Sunday, October 13, 2013

Blog Number 4

     Every character in the story experiences the events that unfold throughout the play differently, but the common emotion throughout all characters is fear.  The fear sets in for each character at different times in the story.  For characters like Parris, the fear is from the first page.  He fears for his daughter's death, as well as for his daughter's involvement in witchery.  He is scared that he will lose his job due to  the towns uptight, strict policy on witch involvement.  His reputation is on the line and he fears he will lose it all.  For other characters such as Abigail, the fear doesn't set in until later, when she has to confess to being a witch and being in line with the Devil.  The fear for her build, because she fear death itself.  Her love for Proctor, but his non love back to her makes her fear that she will never be able to live happily again.  In the end she runs away from Salem because she knows that her chances of living are slim.  Her fear of death causes her to run away.  Proctor fears not of death for himself, but for the death of the ones he loves.  Elizabeth his wife, when accused of being a witch scared Proctor, because he finally felt like he was going to lose her, which hurt him.  Every other character main character also experiences fear in similar ways to the three mentioned above.  Most characters as the ACTs progress get more and more scared, and many of them are scared of the judicial system.
     In USA today we have separation of church and state for exactly this reason hinted throughout the  second few ACTS. The judicial system in Salem is run by the church.  The fact that people are being hung because they are against the belief system put in place by christianity shows that the judicial system is corrupt.  Fear plays a vital role in this, because people fear the church, they fear the government, and they fear their fellow citizens because of the power that they hold.  One blind accusation and you are being hung or forced to lie about what you believe in.  The book revolves around fear, and it help to show a reader how corrupt it was a few hundred years back.  Since the church ran the court, the judges had extreme bias' and instead of going by the constitutional laws, they instead went off of pure eye witness accounts and the church's idealistic approaches.  This caused false accusations and many innocent people being put to death.  Also the whole idea of people who are guilty of an alleged crime confessing and being let off the hook being encouraged over telling the truth and getting executed.  It should be the other way around.  People who claim to be innocent should be investigated further, not just killed.  People who confess should be given a punishment slightly less than death.  This, I believe is what Miller wants his readers to realize.  This book can easily be related to many countries/ cultures today such as north Korea, where most people live in fear of the government, and who worship their leader like a god.  Any act of deference from the rules and death or jail is the punishment.  This book describes how faulty that kind of system is and how unfair and immoral it is as well.
     Whilest reading the Crucible, I attempted to read how Nabokov wanted me to.  I read the story twice (Second time was just a skim), and I do feel that I got more out of it the second time, so that was helpful.  I stayed disconnected with the characters, and tried not to feel overly emotional when events happened, such as when characters were being accused of being witches.  I would definitely recommend this book.  Being a play, it is an interesting change in reading styles required.  The descriptions of the characters was made very easy, because whenever a main character was introduced, there was usually a few sentence description of them at the beginning of the scene.  In addition, though there was not much action, the book was very emotional and keeps the reader wanting to read more.  It is a good balance between plot and dept.  There is just enough happening to keep a reader like me interested, but not so much happening that the meaning of the story is diluted.

3 comments:

  1. So Xander I was wondering, do you know about the Communist trials that happened during McCarthyism? I am asking because if you do, how do you think or feel about them after reading your book, because I see how you started to talk about the usefulness of separation of church and state. I was really wondering how you feel about this situation where people are being prosecuted because of closer to word of mouth and the idea of being paranoid about their neighbors.
    I remember reading this book last year and seeing what you have pulled out of the story I am kinda wanting to go back and read the book, or is it a play, anyway I think that I may reread the book so that I can actually pay a bit more attention to the characters and how they are acting in the given situation instead of just reading for the classwork that I had due soon.
    If I reread this book I think I will try and trace fear or any one symbol like you do during the story. Your blogs do a good job of giving the small glimpses into what was up with the story without it being a full on summary, I think that shows good effort because I knew how hard it was to pull that off and I don’t think I did it as well as you. So all in all a good series of blog posts.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The constant presence of fear is a major similarity between you book and mine (Catch-22). In my book, most--if not all by the end of the novel--of the airmen are terrified of flying, Yossarian being the most fearful. He is an unashamed and self-proclaimed coward because he values his own life and war puts his life in danger. Because Yossarian is so afraid of dying, most of his actions (his willy nilly bomb drops, desperate evasive maneuvers, and insubordination to name a few) are borne out of that fear and his desire for self preservation. The characters in The Crucible also let their fear drive their actions. Whether it be fear of a loved one's death, their own death, or public humiliation, all of the characters in The Crucible and Catch-22 are living in fear because they are governed by irrational rules. In The Crucible, accusations that a neighbor is a witch will lead to hanging even if no evidence is presented against the person to be hanged. The constant threat of death or imprisonment leads characters like Abigail to incriminate everyone else that participated in the Witch ceremonies so that she can save herself. In Catch-22, Yossarian and the other men live in constant fear of the required missions being raised again by Colonel Cathcart and that fear motivates the men to take refuge in the hospital and forces them to concoct other schemes to get out of the required missions, something that Orr did when he rowed from Italy to Sweden. In both The Crucible and Catch-22 fear is what drives many of the characters to do what they do.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Xander,
    I read The Crucible last year in my AP English class, so I enjoyed seeing your point-of-view. I definitely agree with you about the immoral and sly characters, Abigail in particular. I remember that I was very frustrated with the "repenting" girls. Did you look at the time period that the book was written in? Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible in 1953, which was the period of time when the United States was in a frenzy to find and persecute Communists in the country. Actually, the entire play symbolizes that frenzy in the 1950’s.
    Regarding your reading strategy, I am in the same boat. I read my independent reading book—Emma, by Jane Austen—twice as well. I think that helped me to first focus on the plot and to understand what is going on in the story and then using the second read to focus on the specific details and patterns. However, whenever I read a book, it is really difficult for me to remain aloof and to not become emotional about the characters I favor as well as those that I don’t particularly like. How do you accomplish this “aloofness” that Nabokov writes about?
    I noticed that in your third blog post, you wrote about tracing how the mood of the play changes as you were reading it, from upright and moral to afraid to corrupt, ending with destruction. I think that is a very useful tool to use, especially when trying to establish how a certain symbol works in the story to reveal its meaning.
    Great job on your blog!

    ReplyDelete