The Crucible Study Pack

The areas you need to study and know well in order to be able to write about the play

A. Characterisation: John, Elizabeth, Abigail, Hale

B. Conflict between characters

C. Your own response to the characters

D. Turning Point

E. Key Scenes

F. Theme

G. How the play ends

A. Characterisation : John, Elizabeth, Abigail, Hale

1. Go through the play and write down what the character does, or what happens to him/her, in
each scene. (Worksheet 1)

2. Pick out 5 key episodes which you feel best reveal the character. (Episode = an encounter
between characters) Do this in your Crucible jotter.
Write down three important quotations from each episode.

3. What do you think are the things which motivate the character and cause him/her to behave as
s/he does? Pick out evidence and quotations for this. (Worksheet 2)

4. How do you feel about the character? Does your opinion change as the play goes on? How / why?
Write notes in your Crucible jotter.

B. Conflict between characters

1. Use the Team Game Tournament questions to revise the conflict between John and Elizabeth.

2. Look at the relationship between these characters:

John and Abigail John and Hale
The conflict between these characters is also important to the play.
Make notes under the following headings:
Why is there conflict?
How is the conflict shown?
Why does the conflict between John and Hale end?
What is the result of the conflict between John and Abigail?
What evidence do you have of the conflict in each case?

3. CHALLENGE TASK
Make up your own Team Game Tournament about the conflict between other characters. Share
your questions and answers with a study buddy.

FMcGrogan St Aidans HS National 5 English pg. 1

C. Your own response to the characters

It is important to engage with the characters in the play, ie to be aware of your reactions and
feelings, and how they change in response to what the character does / says, or how the character is
treated by others.

1. Make notes on your feelings about each character:

At the start
As the play developed
At the end

What changes can you see? What events or episodes caused your reactions to change?

2. Which character did you feel most sympathetic towards? Why?

3. CHALLENGE TASK
If you engaged well with a character other than the main 4, you can spend some time studying this
character, as that would make the basis of a very good critical essay.

Eg Mary Warren Rebecca Nurse Danforth

D. Turning Point

The turning point of the play can be considered to be either of the following:

When Elizabeth is taken away and John loses his temper

When Elizabeth says No, sir to the court, in response to the question about Johns
adultery.

Use Worksheet 3 to work out the reasons why each could be considered to be a turning point.

E. Key Scenes

Use Worksheet 4 to gather ideas on key scenes.

Note: in this play, the acts are not further divided into scenes as they are in some plays, eg
Shakespeare.

When you are asked to talk about a scene, you can talk about an episode within an act:

Eg

the episode at the end of Act 1 where Abigail and the girls all start yelling and claiming to
have seen various women with the Devil
the episode at the end of Act 4 when John and Elizabeth are allowed to talk in private

FMcGrogan St Aidans HS National 5 English pg. 2

F. Theme

The themes of the play are the things in our world which the play made you think about.

After all, Arthur Miller was writing in the 20th Century, but he chose to write about events in the
17thC: he must have seen some parallels between their world and his own.

Your challenge is to identify parallels between the events in Salem, as depicted in the play, and your
own world. Do you think teenagers ever behave in the way Abigail did? Do you know anyone like
Mary Warren? What do you think John and Elizabeths conflict shows about marriage?

What did the witchcraft accusations say about how people behave towards each other? What do
they say about truth, honesty, integrity? Look at Worksheet 5, What is The Crucible all about?

1. Choose any three of the statements which express what you gained from reading the text, and
write a paragraph explain your choice, with reference to the text.

2. Use any one of these statements and use it as the basis for planning or writing a critical essay on
the question

Choose a play which was set in the past but you feel had a modern message.
Explain what you felt this message was, and how it was revealed in the play.

You can repeat this task as many times as you feel it is useful.

G. How the play ends

Look at the final pages of the play:

1. John considers confessing, because he is already a sinner, so he feels one more lie will do no harm.

Find quotations to show how he feels.

2. John is asked to sign his confession. He loses his temper and refuses, tearing up the confession: this
means that he will hang.

Look carefully at the text and explain why he refuses to sign.

3. They try to get Elizabeth to plead with him and get him to sign, but she refuses.

Explain why she refuses to try to save him.

4. Why do you think Miller ended the play like this, rather than have him confess and live?

5. What effect did this ending have on the play?

6. How did you feel when John Proctor hanged for witchcraft although he was an innocent man?

FMcGrogan St Aidans HS National 5 English pg. 3