Introduction

match_stickLesson Four - The Crucible
Duration - 6 blocks (6 x 80 min + homework)

"But you must understand, sir, that a person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between." - Deputy Governor of the Province, Danforth in The Crucible.

Have you ever wondered where the term "witch hunt" came from? You are about to find out! For the next few lessons, you are going to be studying The Crucible, playwright Arthur Miller's dramatization of the Salem Witch Trials.

"Imagine a super-constrictive time in history. Think confining apparel. Think proper social etiquette. Think mass hysteria that makes entire communities suspicious and paranoid.

"There is something about the potent cocktail of fear, anxiety, passion, and jealousy in The Crucible that we find disturbingly familiar. As wild as The Crucible’s plot is, we’ve seen this episode in history over and over again.The Crucible drives home just how sickeningly often history repeats itself.

"The Crucible is a parable that tells the tale of a similar 'witch-hunt' that went down in playwright Arthur Miller’s time. Fearing the spread of Communism and seeing it as a threat to the nation and to individual freedoms, the American government, led by Senator Joseph McCarthy,sought out every single communist in the U.S. They put suspects on trial and forced them to “name names” and rat out their friends and compatriots. Soon the whole country was whipped into a moral frenzy.

"Arthur Miller, playwright extraordinaire, realized that the lingo being thrown around by McCarthy sounded very similar to the language used in the Salem Witch Trials (some 300 years before), a historical period he researched heavily while in college. So he wrote The Crucible.

"This might sound moderately cool to you, even if it contains two layers of retro—the 1950's and the 1690's. 'Oh, how nifty,' you might think, 'A dated morality play.'

"Except these aren't the only two examples of witch-hunting in history.

"In the 1980's, a similar a witch-hunt developed over the issue of child molestation. Stalin's Great Purge was eerily similar to a witch-hunt in its erratic and demented nature. Today in Africa, Latin America, and the Pacific, there are still witch-hunts taking place... and yes, they're hunting actual witches. And in America, parallels are being drawn between the events of McCarthyism, the Salem Witch Trials, and measures being taken to guard against 'the threat of homegrown Islamist terrorism.'

"Where would you stand if history were to repeat itself once more and you found yourself in the middle of a witch-hunt? Would you agree to say something that wasn’t true in order to save your family? What would you do if you became the scapegoat? Arthur Miller helps us try to think about how we would handle ourselves if we were to find ourselves in this situation... and he also makes us think about how emotional humans can get when justice is on the line." - Shmoop