Take notes on the discussion questions that you have been assigned. Your notes need to be neatly written on loose leaf paper, and your notes must include page refereneces. Be sure to address ALL PARTS of the QUESTION.
While the notes can be written in bullets, there must be enough information in the bullets for me to understand your point. Writing that is incomplete or illegible will be penalized.
The graded discussion will be worth 20 points, and it will be one of the last grades for the quarter. So, your notes and your participation are important.
Discussion
Questions
- What is the state of the community at the beginning of
the play, as the play progresses and at the end of the play? How are
insiders and outsiders defined during these times?
- What elements existed or were created within the
community to allow Abigail and the other girls to gain power?
- What role did fear play in creating authority? How did
some people choose to resist authority? Who are they and what form did
their resistance take?
- What in the play is historically accurate? Where did Miller take license with the historical truth? Why does he take license with history?
- Provide evidence from The Crucible that demonstrates that certainty can be dangerous.
- Judge Danforth says, “a person is either with this
court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between” (Act 3,
Scene 1). What happens to a society where there is no “road between”?
- At the end of the play, John Hale has changed his
opinion of the trials. What brings about this change?
- Each of the characters represent a "type", that is, a specific kind of person who exhibits a very specific response to fear. Identify what type each character represents in the play. Play particular attention to how the character changes or refuses to change as the play goes on.
9.
13. Arthur Miller has been quoted as
saying “The tragedy of The Crucible is the everlasting conflict between people so fanatically
wedded to this orthodoxy that they could not cope with the evidence of their
senses.” What does he mean b y“this orthodoxy”? What is “the evidence of their
senses”? Do you agree that this is the basic conflict?
10. As a socially conscious writer,
Miller intended this play as a comment on McCarthyism. What are the parallels
between the incidents Miller dramatizes and the acts of Senator McCarthy in the
1950s?
