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?
- John and Abigail’s affair serves as a catalyst for the
events of the play, yet historically no such affair ever took place. Why
did Arthur Miller use his dramatic license to invent this relationship?
- Provide evidence for the theme of 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?
- John Proctor comes very close to admitting guilt so
that he may live, and it’s at this moment that Reverend Parris tells him
that his refusal to confess is vanity. John could lie, and confess, and
stay alive for his wife and children. Do you agree with Parris?
9.
. 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?
