The Crucible Arthur Miller S5/6 Int 2 Drama Study

1. The Crucible Arthur Miller S5/6 Int 2 Drama Study

2. Learning Intention We are learning to: Success Criteria: I can identify aspects of theme. • Consolidate our knowledge of Act 1. Achieving this S.C. means you are on target!

3. The Crucible: The Opening Scene cont.

4. Summary of Act 1 cont. • Betty wakes up screaming. • Several of the townspeople rush upstairs and, while they are gathered in her bedroom, they argue about witchcraft. • In the midst of this crisis, Proctor, Parris, Giles Corey and a wealthy landowner, Thomas Putnam, begin to argue about money and land deeds. • It is evident that the town of Salem is full of personal grudges. Note taking: Update your visualisers as we discuss Act 1. This will help you as you study the text

5. Summary of Act 1 cont. • Reverend Hale arrives and questions both Betty and Abigail. • He grows suspicious about the girls' activities in the forest, especially the role of Tituba. • She is summoned and Parris and Hale both interrogate her. • Afraid of being hanged, Tituba accuses two townswomen of consorting with the devil. • Suddenly, Abigail joins in, confessing to having seen the devil with other townspeople and Betty and other girls join them. • The scene ends in hysteria and uproar.

6. Note taking: Update your visualisers as we discuss Act 1. This will help you as you study the text • The Crucible – Visualiser Theme

7. Act 1 – Theme of Hysteria • The play has a momentum which shows how events snowball out of control. • The illness of Betty Parris starts a panic, fuelled by Parris’s own desperation to hold his position and Abigail’s manipulation

8. Act One – Theme of Corruption • In this act Abigail shows how corrupted she is- by her jealousy and lust • She has corrupted John and made him act “like a wild stallion”. • Yet this has made Proctor a conflicted man because he has a strong sense of what is just: “I like not the smell of this ‘authority’” • Parris seems to have been corrupted by his thirst for power and greed. • Hale believes strongly in justice.

9. Themes explored in Act 1 • Intolerance: • Due to the Theocratic nature of the society – moral laws and state laws are one and the same: sin and the status of an individual’s soul are matters of public concern. • There is no room for deviation from social norms, since any individual whose private life doesn’t conform to the established moral laws represents a threat not only to the public good but also to the rule of God and true religion. • In Salem, everything and everyone belongs to either God or the Devil; dissent is not merely unlawful, it is associated with satanic activity. This dichotomy functions as the underlying logic behind the witch trials.

10. Themes explored in Act 1 • Reputation: • Reputation is tremendously important in theocratic Salem, where public and private moralities are one and the same. In an environment where reputation plays such an important role, the fear of guilt by association becomes particularly pernicious. • Focused on maintaining public reputation, the townsfolk of Salem must fear that the sins of their friends and associates will taint their names. • Various characters base their actions on the desire to protect their respective reputations. As the play begins, Parris fears that Abigail’s increasingly questionable actions, and the hints of witchcraft surrounding his daughter’s coma, will threaten his reputation and force him from the pulpit. • Meanwhile, the protagonist, John Proctor, also seeks to keep his good name from being tarnished.

11. Act 1 Structure • Turning Point: The interrogation of Tituba and her false confession. • Dramatic Climax: An eruption of mass hysteria and accusations of witchcraft as the girls tell the superstitious people of Salem what they want to hear.

12. Holding Back the Climax • climax • noun • the most intense, exciting, or important point of something; the culmination. • Miller once wrote that one of the most important techniques in drama was “the holding back of climax until it was ready, the grasp of the rising line and the unwillingness to divert to any easy climax until the true one was ready. If there was one word to name the mood it was Forego. Let nothing interfere with the shape, the direction, the intention.”

13. Dramatic Climax • Of course, to build up to a climax, certain hints, clues and suggestions must be given earlier on in the play, many of them purposely left unanswered or ambiguous, so the audience is kept wondering.

14. There are many examples within The Crucible. • Act 1 is a perfect example of this technique, where the potential hysteria that could arise from the opening situation is restrained until the very end of the act. • This allows Miller to add in more tensions between the characters, such as the affair between Proctor and Abigail; the insecurities of Parris’ position in the town, the Putnams’ desire to reclaim their “good name”; and the introduction of the witch hunter, Rev. Hale. • NB – All of these elements and repressed fears are brought out in the hysterical climax.