THE CRUCIBLE
Rubric
Common Module: Texts and Human Experiences
In this common module students deepen their understanding of how texts represent
individual and collective human experiences. They examine how texts represent human
qualities and emotions associated with, or arising from, these experiences. Students
appreciate, explore, interpret, analyse and evaluate the ways language is used to shape
these representations in a range of texts in a variety of forms, modes and media.
Students explore how texts may give insight into the anomalies, paradoxes and
inconsistencies in human behaviour and motivations, inviting the responder to see the
world differently, to challenge assumptions, ignite new ideas or reflect personally. They may
also consider the role of storytelling throughout time to express and reflect particular lives
and cultures. By responding to a range of texts they further develop skills and confidence
using various literary devices, language concepts, modes and media to formulate a
considered response to texts.
Students study one prescribed text and a range of short texts that provide rich opportunities
to further explore representations of human experiences illuminated in texts. They make
increasingly informed judgements about how aspects of these texts, for example context,
purpose, structure, stylistic and grammatical features, and form shape meaning. In addition,
students select one related text and draw from personal experience to make connections
between themselves, the world of the text and their wider world.
By responding and composing throughout the module students further develop a repertoire
of skills in comprehending, interpreting and analysing complex texts. They examine how
different modes and media use visual, verbal and/or digital language elements. They
communicate ideas using figurative language to express universal themes and evaluative
language to make informed judgements about texts. Students further develop skills in using
metalanguage, correct grammar and syntax to analyse language and express a personal
perspective about a text.
Vocabulary Word Bank
Initial Considerations
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Ageless text
Captures the zeitgeist of the grim epoch of 20th century America
Is an allegory: Dramatic decontextualization of 195o America into 15th century smalltown Salem
It speaks to the audience on shared human concerns while also dealing with
contextually pertinent issues.
Background to The Crucible
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Miller’s play is an allegory based on the McCarthy-eques witch hunt waged against
communists and their sympathisers in America circa 1950’s.
It posits the witch hunts as a derivative of the hysteria that grips and contorts the
people of Salem, dually allegorical of mob mentality, hysteria and its grip on society
as a whole.
Miller explores the disruption to Salem’s power structures and hierarchy at the dawn
of hysteria when status and status quo is threatened by the hubristic strides of
individuals who seek either greater individual autonomy or the downfall of others, as
well as the former via the latter.
Miller signposts how fear sets in and circulates once societies are faced with change;
a recurring motif of the stage play.
o In 16th Century Salem, individuals begin to question authority and the
authority imbued in rhetoric.
o Theocratic institutions are doomed to come undone and conservative
religious values unravelled.
We can draw parallels between Arthur Miller’s own context, and those of Salem.
Author Arthur Miller’s Context
Personal Life
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The Red Scare
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McCarthyism
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Relevance to The Crucible
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The Crucible and links to the HSC Common Module Texts and
Human Experiences rubric points.
Individual and Collective Human Experiences in The Crucible
Rubric statement: In this common module students deepen their understanding of how
texts represent individual and collective human experiences.
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Inferred question: How does The Crucible manage to deepen our understanding of
and represent individual and collective human experiences?
o By informing us that most human concerns are universal and timeless.
o By developing our understanding that all individuals stand in different
relation to intrinsic human concerns, depending on their motivations and
disposition.
The Representation of Emotions in The Crucible
Rubric statement: They examine how texts represent human qualities and emotions
associated with, or arising from, these experiences. Students appreciate, explore, interpret,
analyse and evaluate the ways language is used to shape these representations in a range of
texts in a variety of forms, modes and media.
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Inferred question: Examine how The Crucible represents human qualities and
emotions arising from collective experiences. How has language shaped these
representations in the form, mode and medium of The Crucible?
o Emotions and Stage Plays: A plethora of dramatically explicit or inferred
direction are deployed throughout the crucible, and – given the textual
medium – you are expected to draw and text-type specific techniques,
namely, stage directions. We are invited into the world of the characters of
The Crucible by their emotions, and a good essay will consider the emotional
brewing of characters initially and at the conclusion of the play.
Anomalies, Paradoxes and Inconsistencies in The Crucible
Rubric statement: Students explore how texts may give insight into the anomalies,
paradoxes and inconsistencies in human behaviour and motivations, inviting the responder
to see the world differently, to challenge assumptions, ignite new ideas or reflect
personally.
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Inferred question: How has The Crucible given insight into the anomalies, paradoxes
and inconsistencies in human behaviour and motivations, inviting you to see the
world differently, challenge assumptions, become enlightened with new ideas or
reflect?
Storytelling: Lives and Cultures in The Crucible
Rubric Statement: Students may also consider the role of storytelling throughout time to
express and reflect particular lives and cultures.
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Inferred Question: Consider the role of storytelling throughout time to express and
reflect particular lives and cultures.
Textual Form
By a joint consideration of Arthur Miller’s allegorical play and a related text of your
choosing, it may be inferred that symbolic representations of political climates fare better
and far more universal than a literal counterpart. By the dramatic decontextualisation of
America’s 1950’s McCarthyism through Salemite Puritan Witch trials, The Crucible manages
a universal exploration of the dangers of political hysteria.
Analysis of Major Thematic Concerns
1. Usurpation by Political Dexterity
Politics pertains to the reality of usurping and manipulating others to achieve power. A
Machiavellianist approach to The Crucible would tell us that Abigail’s plan-of-action would
have to be that of blood; that to become the ‘usurper’, she would be the only one willing to
do what others will not. Arthur Miller’s allegory thus stands as a critique of McCarthyism: a
dire attempt at gaining favour and power by the dismantling of social fabric and intricacies,
of rending his subjects fear-ridden. This, in effect, became the far right-winged
demagoguery that lay in his wake.
Through the conduit of fanatical ‘othering’, right-winged demagoguery alienates the
individuals of The Crucible – silencing conflicting perspectives within a people who always
cling to conformity. This alienation is expounded by Brechtain register overt throughout the
Crucible, its deliberately antique language serving no purpose but for Miller to exude
circumstantial irony and distance his audience from unfamiliar setting, removing immediate
comparison to its present context of McCarthyism. Such historical allusions only arrive
towards the latter parts of the play, direct quotes from McCarthy as manifested in Danforth
professing “You must understand, sir, that a person is either with this court or he must be
counted against it, there be no road between” allowing the audience to draw this unsettling
historical parallel in an effective retrospect. Such polarisation leads to political essentialism,
the closing of the first Act escalating through truncated dialogue as the innocent are
fanatically condemned in short secessions.
2. Lust
Whether it be the “land lust” prefaced as the backdrop of the events of The Crucible, or
Abigail’s lust for John Proctor, The Crucible is a text that deals greatly with this concern. The
Texts and Human Experiences paired with The Crucible begs for a strong consideration of
what the driving impetus of each characters motivations are – and last comes to stand in on
many an occasion. Salemite greed, lust knows no bounds, for adultery, for land, for
reputation.
3. Persecution
The Crucible manages a unique examination of political persecution as a means for
deflecting attention from difficult situations. Here we may find an umbilical link to Miller’s
own context, particularly in considering Senator Joseph McCarthy’s own persecution of
Communist sympathisers to deflect from America’s grander issues. The Senator’s
contribution to the cause did little to strengthen to core of American livelihood, nor do
Reverend Pari’s hubristic strides in The Crucible. It is an ignored reality that Abigail and the
other girls may very well be going about their treacherous deeds merely for entertainment.
Instead, the wayward girls’ actions have their onus placed on the Devil and witchcraft. In a
similar fashion, McCarthy’s persecution rested on the presence of an evil force encroaching
on an American way of life.
4. Competing Perspectives
“Competing perspectives” is a term that has seen itself reused and recycled in HSC syllabi
time and time again and is hence as important aspect to consider in any text about power,
people and politics. We should first begin by considering that politics is volatile, and ‘mob
mentality’ in The Crucible stands to represent this reality. Competing political perspectives
may be found in:
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Proctor vs The Court
McCarthy vs Communism
Judge vs The Divine Will of God
Abigail and company vs the convicted
Proctor vs Parris (as character foils)
5. Facade, Deceit and Lies
Voltaire once wrote that if there to be no God, then mankind would find it necessary to
invent him. The Crucible, as a textual selection for the HSC Module ‘Texts and Human
Experiences’, comes to stand for man without guidance, yet is dually the extremity of man
guided by the unproven divine. The Crucible is just as much about attempting to find God,
as it is about establishing political order.
We see facade and deceit imbued in the faux holy resonance of the court, particularly when
Reverend Parris claims “Do you know, Mr. Proctor, that the entire contention of the state in
these trials is that the voice of Heaven is speaking through these children?”
The words of the Reverend further echo those of Senator Joseph McCarthy, claiming “All
innocent and Christian people are happy for the courts in Salem. The imperfections of any
system of judgment, possibility of error, any concept of mercy and the realities of human
nature are banished as objections before this pronouncement and their self-ordained
heavenly charter.” Here we see the full fruition of circle reasoning, that an individual who is
not a witch is happy for the Salemite courts, the same way an individual who was not a
communist in 1950’s America had no qualms with the House Committee on Un-American
Activities.
6. Hysteria
When looking to the origins of political unrest, we can often find personal inner turmoil to
be the harming of demise – the ultimate externalisation and inflation of motives
eventuating to dogmatic manifesto. Miller’s Crucible very much draws upon classic
allegorical considerations of historic Greek hysteria – a phenomenon that was a result of the
bodily imbalance of a woman’s fluids prompting her womb to wander the body in search for
relief (Hippocratic Corus – 400BC). We may hence find the intersection here between
hysteria and lust in The Crucible, notably in the characterisation of Abigail. After twentieth
century physicians drew their own assertions on this notion, Freud famously claimed that
“biology is destiny”, and such a reality is most certainly true for Abigail Williams. Abigail’s
personal longing for Proctor never surfaced, despite Danforth claiming that they “burn a hot
fire” that “melts down all concealment.” The ironic voice of Miller exudes here, particularly
with reference to his own life and trials. Thus, her hysteria stems beyond her personal
sphere and into the political scene of Salem’s metaphoric “wheels within wheels” and “fires
within fires.”
We eventually are met with a John Proctor who sees himself come to his sentences in
speaking to Abigail – “Ah, you are wicked yet!”, an umbilical link to the corruption of Eve in
creationist belief systems, notably Christianity, explaining the demise of main as owing to
the wrongdoing of womankind. Abigail’s identity as a temptress is further solidified in
Abigail’s assertions Act One: “I have a sense for heat, John, and yours has drawn me to my
window, and I have seen you looking up, burning in your loneliness.” Here, Abigail denies
the Puritan doctrine that sex is not for procreation alone, but too for personal fulfilment.
Hence Proctor fails to recite the Commandment “Thou shalt not commit adultery” when
pressed by Reverend Hale. We see Abigail fulfil her role as a temptress in the epilogue of the
play.
7. Madness
Madness at Salem historically has roots in many sources of American life. Moral and security
panic gripped Salemites particularly due to the nature of transatlantic migrants, their sociopolitical dogma pertaining to the founding fathers of the USA in the 15th Century, teenage
boredom, ongoing frontier wars with the Indians, economic circumstances and
congregational strife. All these realities occurred amidst an attempt to establish a New Israel
in America. Any slight deviation from the norm would most certainly erupt in panic for 15th
Century small-town Americans.
8. The ‘Other’
We may also find condemnation of womanly knowledge imbued in the sub-narrative of
Tituba. Tituba knew sexuality, the mystic and the otherworldly. She was a foreigner to the
Salemites, whose knowledge was different of that to the locals, who had a xenophobic
history of disregarding the alien. This reality is prefaced by their incapacity to convert the
local Native American Indians in the forest greens beyond Salem.
“The edge of the wilderness was close by. The American continent stretched endlessly west,
and it was full of mystery for them. It stood, dark and threatening, over their shoulder night
and day, for out of its Indian tribes marauder from time to time, and Reverend Parris had
parishioners who had lost relative to this heaven.”
Tituba was condemned by allegations of witchcraft – coming from Barbados, Tituba would
easily be labelled as superstitious: a practitioner of Hoodoo. She was too a midwife: birthing
and midwifery being knowledge beyond the everyday human understanding of reality; this
was a matter rarely understood in the times of 15th Century Salem, the creation of life from
the point of conception was little deliberated. Hence, Tituba of Barbados comes to stand as
a novelty against the stark contrasting parochial snobbery of the Salemites. Furthermore,
Sarah Good would see herself become subject to accusation, particularly due to her
nonconformity surrounding extramarital sex. This is the reason why Abigail’s turmoil begins
in the forest: Miller purposely drawing upon the foreign and the strange to preface the
events of the play.
Ultimately, the parochial snobbery of the Salemites got the better of them. It was in their
failure to convert the Indians that these small-town Americans failed to see the dangers of
zealotry. The people of Salem always preferred to take land from heathens rather than from
fellow Christians, and hence aged themselves towards the virgin forests, or as they
affectionately knew it, the “Devil’s last preserve.” Hence the people of Salem in 1692 were
“not quite the dedicated folk that arrived not the Mayflower.” Previously, their “hardhanded justice” were perfect instruments for conquest, yet their greed had run out of land.
The Salemites failed to recognise the reality that their way of life had run out, looking to
shift blame to the Devil rather than the teenage boredom of their own daughters. Hysteria
has snowballed beyond return for Salem, and hence a longing to seek conformity grips the
town.
9. The Home as a Court: The Individual vs Society
Apart from the first act, which serves to be an overture, the remaining three acts take place
literally and/or symbolically in a court. The tone of the play shift and elevates as the allegory
takes full swing. The Crucible is not at its peak as a microcosm for the House Committee on
Un-American Activities. In Proctor’s own words in Act Two Scene Two, the house is now a
court, “it is as though I come into a court when I come into this house.” Soon later, we find a
John Proctor who claims “I confessed, I confessed.” Proctor’s personal life is hence
inextricable from Salem’s havoc, causing him to appear before the tribunal of his own
conscience according to his wife who claims figuratively that “the magistrate sits in your
heart that judges you.”
Moreover, Miller’s deliberate construction of the stage set of the courtroom as “the very
room of the same meeting house, now serving as the anteroom of the general court” serves
to strip the setting of any authority in a quasi-satirical critique of the HUAC. We are then
presented with only the voices of characters facing trials, the individuals not shown on stage
to draw emphasis to the obscene condemnations following Martha Corey’s voice
claiming “I know not what a witch is” with Hawthorne’s claiming “How do you know then,
that you are not a witch?” We may find the imperative nature of Puritanism embedded in
Hale’s allegory of “theology” as a “fortress” and that “no crack in a fortress may be
accounted small.” This maxim ironically becomes the demise of the town of Salem, who
believe “it’s God’s work we do.” Miller as such presents an imperative fixation to Puritanism
to drawl parallel to the political rashness and fanatical ‘othering’ that McCarthy imposes.
10. Reputation
Reputation is a large driving motivator for the events of The Crucible. Likewise, reputation
was of dire concern to Senator Joseph McCarthy of Miller’s time. “Do you know, Mr.
Proctor, that the entire contention of the state in these trials is that the voice of Heaven is
speaking through these children?” claims an oh-so-pious Danforth, a governor whose blind
faith in the rule of law – and the subsequent subordination of its people – is the only
foundation to his reputation as an unquestionable authority. For Abigail, reputation is
regarded as a strong political motivator beyond her desire for John Proctor. Abigail
explaining in the first act that she “will not black my (her) face”
Moreover, Reverend Parris is a man known by many Salemites to be a man displaced: a
preacher whose goals consist not only of serving the Lord, but too serving unto thyself.
Reverend Parris, much like McCarthy, claims that “all innocent and Christian people are
happy for the courts in Salem” in the same way that the American Senator claimed that all
Americans are happy for the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Furthermore, we
find the idiosyncrasies of many of The Crucible’s characters as epitomising selfrighteousness, Reverend Parris being a man who “felt insulted if someone rose to shut the
door” in a meeting, an idiosyncratic characterisation reinforcing reputation sensitivity. In an
appeal to ethos, Parris’ tired attempts at proving his integrity increase throughout the play.
Perhaps Parris’ egotistic ways are best summated by John Proctor’s exaltation in Act Two:
“Since we built the church there were pewter candle-sticks upon the altar; Francis Nurse
made them, y’know, and a sweeter hand never touched the metal. But Parris came, and for
twenty week he preaches nothin’ but golden candlesticks until he had them. I labour the
earth from dawn of day to blink of night, and I tell you true, when I look to heaven and see
my money glaring at his elbows – it hurt my prayer, sir, it hurt my prayer. I think,
sometimes, the man dreams cathedrals, not clapboard meetin’ houses.”
11. Namesake
Parris is not the only Salemite to be concerned by his reputation, John Proctor is too a
character unwilling to provide his name to be placed as a convicted wizard. A name is all
Proctor has to live by: it is his sense of identity and security in a town gone mad. Danforth
and Parris ever-so-desperately attempt to procure a confession from Proctor, yet will only
accept such a confession if his name is provided publicly for the town’s entirety to see nailed
to the church door:
“I have confessed myself! Is there no good penitence but it be public? God does not need
my name nailed upon the church! God sees my name; God knows how black my sins are! It
is enough!”
It is clear Parris and Danforth attempt to reach such a height with Proctor for the sake of
using his name as an example of a confessed man: the sole voice of reason in the play who
must either show cowardice or self-sacrifice:
“ it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to
lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without
my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!”
Despite the reality that John Proctor believes God to have witnessed his blackened name,
Parris and Danforth find no solace nor utilitarian purpose in this claim. Hence, John Proctor
only stands one fate at the hands of a society gone mad: crucifixion. “Hell, and Heaven
grapple on our backs” exalts Proctor, and he is here to save the sinners of Salem, the Christlike figure now standing to be the martyr of Salem, the only harbinger of hope and salvation
for the town.
Practise Essay Questions
1. How has your understanding of the challenges of the human experience been
shaped by the director’s use of stage directions in your prescribed text?
2. Through the telling and receiving of stories, we become more aware of ourselves
and our shared human experiences. Explore this statement with close reference to
your prescribed text.
3. ‘One can only pity them all”. How does Miller’s evocative modern tragedy engage
our compassion for the individual and shared human experiences represented?
4. Ho do texts use the exploration of the life scenarios of individuals in order to convey
important concepts about the human experience? Refer to your prescribed text.
5. Ho does Arthur Miller use setting to explore societal attitudes of power and
marginalisation in the play ‘The Crucible’?
6. How do texts encourage us to reflect on the different values and beliefs involved in
important social issues? Refer to your prescribed text.
7. Texts “hold as ‘twere the mirror up to nature: to show virtue her feature, scorn her
own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure”. – Hamlet
(3.2.17-24) To what extent does this statement reflect representations of individual
and collective human experiences in your prescribed text?
8. “The purpose of a story teller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you
questions to think upon”. Evaluate this statement in the relation to your prescribed
text.
9. Critically analyse how the representation of conflicting human motivations in your
prescribed text invites individuals to see the world differently.
10. While we may have different experiences and attitudes to life, we all share the same
fate. Explore this statement with close reference to your prescribed text.
Persuasive writing prompt
In Arthur Miller’s ‘The Crucible’, Reverend Hale tells Elizabeth Proctor that “no principle,
however glorious” is worth dying for, and he argues that it is better to give a false
confession than to die for a principle of belief.
Defend or refute Hale’s assertation using evidence from ‘The Crucible’ and other literary and
cultural references to support your stance.
The famous Spanish-American philosopher, George Santaya, once said: “Those who cannot
remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
In light of this quote, do you think The Crucible can help modern Americans? Or, in your
opinion, is it a play that only applies to the past? Create an argument based on textual and
anecdotal evidence.