The students will then read The Crucible itself.īy closely reading historical documents and attempting to interpret them, students will be able to put themselves in the place of playwrights that is, they will be able to look at historical events and the people involved with them and ask, what makes these trials so compelling? What is it about this particular tragic segment of American history that appeals to the creative imagination? How can history be dramatic, and how can drama bring history to life? A reading of The Crucible will reveal how one playwright not only "outdid the historians at their own game," but also created an authentic American tragic hero.Īs students examine historical materials with an eye to their dramatic potential, they can also explore the central questions of psychology and society that so fascinated Miller. The students will also read a summary of the historical events in Salem and study a timeline. In this lesson, students will examine some of Miller's historical sources: biographies of key players (the accused and the accusers) and transcripts of the Salem Witch trials themselves. Our inquiry into this matter will be guided by aesthetic and dramatic concerns as we attempt to interpret history and examine Miller's own interpretations of it. This lesson plan's goal is to examine the ways in which Miller interpreted the facts of the witch trials and successfully dramatized them.
When Arthur Miller published The Crucible in the early 1950s, he simply outdid the historians at their own game" (22). Moreover, they note that because of the trials' dramatic elements, "it is no coincidence that the Salem witch trials are best known today through the work of a playwright, not a historian. They observe, "for most Americans the episode ranks in familiarity somewhere between Plymouth Rock and Custer's last stand" (22). In their book Salem Possessed, Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum remark upon the prominent place the Salem witch trials have in America's cultural consciousness.
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