we make links to the text? What is being heated to high temperatures? What is being put on trial?

Front Cover

• Look at the front cover of the copy of your text. This is the first part we look at, and so much of what it is about is visually represented.

• What is it trying to tell us? What is this play about?

Encountering Conflict

Encountering Conflict

• Remember that you are writing about this context, not the text itself.

• You are using the text to help form ideas from which you can explore this context.

Encountering Conflict

Conflict that exists within the

text.

Your ideas about

conflict

Conflict that exists

outside the text

Character conflict

Larger conflicts in

the text

Real world events

Historical context

Key questions to help you engage with the idea of ‘Encountering Conflict’.

What types of conflict exist?

• Religious conflict• Conflict with the land• Conflict with American Indians• Community conflict• Personal conflict

For each, write at least one example of where this conflict exists in the play.

What are the causes of conflict?

Some examples:

GriefGuiltFearGreed

Others?

What is the impact of encountering conflict?

• On individuals?• On communities?• In what ways are people impacted?

• How do people react to conflict?

We will use these as we study each act of the text.

Background to the Text

1950s America

• Written in 1953 • HUAC claimed to be weeding out unseen

enemies of America (communists)• People who were ‘named’ were blacklisted

and therefore ostracized in many ways.

Arthur Miller• Miller believed it was the social responsibility of the artist to

make critiques on society.• As a leftist, he appeared before the HUAC and was convicted

for refusing to name alleged Communist writers and was blacklisted:

“I could not use the name of another person and bring trouble on him”

Arthur Miller

• Therefore, Miller wrote ‘The Crucible’ as a comment on the collective societal madness in seventeenth-century America, and on mid-twentieth century ‘Cold War’ anxieties fuelled by a nuclear arms race.

• Both, as he saw it, resulted in a ‘witch-hunt’

• ‘The Crucible’ is, then, “a powerful and timeless depiction of how intolerance and hysteria can intersect and tear a community apart”.

Our first job is to identify what critiques and comments Miller was trying to make.

Salem 1692

• One group of pioneers going through a transition into two different communities.

• This caused disagreements about property and other rights.

• There also grew conflicting ideas about religious practice.

Puritans and Quakers

• Puritans – hard line Christians. Follow the bible’s teachings and the Ten Commandments. Suppress independent thought.

• Quakers – are seen as more free thinkers. They look for God in every person, the engage in social philanthropy, pacifists.

How does this relate to ‘The Crucible’?

Key Definitions

• Autocracy – government in which one person has uncontrolled or unlimited authority over others

• Theocracy – a form of government in which God is recognised as the supreme civil ruler, the God’s laws being interpreted by the ecclesiastical authorities (eg. priests)

Homework

• The Hollywood Seven• Ed Murrow• Julius and Ethel Rosenberg• Puritans and Quakers• The ‘real’ Salem witch hunts of 1692