Ishan

Stage Directions- Act 1 Throughout Act 1 of ‘The Crucible’ I took to using a grand amount of stage directions, more than normally used in any usual play at the time. My aim was to force the realism out of the play and make it agree with my initial wishes when I wrote it, of making it as historically accurate as possible as well as having the characters being accurate depictions of their real personas as they would have been at the time. The first act introduces all of the characters that will later come to be the defining persons in the play; by including copious and sometimes unnecessary amounts of stage directions, such as ‘//Abigail lowers her eyes//’ I was, no matter the annoyance to the actor, able to lay solid ground work for the characters actors to follow in the rest of the play; I desired the audience’s first impression to be the most realistic and defining of the characters emotions and wishes. This, as well as for them to understand how each of the characters viewed one another, were important so as to allow the audience to understand all the preexisting attachments between the characters so that the motives behind their actions later on could be better understood an example of Abigail to Proctor ‘Abigail //with bitter anger//’. The stricter control such as detailing simple actions that would not have been included otherwise, e.g. ‘Proctor //looking at Abigail now, the faintest suggestion of a knowing smile on his face//’ had let me control the emotions put into the play and so get the correct feelings to be communicated. Thought my use of stage directions was more than needed, they provided a needed backbone to the play, stopping unneeded interpretations which would have distorted the aims of the play. Catalysts The witch hunt of Salem was one of cruelest occurrences in the United States’ history. A previously unthinkable event took place and ended with the hanging of almost 20 people. However, to look at the community of Salem before the hysteria began, one would be unable to see how the whole matter was able to come to pass; indeed if not for the exact timing of the event and the precise action of the parties involved, all the happenings might have swept over and been water under the bridge. The main ‘catalyst’ of the incident, the aspect of the affair that if not for would have caused the occurrence to die out before it began; was in my opinion the calling and arrival of the esteemed reverend Hale. With the arrival of reverend Hale and the news beforehand that he had been sent for, the presence of witchcraft was assumed. Hale provides the inspiration for the calling out by the girls by himself requesting Tituba to call out the followers she saw with the devil which almost immediately resulted in Abigail following suit and taking control of the whole operation. Without the input from Hale, the inspiration needed to encourage Abigail to push the first domino would not have been present. Though many would consider Abigail the catalyst, she herself was trying her hardest to rebuke the witchcraft rumors before Hale’s arrival, and would not have been able to come up with such an idea and would not have been taken as seriously if not for Reverend Hale first putting forward the suggestion to name others as witches. Hale’s role was a pivotal factor in this story; he was the first domino to fall as well as the finger to push it. His arrival would have had a great impact on the village for the explained reasons and also since they had brought a stranger to their town who would not have been able to correctly judge the situation due to ignorance. Without Reverend Hale’s arrival, the town would have dealt with it with all the necessary knowledge and no first impressions to affect their judgment, without Hale it is (in my opinion) unlikely that the Salem witch-hunt would have gone as far as it did. Me as Director- pg69-70 From halfway down page 68, Cheever enters the Proctor household, and upon investigation and discovery of Mary’s poppet with the needle in its abdomen he becomes convinced that Elizabeth is a witch. Though this scene is most definitely ripe with tension, almost none of the underlying hysteria is communicated. If I were to direct this segment I would have had Cheever and Herrick react more openly and dramatically to the discovery of the needle. Though they are implemented as court officials they are in reality just more of the townsfolk and would have been affected by the hysteria just like the rest of the town, and with this opinion I find their reaction to what they themselves describe as ‘hard proof’ to be somewhat lacking. A greater reaction would have conveyed the depth and magnitude of the effect the trials were having on the people of the village and helped get across how raw their nerves were that any sign of witchcraft would make them jump. In similar circumstances when Cheever demands all dolls present in the house and when Elizabeth leaves to find Mary there is no major emotional response or any tension represented. When asking for all the dolls Elizabeth might have had, I would have had it that Cheever be much more nervous. In his eyes, he must have thought that this request was the same as demanding the tools Elizabeth was using in her supposed bewitching. Such an event should suggest nervousness and fear in Cheever, though neither of these emotions are witnessed in him. Also, when Elizabeth leaves Cheever’s sight to find Mary, Cheever does object to it, but is just as quick to let it slide when Proctor roars him down. This is a peculiar moment, since if Elizabeth is being arrested for being a witch it makes no sense that she be gone from an authority’s sight as she would then have been able to do more witchcraft when alone. Cheever would have done well to be more pressing in his objection and to have been worried about all the things that she could be doing. On the whole the play does have the needed ‘underlying sense of tension and hysteria’, but upon looking through it again I found this scene to have a shortage of it; the changes outlined would, in my opinion, be good additions to the play to make it seem more realistic and follow the flow of the rest of the plot. Book vs. Movie: Character Visuals When deciding what to write for this topic I was trying to choose an aspect of the play that was represented very differently in the book. Unfortunately, other than a few of the minor incidents, the book and movie agreed in all areas as far as I could see. The one thing I did remember is how different the characters appeared visually in the movie than as described in the play. One such dissimilarity is between the two Giles Coreys. In the book Giles is described as ‘//knotted with muscle, canny, inquisitive, and still powerful//.’, however when seen in the movie I would not have been able to identify him other than from the similar circumstances in which he is introduced. Likewise, Elizabeth Proctor is seen to be quite different from the image given by the manuscript. Though she is not actually visually described in the play, the film depicts her as a far from beautiful women, which is not the image given in the book; indeed, there even seems to be a visible age difference between Mr. and Mrs. Proctor, which I did not expect at all. Finally, my last example and one of the aspects of the movie that I found most shocking in depiction, was Mr. Hale’s hair cut. As he is a Reverend, I was dumbfounded when I saw the style of hair he wore in the film. In that era, it would have been shocking to such a community for one to have such a non-masculine hair style, especially a man of the church. Such a representation cannot have been envisaged by any person as well as by historical fact. Mr. Hale’s haircut completely opposes his base character of a forty year old intellectual, and would have been, and is, a completely ridiculous illustration of a Reverend. On the whole, the movie ‘The Crucible’ portrays the character very differently than in the book, at least in a visual sense. Though it has no real impact on the play, and movies are known to distort their written equivalents; the changes made to the play in order to bring it to the big screen made its presentation harder to accept and made it confusing and distorted to those that had read the play. ‘Society vs. The Individual’ from the Literary Reference Center The article I have chosen to discuss is one in which the author debates whether ‘The Crucible’ is meant to be a tale of an individual man’s plight or of a community’s tragedy. The final idea of the article is that the play is not just one story but two simultaneous stories. It is a story of John Proctor’s internal battle but also at the same time, equally a story of a village being killed off due to personal vendettas. I completely agree with this conclusion as the whole story of ‘The Crucible’ splits off at so many places, and is viewed from so many angles that it cannot be considered solely as an individual or cumulative story. Though the story focuses on John’s view of all of the events it is impossible to label the tale as his. Though almost all of the happenings center on his past, present and future, and we are witnesses to events (such as act two), that are much more personal and have little effect on the big picture the play is clearly also about the village. For some, this might be considered a dilemma. How can there be two focuses that have no defining connection to each other, other than the presence of the same characters. However, it is undoubtedly true that this is the case; though the story is about the event of the Salem witch trials in which Proctor was a bystander (a major one, but simply a bystander none the less), and the trials are the overarching plot point that pushes the story forward, there is still too much focus on Proctor and the other people associated with him for it to be counted as a simple documentation of the event. The play is two equally important stories that must be understood together, one cannot pick one out of the two as they rely on each other to be understood.

An excellent set of responses here Ishan with some thoughtful and well focused responses. I like the amount of detail you use throuhgout although even more use of direct quotation in response would have made your paragraphs a little more persuasive. You have a sound knowledge of the play and I am pleased you are viewing key characters and themes through the audiences' point of view. I particularly enjoyed the paragraph on catalysts and commend you on the hard work you have done.

__Knowledge and Understanding - 4__ __Appreciation of Literary Features - 4__ __Interpretations of the Text from the Written Commentary__ - 4