Crucible

Junior Composition and Literature

The Rhetoric of Drama

“Why I Wrote The Crucible”

Directions: Actively read, answer the in-text questions, and annotate the following essay by Arthur Miller. When you are finished reading, TYPE thoughtful answers (including concrete details) to the following discussion questions (one paragraph each) in preparation for a class discussion:

1. Why did Arthur Miller write The Crucible? Consider his motivations, personal experiences and historical setting in which it was written.

2. Why do people continue to read, study and perform it? What makes The Crucible relevant from decade to decade?

3. What connections can you make between the story of The Crucible, Arthur Miller’s experiences in the 1950s, and/or your experiences today? Consider the concept of fear as a motivating factor for action.

Why I Wrote The Crucible: An Artist's Answer to Politics

By Arthur Miller

As I watched "The Crucible" taking shape as a movie over much of the past year, the sheer depth of time that it represents for me kept returning to mind. As those powerful actors blossomed on the screen, and the children and the horses, the crowds and the wagons, I thought again about how I came to cook all this up nearly fifty years ago, in an America almost nobody I know seems to remember clearly. In a way, there is a biting irony in this film's having been made by a Hollywood studio, something unimaginable in the fifties. But there they are--Daniel Day-Lewis (John Proctor) scything his sea-bordered field, Joan Allen (Elizabeth) lying pregnant in the frigid jail, Winona Ryder (Abigail) stealing her minister-uncle's money, majestic Paul Scofield (Judge Danforth) and his righteous empathy with the Devil-possessed children, and all of them looking as inevitable as rain.

I remember those years--they formed "The Crucible's” skeleton--but I have lost the dead weight of the fear I had then… McCarthy's power to stir fears of creeping Communism was...