Research+and+Articles

This is an article explaining the relevance of Miller's play, //The Crucible,// in modern American society. The author discusses how Miller wrote the play as a way to protest the atmosphere of fear and cohersion of the McCarthy era and to warn people of the dangers of giving up their individual conscience.

www.sdcoe.k12.ca.us/score/cruc/cructg.html This website comes from a school in San Diego, and is designed to supplement the teaching of //The Crucible//. The teacher includes not only some activities and lessons, but primary and secondary sources - historical articles on Communism and the McCarthy Era - to provide an in-depth framework for students.

http://www.latw.org/acrobat/crucible.pdf This website is from the L.A. Theatre Works and is a teacher's study guide for //The Crucible//. It includes historical context, cast descriptions, writing exercises, research projects, among other performance and theatrical-related elements. It is extremely thorough and comprehensive, and seems to be a helpful resource to anyone teaching //The Crucible//.

http://www.emints.org/ethemes/resources/S00001749.shtml This website organizes other sites related to //The Crucible//, including historical and play-related information. It also includes activities and lesson plans.

The Crucible Deleted Scenes Activity Act Two, Scene 2 Many movies today have deleted scenes; perhaps a director thought the scene too long or irrelevant or even inappropriate for the targeted audience. Arthur Miller's //the Crucible// has a deleted scene. Your task is to read Act Two, Scene 2 of //the Crucible// (pages 148-152) and form your own analysis of why it is often not included. Your analysis should include: a brief summary of the deleted scene, your opinion as to why it is often deleted, and a judgment of whether or not it should be included. (Suggestion: write a short paragraph for each of the three requirements.) This analysis is to be 1 page in length. It is due by the end of class and is worth a maximum of 10 points. Point Criteria: · .  Summary - 2 points . Opinion of why it is often deleted - 3 points . Judgment of why it should/shouldn't be deleted - 3 points . Grammar/spelling - 1 point . Length - 1 point

Why I Wrote // The Crucible // An artist's answer to politics // by // Arthur Miller

As I watched // The Crucible // taking shape as a movie over much of the past year, the sheer depth of time that it represents for me kept returning to mind. As those powerful actors blossomed on the screen, and the children and the horses, and the crowds and the wagons, I thought again about how I came to cook all this up nearly fifty years ago, in an America almost nobody I know seems to remember clearly. . ..

I remember those years-they formed // The Crucible's // skeleton-but I have lost the dead weight of the fear I had then. Fear doesn't trav­el well; just as it can warp judgment, its absence can diminish memory's truth. What terrifies one generation is likely to bring only a puzzled smile to the next. . . . [Senator] McCarthy's power to stir fears of creeping Communism was not entirely based on illusion, of course. . . . From being our wartime ally, the Soviet Union rapidly became an expanding empire. In 1949, Mao Zedong took power in China. Western Europe also seemed ready to become Red, especially Italy, where the Communist Party was the largest outside Russia, and was growing. . . . McCarthy-brash and ill-mannered but to many authentic and true-boiled it all down to what anyone could understand: We had "'ost China" and would soon lose Europe as well, because the State Department-staffed, of course, under Democratic presidents-was full of treasonous pro-Soviet intellectuals. It was as simple as that. . . . // The Crucible // was an act of desperation. . . . By 1950 when I began to think of writing about the hunt for Reds in America, I was motivate in some great part by the paralysis that had set in among many liberals who, despite their discom­fort with the inquisitors' violations of civil rights, were fearful, and with good reason, of being identified as covert Communists if they should protest too strongly. . . . I visited Salem for the first time on a dismal spring day in 1952. . . . In the gloomy court­house there I read the transcripts of the witch­craft trials of 1692, as taken down in a primitive shorthand by ministers who were spelling each other. But there was one entry in Uphamo in which the thousands of pieces I had come across were jogged into place. It was from a report written by the Reverend Samuel Parris, who was one of the chief instigators of the witch-hunt. "During the examination of Elizabeth Proctor, Abigail Williams, and Ann Putnam"-the two were "afflicted" teen-age accusers, and Abigail was Parris's niece-"both made offer to strike at said Proctor; but when Abigail's hand came near, it opened, whereas it was made up, into a fist before, and came down exceeding lightly as it drew near to said Proctor, and at length, with open and extended fingers, touched Proctor's hood very lightly. Immediately Abigail cried out her fingers, her fingers, her fingers burned. . . :' In this_ remarkably observed gesture of a troubled young girl, I believed, a play became possible. Elizabeth Proctor had been the orphaned Abigail's mistress, and they had lived together in the same small house until Elizabeth fired the girl. By this time, I was sure, John Proctor had bedded Abigail, who had to be dis­missed most likely to appease Elizabeth. There was bad blood between the two women now. That Abigail started, in effect, to condemn Elizabeth to death with her touch, then stopped her hand, then went through with it, was quite suddenly the human center of all this turmoil. All this I understood. I had not approached the witchcraft out of nowhere or from purely social and political considerations. My own marriage of twelve years was teetering and I knew more than I wished to know about where the blame lay. That John Proctor the sinner might overturn his paralyzing personal guilt and become the most forthright voice against the madness around him was a reassural')ce to me, and, I suppose, an inspiration: It demonstrated that a clear moral outcry could still spring even from an ambiguously unblemished soul. Moving crabwise across the profusion of evidence, I sensed that I had at last found something of myself in it, and a play began to accumulate around this man. // -(rom //// The New //// Yorker; // October 21 and 28, 1996 °Charles W. Upham. a mayor of Salem, published a two­volume study of the trials in 1867.     Character List John Proctor: A farmer in Salem, Proctor serves as the voice of reason and justice in The Crucible. It is he who exposes the girls as frauds who are only pretending that there is witchcraft, and thus becomes the tragic hero of the tale. Proctor is a sharply intelligent man who can easily detect foolishness in others and expose it, but he questions his own moral sense. Because of his affair with Abigail Williams, Proctor questions whether or not he is a moral man, yet this past event is the only major flaw attributed to Proctor, who is in all other respects honorable and ethical. Proctor desperately wants to save his wife but knows he will blacken his own name if he discloses Abigail's motives for naming Elizabeth. **Elizabeth Proctor:** The wife of John Proctor, Elizabeth shares with John a similarly strict adherence to justice and moral principles She is a woman who has great -Confidence in her own morality and in the ability of a person to maintain a sense of righteousness both internal and external, even when this principle conflicts with strict Christian doctrine. She is regarded as a woman of unimpeachable honesty. However, Elizabeth can be a cold and demanding woman whose chilly demeanor she feels may have driven her husband to adultery and whose continual suspicions of her husband render their marriage tense.  **Abigail Williams:** A seventeen year old girl who is the niece of Reverend Parris, Abigail was the Proctors' servant before Elizabeth fired her for having an affair with John. She is a malicious, vengeful girl who, in an attempt to protect herself from punishment when her cousin falls ill after Reverend Parris finds them dancing, instigates the Salem witch trials and leads the charge of accusations. Despite her accusations, Abigail is an unabashed liar who charges witchcraft against those who oppose her, even Elizabeth Proctor in an attempt to take her place as Proctor's wife.  **Mary** **Warren:** The eighteen year old servant in the Proctor household, Mary is one of the girls found dancing in the woods and is complicit in Abigail Williams' schemes. Although weak and tentative, she challenges the Proctors when they forbid her to go to court. She even supports Abigail in her efforts to frame Elizabeth. However, Mary Warren eventually breaks down and testifies against Abigail until Abigail charges her with witchery. Mary is a weak person that is torn between her knowledge of what is right and just and her fears for her own survival.