Common Module – The Crucible Notes

Resource Description

Module Common – The Crucible Notes by E.J

THE CRUCIBLE

COMMMON MODULE – TEXTS AND HUMAN EXPERIENCES

– Individual and collective human experiences; human qualities and emotions; anomalies, paradoxes and inconsistencies in human behaviour and motivation
– Set in the Puritanical theocracy of Salem during the 17 th Century witch trials
– Written by Arthur Miller and is a blatant political allegory for the 1950’s when McCarthyism and communism was rife.
o ‘The Salem tragedy, which is about to begin in these pages, developed out of a paradox. It is a paradox in whose grip we still live, and there is no prospect yet that we will discover its resolution’
o ‘while there were no witches then, there are Communists and capitalists now, and… each camp… work at undermining the other’
– Miller’s stage directions give explicit instructions regarding all aspects of the play, drawing comparisons between Salem and the modern world
o ‘long-held hatreds of neighbours could now be openly expressed and vengeance taken’
– The Crucible’s form is that of a ‘modern tragedy’
– Garth Boomer said that ‘stories are the lifeblood of nations’
– Tragedy and the Common Man
o ‘the common man is an apt subject for tragedy’
o ‘the tragic right is a condition of life’
o ‘tragedy enlightens’

TRANSGRESSION AND REDEMPTION

‘the universal and individual experience of transgression and redemption is examined in The Crucible through the character of John Proctor as he struggles with the wider consequences of his actions and the internal conflict that arose from those actions’ – Salem is puritanical theocratic society, which has a deeply conservative regime that suffocates individuality in the pursuit of collective ideology. – Individuals are repressed by the strict dogma of the collective – Miller is making his own political opinions felt as he symbolically links Salem to other
moments in human history – One of the most fundamental human experiences is the notion of transgression and redemption.

Links to the idea that to ‘err is to be human’ but also to the central purpose of the role of storytelling.

– Proctor represents the issue of transgression and redemption best, with the internal conflict regarding his transgressions
– His personal and individual experience of finding redemption