In the period immediately following the end of World War II, American theater was transformed by the work of playwright Arthur Miller. Profoundly influenced by the Depression and the war that immediately followed it, Miller tapped into a sense of dissatisfaction and unrest within the greater American psyche. His probing dramas proved to be both the conscience and redemption of the times, allowing people an honest view of the direction the country had taken.

Arthur Miller was born in Manhattan in 1915 to Jewish immigrant parents. By 1928, the family had moved to Brooklyn, after their garment manufacturing business began to fail. Witnessing the societal decay of the Depression and his father’s desperation due to business failures had an enormous effect on Miller. After graduating from high school, Miller worked a number of jobs and saved up the money for college. In 1934, he enrolled in the University of Michigan and spent much of the next four years learning to write and working on a number of well-received plays.

After graduating, Miller returned to New York, where he worked as a freelance writer. In 1944, his first play, “The Man Who Had All the Luck”, opened to horrible reviews. A story about an incredibly successful man who is unhappy with that success, “The Man Who Had All The Luck” was already addressing the major themes of Miller’s later work. In 1945, Miller published a novel, FOCUS, and two years later had his first play on Broadway. “All My Sons,” a tragedy about a manufacturer who sells faulty parts to the military in order to save his business, was an instant success. Concerned with morality in the face of desperation, “All My Sons” appealed to a nation having recently gone through both a war and a depression.

Only two years after the success of “All My Sons,” Miller came out with his most famous and well-respected work, “Death of a Salesman.” Dealing again with both desperation and paternal responsibility, “Death of a Salesman” focused on a failed businessman as he tries to remember and reconstruct his life. Eventually killing himself to leave his son insurance money, the salesman seems a tragic character out of Shakespeare or Dostoevsky. Winning both a Pulitzer Prize and a Drama Critics Circle Award, the play ran for more than seven hundred performances. Within a short while, it had been translated into over a dozen languages and had made its author a millionaire.

Overwhelmed by post-war paranoia and intolerance, Miller began work on the third of his major plays. Though it was clearly an indictment of the McCarthyism of the early 1950s, “The Crucible” was set in Salem during the witch-hunts of the late 17th century. The play, which deals with extraordinary tragedy in ordinary lives, expanded Miller’s voice and his concern for the physical and psychological wellbeing of the working class. Within three years, Miller was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and convicted of contempt of Congress for not cooperating. A difficult time in his life, Miller ended a short and turbulent marriage with actress Marilyn Monroe. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, he wrote very little of note, concentrating at first on issues of guilt over the Holocaust, and later moving into comedies.

It was not until the 1991 productions of his “The Ride Down Mount Morgan” and “The Last Yankee” that Miller’s career began to see a resurgence. Both plays returned to the themes of success and failure that he had dealt with in earlier works. Concerning himself with the American dream, and the average American’s pursuit of it, Miller recognized a link between the poverty of the 1920s and the wealth of the 1980s. Encouraged by the success of these works, a number of his earlier pieces returned to the stage for revival performances.

More than any other playwright working today, Arthur Miller has dedicated himself to the investigation of the moral plight of the white American working class. With a sense of realism and a strong ear for the American vernacular, Miller has created characters whose voices are an important part of the American landscape. His insight into the psychology of desperation and his ability to create stories that express the deepest meanings of struggle, have made him one of the most highly regarded and widely performed American playwrights. In his eighty-fifth year, Miller remains an active and important part of American theater.

• Questions about the McCarthy Era (pdf)
• Rubric for Reader’s Theater (pdf)
• General Assessment Rubric for the Arthur Miller and Elia Kazan Exhibition (pdf)

Media Components

Computer Resources:

• Modem: 56.6 Kbps or faster.
• Browser: Netscape Navigator 4.0 or above or Internet Explorer 4.0 or above.
• Personal computer (Pentium II 350 MHz or Celeron 600 MHz) running Windows® 95 or higher and at least 32 MB of RAM and/or Macintosh computer: System 8.1 or above and at least 32 MB of RAM.
• Software: Any presentation software such as Power Point or Hyperstudio (optional)

Bookmarked sites:

Bookmark all of the Web sites used in the lesson and create a word processing document listing all of the links to distribute to students. Preview all of the sites and videos before presenting them to your class.

• BBC News’ On This Day – Witness
  http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/low/
  witness/august/7/newsid_2946000/2946420.stm
  Arthur Miller discusses his play The Crucible and the McCarthy witch-hunts with Francine Stock, from July 2000.
• Secrets of the Dead – Crime Scene Investigations Meet History
  http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/case_salem/resources.html
  Behavioral Psychologist Linnda Caporael investigates a shocking new idea about the girls’ convulsions that led to the Salem Witch Trials of 1692.
• National Geographic Interactive
  http://www.nationalgeographic.com/features/97/salem/
  This interactive Salem Witch Hunt is entertaining and educational. This site will provide students with basic information about the Salem Witch Trials, the inspiration for Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.
• Why I Wrote The Crucible: An Artist’s Answer to Politics by Arthur Miller
  http://the_english_dept.tripod.com/miller.html
  This article appeared in the October 21 & 28, 1996 issue of The New Yorker, pages 158-164. The author of the play and screenplay reflects on the 1950’s political origins of his play, as the motion picture is about to be released.
• The Salem Witch Museum
  http://www.salemwitchmuseum.com/
  Students can access this site to find out more information about Salem, the witch trials, and more.

Links about Arthur Miller and The Crucible for Research Purposes

• Ogram’s 17th Century New England Links
  http://www.ogram.org/17thc/miller.shtml
• The Arthur Miller Society
  http://www.ibiblio.org/miller/index.html
• PBS’s American Masters Site
  http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/miller_a.html

Links about Elia Kazan for Research Purposes

• Books and Writers – biography of Elia Kazan
  http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/kazan.htm
• The Kennedy Center Honors
  http://www.kennedycenter.org/programs/
  specialevents/honors/history/honoree/kazan.html
• “Blacklist and Backstory: Hollywood’s unexpected embrace of Elia Kazan by Jacob Weisberg for www.slate.com
  http://slate.msn.com/id/18121/

Materials:

Teachers will need the following supplies:

• Board and/or chart paper
• Ideally a screen on which to project the Web-based video clips
• Handouts of Web resources if computers are not available in the classroom
• A copy of The Crucible by Arthur Miller. Ideally, each student should have his or her own copy of the play to mark up. If this is not possible, photocopy, with permission, the appropriate number of copies of each act of The Crucible for each student.

Students will need the following supplies:

• Computers with the capacities indicated above
• Notebook or journal
• Pens/pencils
• Highlighters

Steps:

Introductory Activity:

1. Pose the following question to your students: “How would you deal with being falsely accused of a crime simply because of the way you look or because of the people that you are associated with?” As the students are brainstorming answers, record the responses on a large piece of chart paper. Teachers should be aware that similar incidents, such as racial discrimination, may have happened to the students themselves. Teachers must be sensitive to the fact that this could bring up upsetting experiences and memories.

2. Consider the following questions as part of the ongoing discussion. Remember, if students have personal experiences with discrimination, try to be sensitive to the individual student. A student may feel uneasy about his memories or he may find the discussion to be cathartic, given the safe space within a classroom setting. The teacher should gauge whether or not the discussion should be more abstract and hypothetical or more personal in nature.

• How would these allegations impact your daily life, reputation, career and family?
• Are these types of allegations fair? If not, why do they persist?
• Who makes these types of rumors or accusations? Why?
• How do the themes of “panic,” “hysteria,” “paranoia,” and “intolerance” fit into the discussion?
• How does this fit in with the belief that a person is “innocent until proven guilty” under American law?

3. Ask students to write a short journal entry in which they describe an experience of discrimination. Encourage students to think about the following questions:

• What events, if any, led up to this experience?
• Where were you?
• Who else was there?
• How did they react to the situation?
• How did you react to it?
• What changed after you experienced this?

4. Finally, the class should begin speaking about these injustices in historical terms. When in history have groups of people been falsely accused of crimes because of the way they look? How about in recent history? Answers should include some of the following:

• Japanese internment camps during World War II
• Salem Witch Trials of 1692
• The plight of Arab Americans after September 11
• The Holocaust
• The Cultural Revolution
• Stalin’s regime in Russia
• Pinochet’s regime in Chile
• McCarthyism in the 1950s

5. End with a brief discussion about McCarthyism. Ask the students what they know about McCarthyism and why it was such a significant aspect of life in the 1950s. The discussion does not have to be too specific because students will watch a segment about it from AMERICAN MASTERS and conduct some background research information about it.

• What is McCarthyism?
• What happened to people in Hollywood because of it?

Learning Activities:

1. Show students the portion of the AMERICAN MASTERS episode: “None Without Sin: Arthur Miller, Elia Kazan, and the Blacklist” beginning at 29 minutes and ending at the 68 minute mark. This segment deals with McCarthyism, House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), Elia Kazan’s role in the hearings with HUAC, and the connection to Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.

2. After watching the segments, students will research background information about McCarthyism and HUAC. This will serve as background info for The Crucible.

3. Introduce The Crucible to the class. Tell the students that The Crucible is an allegorical re-telling of the McCarthy era red scare that occurred in the United States after World War II. (Note: You may need to explain what an allegory is. According to www.dictionary.com, an allegory is “the representation of abstract ideas or principles by characters, figures, or events in narrative, dramatic, or pictorial form.”) Based on historical accounts, The Crucible, which means a trial of faith and belief, is set during the 1692 Salem Witchcraft Trials when several young girls accuse innocent town members of witchcraft to avoid getting into trouble for entertaining ideas of witchery themselves.

4. Ideally, the class will have read the entire play. If not, students should read one or two acts, supplemented by summaries and analyses of each of the four acts of the play, found at http://www.classicnote.com/ClassicNotes/Titles/crucible/fullsumm.html.

5. As the students read the summaries, they should be able to start making the connections and the parallels between The Crucible and the McCarthy Era. You could begin charting their observations. After students examine the text more closely during their practice sessions for the Reader’s Theater activity (see below), the group will reconvene to continue the discussion and add to the chart.

6. For the next activity, students will study and then perform one act of The Crucible using a strategy called Reader’s Theater. Explain to students what Reader’s Theater is. Traditionally, Reader’s Theater allows students to take any piece of literature, analyze it and adapt it into a script. We have selected a text that is already in script form because of the relevance of the text to the topic at hand. Since the text is already in script form, students should focus on the most important and more relevant lines. Though there are many forms of this type of “theater performance,” here are the common traits of Reader’s Theater:

• No full memorization. Actors/readers use scripts during performance.
• No full costume. If they are used, they should be partial and suggestive, or neutral and uniform.
• No full stage sets. If used, they should be simple and suggestive.
• Narration provides the framework for dramatic action.

7. Divide the students into groups large enough to act out the play’s acts. (Note: Acts I and III are much longer than the other two acts.)

• Act I – 13 characters (Tituba, Parris, Abigail, Susanna, Mrs. Putnam, Putnam, Mercy, Mary Warren, Proctor, Giles Corey, Rebecca, Hale and Betty)
• Act II – 9 characters (Elizabeth, Proctor, Mary Warren, Hale, Giles, Francis, Cheever, Herrick, and Francis Nurse)
• Act III – 14 characters (Hathorne, Martha Corey, Giles, Danforth, Herrick, Parris, Proctor, Mary Warren, Hale, Cheever, Putnam, Abigail, Mercy Lewis, and Susanna Walcott)
• Act IV – 11 characters (Herrick, Sarah Good, Tituba, Hopkins, Danforth, Hathorne, Cheever, Parris, Hale, Elizabeth, and Rebecca)

8. As the groups are working, distribute the Reader’s Theater rubric. Review the criteria with students so that they are aware of your expectations.

9. After sufficient rehearsal time during class and as part of their homework assignments, the students will perform their scene.

10. After reading, studying and performing the play, the teacher should initiate a discussion about the play and its relationship to McCarthyism.

• Why is it considered an allegory?
• Where are the parallels? (The teacher should chart the ideas that come out of the discussion.)
• What other historical or mythical stories could you use to create an allegory about discrimination? What topics would you choose to create an allegory about discrimination in your own life?

11. Tell students that they will now write a brief script that allegorizes their own experience of discrimination. (Explain to them that they may present this brief script for their culminating activity, and that they can use a narrator to describe the action of the scene.) Ask students to take the brief journal entry they wrote about an experience of discrimination and match it with one of the allegory topics they generated. Suggest that they begin by considering:

• What would be a good title for your script?
• Who are the characters? How will you rename them?
• What is the chain of events?
• Have things changed between the beginning and end of your script? How can your audience see that things have changed?

Students may need time to work with you individually to generate their ideas. Be sure to allow ample class time for this activity.

Culminating Activity/Assessment:

1. Tell students that for the culminating activity, the class will create an “exhibition” about discrimination in America and the McCarthyism controversy. Each student will contribute one project for the exhibition.
2. Tell students that they may choose the medium they will use. (See the table below for suggested presentation formats.) This will accommodate different learning styles, abilities and interests among students. Encourage variety among the types of projects students choose to prepare. Students are also allowed to work together on projects. The size of the group should be commensurate with the scope of the project.
3. Students should be encouraged to find peers who can act out the scripts they wrote about their own experiences. As with the reading of The Crucible, above, students can present these dramas with minimal memorization, costumes or scenery – to focus on the story more clearly — and they may use a narrator to explain the action of the drama if necessary.

4. Allow sufficient time for rehearsal or in-class Web research using the bookmarked sites above, but tell students that the bulk of the project should be completed at home. You should also make the AMERICAN MASTERS video accessible for any students who want to view it again.

5. Hand out “General Assessment Rubric for the Arthur Miller and Elia Kazan Exhibition.” Review the evaluation criteria with students.

6. Schedule a day for the exhibition. Extend invitations to other classrooms and/or parents and others who may have experienced the McCarthy era firsthand.

Extension

Cross-Curricular Extensions:

• History and Current Events – Have students explore the other examples from history listed in the Introductory Activity through interviews and research. Students can consider why “intolerance,” “hysteria,” and “accusations” recur throughout history.
• English – Have students read some of Arthur Miller’s other plays, such as Death of a Salesman.

Community Connections:

Grade Level:
9th to 12th grade

Time Allotment:

• Eight to twelve class periods for introductory activities, video, and subsequent discussions.
• One to two class periods for presentations, depending on class size
• Teachers should be aware that students will have to do a majority of the preparation for the Reader’s Theater unit and the final project for homework.

Subject Matter:

• English, Drama, American History

Learning Objectives:
Students will be able to:

• Develop a stronger understanding of the text through repeated readings and interpretation.
• Relate information and context of a text through dialogue rather than pure narration.
• Hone their decoding and reading fluency skills.
• Adapt a chapter of narrative into script form.
• Work cooperatively in a team situation.
• Use various types of presentation software.

Standards:

National Standards:

MCREL LANGUAGE ARTS, Level 4, Standard 1
http://www.mcrel.org/compendium/standardDetails.asp?subjectID=7&standardID=1
Writes fictional, biographical, autobiographical and observational narrative compositions.

MCREL LANGUAGE ARTS, Level 4, Standard 6
http://www.mcrel.org/compendium/Benchmark.asp?SubjectID=7&StandardID=6
Uses reading skills and strategies to understand a variety of literary passages and texts (e.g., fairy tales, folktales, fiction, nonfiction, myths, poems, fables, fantasies, historical fiction, biographies, autobiographies, chapter books)

MCREL LANGUAGE ARTS, Level 4, Standard 5
http://www.mcrel.org/compendium/Benchmark.asp?SubjectID=7&StandardID=5
Uses the general skills and strategies of the reading process

MCREL LANGUAGE ARTS, Level 4, Standard 8
http://www.mcrel.org/compendium/Benchmark.asp?SubjectID=7&StandardID=8
Uses listening and speaking strategies for different purposes

MCREL LANGUAGE ARTS, Level 4, Standard 9
http://www.mcrel.org/compendium/Benchmark.asp?SubjectID=7&StandardID=9
Uses viewing skills and strategies to understand and interpret visual media

MCREL TECHNOLOGY, Level 4, Standard 2
http://www.mcrel.org/compendium/Benchmark.asp?SubjectID=19&StandardID=2
Knows the characteristics and uses of computer software programs.

This lesson was prepared by: Anna Chan Rekate. Anna Chan Rekate is currently a High School English Teacher at Trevor Day School in New York City. Previously, she was the Upper School Coordinator at the Manhattan School for Children. She has also taught all subjects for the sixth and eighth grades at the City & Country School in New York City. Rekate has a master’s degree in Educational Policy from Columbia University’s Teachers College and a master’s degree in Leadership and Supervision from Bank Street College of Education.

Organizers for Students
Print out and make copies of these organizers for your students:

• Questions about the McCarthy Era (pdf)
• Rubric for Reader’s Theater (pdf)
• General Assessment Rubric for the Arthur Miller and Elia Kazan Exhibition (pdf)