The Crucible by Arthur Miller - Symposium

What is it to be human?

What human qualities and emotions do the characters demonstrate and what do we experience watching it?

Do these ideas change across different times and cultures?

How are these things represented to us

Representation & Portrayal

• The dramatic representation of stories

• Theatre = create a visceral experience for the viewer

  • talk about light and sound

• Four climactic builds to terrible events (exactly how a crucible ‘dish’ works, gets hotter and hotter until end point)

• This novel is fuelled by emotions, it is what instigates all the problems and difficulties displayed - leading to mass hysteria. but it is defined and determined in the end by the character’s qualities.

  • qualities are what determine how you handle a certain situation

Context

• the play is about what is true and what is false — and the way how human’s are unable to decipher one from the other (discernment)

• sex/uality is the overarching instigator of majority of the problems within The Crucible

• the people in Salem believed that 10% of their people HAD to be devil worshippers, they believed it was certain

• they also believed that God and satan were having a war right outside Salem

Tragedy = an individual is able to transcend all fears

Miller uses names as the article of faith, everyone is trying to save their reputation/name. They fundamental in this novel, the value of one’s name.

• use short and conise quotes that represent everything

  • Shared human experience = quote Abigail and Proctor

Reverend Hale and Mary Warren are great characters to study their moral change throughout the novel