The Crucible - Witch Trials Essays (2528 words) - American Children

The Crucible - Witch Trials In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, the madness of the Salem witch trials is explored in great detail. There are many theories as to why the witch trials came about, the most popular of which is the girls' suppressed childhoods. However, there were other factors as well, such as Abigail Williams' affair with John Proctor, the secret grudges that neighbors held against each other, and the physical and economic differences between the citizens of Salem Village. From a historical viewpoint, it is known that young girls in colonial Massachusetts were given little or no freedom to act like children. They were expected to walk straight, arms by their sides, eyes slightly downcast, and their mouths were to be shut unless otherwise asked to speak. It is not surprising that the girls would find this type of lifestyle very constricting. To rebel against it, they played pranks, such as dancing in the woods, listening to slaves' magic stories and pretending that other villagers were bewitching them. The Crucible starts after the girls in the village have been caught dancing in the woods. As one of them falls sick, rumors start to fly that there is witchcraft going on in the woods, and that the sick girl is bewitched. Once the girls talk to each other, they become more and more frightened of being accused as witches, so Abigail starts accusing others of practicing witchcraft. The other girls all join in so that the blame will not be placed on them. In The Crucible, Abigail starts the accusations by saying, "I go back to Jesus; I kiss his hand. I saw Sarah Good with the Devil! I saw Goody Osburn with the Devil! I saw Bridget Bishop with the Devil!" Another girl, Betty, continues the cry with, "I saw George Jacobs with the Devil! I saw Goody Howe with the Devil!" From here on, the accusations grow and grow until the jails overflow with accused witches. It must have given them an incredible sense of power when the whole town of Salem listened to their words and believed each and every accusation. After all, children were to be seen and not heard in Puritan society, and the newfound attention was probably overwhelming. In Act Three of The Crucible, the girls were called before the judges to defend themselves against the claims that they were only acting. To prove their innocence, Abigail led the other girls in a chilling scene. Abby acted as if Mary Warren sent her spirit up to the rafters and began to talk to the spirit. "Oh Mary, this is a black art to change your shape. No, I cannot, I cannot stop my mouth; it's God's work I do." The other girls all stared at the rafters in horror and began to repeat everything they heard. Finally, the girls' hysterics caused Mary Warren to accuse John Proctor of witchcraft. Once the scam started, it was too late to stop, and the snowballing effect of wild accusations soon resulted in the hanging of many innocents. After the wave of accusations began, grudges began to surface in the community. Small slights were made out to be witchcraft, and bad business deals were blamed on witchery. Two characters in The Crucible, Giles Corey and Thomas Putnam, argue early on about a plot of land. Corey claims that he bought it from Goody Nurse but Putnam says he owns it, and Goody Nurse had no right to sell it. Later, when Putnam's daughter accuses George Jacobs of witchery, Corey claims that Putnam only wants Jacobs' land. Giles says, "If Jacobs hangs for a witch he forfeit up his property - that's law! And there is none but Putnam with the coin to buy so great a piece. This man is killing his neighbors for their land!" Others also had hidden motives for accusing their neighbors. Once the accusations began, everyone had a reason to accuse someone else which is why the hangings got so out of hand. The wave of accusations can be likened to mass hysteria, in which the people involved are so caught up that they start having delusions of neighbors out to do them harm. One of the main

The artist and the city Essay Example For Students

The artist and the city Essay As Athol Fugard approached his 60th Birthday Celebration, an October-November festival of his works in Atlanta, Ga., he had a last-minute twinge of misgiving. Girding himself for the revealing readings from his published Notebooks, adapted by Theater Emory, the prodigious South African playwright cracked to one of his hosts, I feel as though you should carry me onto the stage in an open casket. As it turned out, no one was more alive to the words than their author. Listening, with head lowered and eyes closed, to the 1960s entries about his dying father (the unseen, pain-wracked figure that haunts his diaries, as well as the plays Hello and Goodbye and Master Haroldand the Boys), Fugard wept. When the lights came up, he mingled for a while with the audience, remembering names with the kindly care most famous artists can only manage for wealthy backers. The reading and reception set the tone for an often joyous and occasionally confrontational encounter between the artist and the city: five productions at three theatres, as well as an array of debate-sparking forums during his three-week resi dency. Fugard was hardly the Great Author on a Delta Stopover collecting a life-achievement award; he came as a working artist, and needed every ounce of energy enhanced by his daily five-mile jogs (whose pace frustrated a rollerblade-mounted cameraman from CBS Sunday Morning) around Piedmont Park. We call the festival a partynot a retrospectivefor good reasons, said Theater Emory artistic director Vincent Murphy. We celebrate a man whos as engaged today, artistically and politically, as hes ever been. Indeed, when Fugard wasnt acting as assistant director (a title he relished) to Del Hamilton on his stirring 7 Stages production of My Children! My Africa!, he was directing brush-up rehearsals of the American premiere of his Playland, a co-production of Californias La Jolla Playhouse and Atlantas Alliance Theatre Company. An intense, exorcistic encounter between a black night watchman and a white ex-soldier in a deserted amusement park on New Years Eve, 1989, Playland is unquestionably Fugards most overtly theatrical work since Master Harold more than a decade ago. (The playwright joked that the whimsical-garish-brooding carnival set by Susan Hilferty, and the masterfully coordinated lighting and sound designs by Dennis Parichy and David Budries, will shock a lot of my critics in terms of production values.) And as his first major utterance since the release of Nelson Mandela, Playland may be Fugards most politically provocative play since the height of his anti-apartheid writings. As my country moves forward, said the playwright in his precise, lilting tenor, no amount of political blueprinting or committees can cross the real hurdles in the hearts and minds of men. That is: forgiveness. Coming to grips with the violence in our past, having the courage to say, Yes, I did thisplease forgive me. De Klerk keeps saying apartheid was misguidedthats not good enough, man! To hell with misguided it was evil! Fugards voice has risen so that it is shaking with rage as he spits out the last word. We must acknowledge that evil, as Germany did with the Holocaust. Otherwise, well have as our first inheritance only lies and hate and bitterness. The New South Africa will be a hollow phrase. Fugard chose to continue Playlands premiere in the spiritual hub of the Civil Rights Movement, immediately after the La Jolla run, out of a sense of poetic justice. In the welcoming words of Michael Lomax, a leading Atlanta politician and creator of the National Black Arts Festival; Mr. Fugard, we have a kinship with you. The playwright has corresponded for years with Atlanta friends, among them Nancy Kearns, a former 7 Stages dramaturg who wrote to him in South Africa from out of the blue; and actor-director Brenda Bynum, a Fugard specialist who met and befriended him at the 1987 Spoleto Festival USA production of his The Road to Mecca. The womens letters stoked his fascination with Atlantas civil rights history and its place as Mecca for the black professional class. Even to this day, it seems to me Atlanta is a touchstone, asserted Fugard, whose bristly beard and weathered face recall the tough-nut merchant seaman he was in his youth. Perhaps the essential American drama is being played out here certainly the greatest experiment. It was at a Theatre Communications Group conference in 1990 that Fugard met Alliance artistic director Kenny Leona 36-year-old black man whose past performances in Fugard plays are part of Atlanta lore. They became instant friends and vowed to collaborate. Wagging his finger as they parted, Leon said, Remember, we have an appointmentmischievously using the playwrights favorite word for his personal destinies. Fugard has sensed he had an appointment to write a play about forgiveness and South Africa since the late 70s. I was in New York, and I found myself in a bar late at night I was still drinking at this pointand I saw this man who seemedto have a cloud over him. Just staring at his shot glass. I sat down near him, and he looked up and said, Im not a killerIm not a killer. It became clear that I was talking to a Vietnam vet, and that something terrible I couldnt grasp the detailshad happened in Nam. Playland may have begun at that moment. The haunted vet became Gideon Le Roux, the bedraggled ex-soldier wandering into the carnival at nightfall, who fought the black SWAPO forces on the Namibian frontier. The image that torments him is one that Fugard came upon in a newspaper. There were two white soldiers standing in a truck full of black bodies, which they were dumping into a pit. Each of them had an arm as they had dragged this dead young man to the edge of the truck, and I thought, My God its like two Roman Centurions taking an African Christ-figure down from the Cross.' By making Gideon one of those centurions, Fugard created a character so wracked with guilt that he drunkenly, desperately seeks out a black man to beg for redemption. By a strange fluke, it turns out to be a night watchman, Martinus Zoeloe, who also bears the invisible scar of Number 6 (as in the 6th Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Kill) on his head. His compassion is tested to the extreme when the viciously taunting Gideon demands, Kill me or forgive me. Leon, whose two-and-a-half-year tenure has been marked by some white flight among subscribers in spite of a balanced, eclectic repertoire, saw that Playland had a message that Atlanta needs to heara message that doesnt make whites feel guilty or make blacks angry. As the director received freshly written pages of the play over the transatlantic fax last spring, America was reeling from the beatings of Rodney King and Reginald Denny; Atlantas street disturbances were among the worst in the country, second only to Los Angeles. It was uncanny to me, Fugard avows, his eyes wide with amazement, that my play was going straight into the two areas of the country where the pain had been the worst. I couldnt imagine how it would be received. One of those who took part in peaceful demonstrations in Atlanta in spite of classmates involvement in the near-riotswas Saul Williams, a 20-year-old student at prestigious Morehouse College. In his acclaimed professional acting debut in My Children! My Africa!, he was on the far shore of the debate, playing an enraged student who defies his teachers courageous plea for peace. I met Mr. Fugard with mixed emotions. I didnt know if such a play could be written by a white man. But I spoke to black South Africans who knew much of his work, and I was very impressed with the man himself. It was obvious the story came from the goodness of his soul. As much as the playwright appreciated newfound friends such as Williams, he was also profoundly affected by the angrier black students he addressed on local campuses and in the Alliance audience following preview performances. These exchanges, startlingly blunt even to the veteran of the apartheid wars, helped him clarify some of my own thinking about the situation in South Africa. Fugard quoted from his own Atlanta diary in an essay commissioned by the Atlanta Journal and Constitution: A black South African female student in her early 20s. She stared at me unflinchingly out of what I sensed was a deep well of smouldering resentment. I hesitate to use the word hate but it might well have been as strong as that. When she eventually spoke, the question was for Kenny, sitting next to me. How can you be his friend after what his people did to the black people of South Africa? Kenny spoke quietly. I will never forget his words. He is not a friend. He is my brother. If I do not forgive him, there is no hope for us in this world. Theater Emorys shrewdly selected repertoire of early, lesser-known Fugard worksHello and Goodbye (1965), Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act (1972) and the two-part readings of the adapted Notebooks: 1960-77opened a window of personal history through which to appreciate the most recent plays. For instance, the troubled anti-hero of Hello, Johnnie Smits, is spiritually shackled to and (in a transformation prefiguring Sam Shepard) ultimately becomes his crippled father. Johnnie was described by Fugard as that very timid side of me, always at war with the brave devil in me. Notebooks contained the germinal idea of nearly every Fugard play. Foreshadowing Statements, based on the true case of a black principal and white librarian who were prosecuted under apartheid law for their secret love affair, the playwright recorded the eerily beautiful sight of two cobras first mating almost upright on a garden wallthen hacked to bits by the gardeners spades: Six seconds in which me n destroy something only God can make. Directed by Bynum with an intimate, Beckettian spareness that brought its streaks of poetry into sharp relief, Statements was the festivals surprising gem. Its principals, Rob Cleveland and mary Lynn Owen, had just celebrated their first wedding anniversary. There had never been a way for us to express all the difficult things about our relationship, the uncomfortable vibrations we get from both whites and blacks, said Owen. Suddenly we had a place for all of that feeling to pour out, to come into focus. The actresss sense of vulnerability was only heightened by the knowledge that the creator of her character would be sitting only a few feet away. But Fugard put her fears to rest by approaching her at a pot-luck dinner that 7 Stages threw for the playwright and Atlantas theatre community. Mr. Fugard said to me, Youll find Im a wonderful audience. I eat up everything you give me.' .uf181d8ccd02ab2a43ac68b49e2ccdde4 , .uf181d8ccd02ab2a43ac68b49e2ccdde4 .postImageUrl , .uf181d8ccd02ab2a43ac68b49e2ccdde4 .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .uf181d8ccd02ab2a43ac68b49e2ccdde4 , .uf181d8ccd02ab2a43ac68b49e2ccdde4:hover , .uf181d8ccd02ab2a43ac68b49e2ccdde4:visited , .uf181d8ccd02ab2a43ac68b49e2ccdde4:active { border:0!important; } .uf181d8ccd02ab2a43ac68b49e2ccdde4 .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .uf181d8ccd02ab2a43ac68b49e2ccdde4 { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .uf181d8ccd02ab2a43ac68b49e2ccdde4:active , .uf181d8ccd02ab2a43ac68b49e2ccdde4:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .uf181d8ccd02ab2a43ac68b49e2ccdde4 .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .uf181d8ccd02ab2a43ac68b49e2ccdde4 .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .uf181d8ccd02ab2a43ac68b49e2ccdde4 .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .uf181d8ccd02ab2a43ac68b49e2ccdde4 .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .uf181d8ccd02ab2a43ac68b49e2ccdde4:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .uf181d8ccd02ab2a43ac68b49e2ccdde4 .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .uf181d8ccd02ab2a43ac68b49e2ccdde4 .uf181d8ccd02ab2a43ac68b49e2ccdde4-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .uf181d8ccd02ab2a43ac68b49e2ccdde4:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: McTeague Persuasive Essay We will write a custom essay on The artist and the city specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now One the amusement park setting of Playland:Â   I came across an old entry from my notebooks about such a parkan icon of my youth! As hard-up as our family was, my mum always scraped together a few pennies so that we could have a few rides. That was my Christmas and my New Years. It was exclusively for whites in those days, but with a few matinees set aside for other races.Years later, I was driving through Karroo and I saw this sad little amusement park, encamped on the outskirts of a little town. It struck me what a visual setting it would be for a play, and what a metaphora place where people could go to play and to forget the harsh realities of their lives. On turning 60 and the New South Africa:Â   Just when there was the temptation to start thinking, Okay, its the home stretch now, my country throws the biggest drama of my entire life |the release of Nelson Mandela~ right in my face, and says, No, man! Wait a minute! Youve got another guess coming: weve only just started!The past was simple: I was ready to stand and be counted as a dissident voice. The future will be infinitely more complexrich, and provocative. There was some disturbing talk recently of cultural commissars and the correct thing for artists to sayit sounded a little like the old South Africa but from a different perspective. So I expect Ill go on as before, the outsider. On writing, and a sense of place:Â   When I sit down and face what I still lovingly call the Inquisition of Blank Paper, I feel I must be in South Africa, so thats why I spend half the year there. That country gives me my stories, for I understand its codes of life down to my bones. I have a house in the Karroo, outside of a little village with only 10 or 12 permanent residents. I become a bachelor when I writethank God Sheila |his wife of over 30 years~ understands this. Im self-sufficient there, with my windmill and my orchards, in my island of serenity and silence. Playland was mostly written there. On spirituality and his themes:Â   As I looked over what I had written in Playland, I was amazed to find more religious imageryor let me say instead, spiritual concernsthan I had been aware of. This was certainly a departure for meBut as Gideon tells Martinus, Gods forgotten usits just you and me tonight. Thats the essential theme in all my writing. Its what we do to each other, and with each other, one-on-one, on thefaceofthisearth! Thats the arena. Thats our damnation, man, or our salvation.