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photograph by Melanie Grizzel
Why does Arthur Miller have lasting appeal for teenagers? Three metropolitan-area teachers explain.
When the spotlight focuses on new productions of Arthur Miller’s plays, it’s easy to forget that lively debates take place every day in high school classrooms across the country, where students continue to read and discuss his texts. Teachers say Miller remains as provocative and relevant to American teens as ever. To find out why, and to see how the dramas fit into today’s curriculum, Roundabout recently solicited short essays on the subject from educators. Here are excerpts from three who responded from the New York area.
JEFFREY GILDEN
Great Neck North High School, Long Island
In their never-ending search for identity, our teenagers are bombarded with a seemingly infinite number of influences. Some youngsters look to this film star or that rock singer, this friend or that acquaintance, this athlete or that millionaire, and find in varied and disparate icons the foundation for their own identities. It is a long and arduous pursuit, and it is the educator’s obligation to provide encouragement. In my classroom, the work of Arthur Miller allows students to confront the meaning of this journey.
Miller gives them a search for identity by men and women close to their own realities. My classes are moved to tears by the plight of Willy Loman, who is both victim and assailant in the world that destroys him. My students have all known a Willy: an uncle who just couldn’t get his act together enough to keep a business afloat; a family friend who always seems a little bit lost and confused; a father who, though he has all the best intentions, cannot establish a meaningful connection to his children. Miller also forces us to confront the very real possibility that our journeys may be marked by failure, a lesson that our self-esteem based society tends to forget to tell its adolescents. For me, Willy Loman’s story is a tragedy; for them it’s a cautionary tale.
How wonderful it is, then, to juxtapose Willy’s relentless pursuit of his own doom with John Proctor’s serene acceptance of his own identity at the end of The Crucible. Proctor finds a way to conquer his own demons and assert that ultimately nothing is more important than knowing who you are. That is, without a doubt, the most momentous realization I witness in my awestruck students.
"Miller also forces us to confront the very real possibility that our journeys may be marked by failure, a lesson that our self-esteem based society tends to forget to tell its adolescents."
So I really don’t mind if my students, on the surface, voice a fondness for a rap singer or an affinity with an athlete, or if they label their future plans in terms of dollar signs and fancy cars. I am confident that, in the private and reflective moments of their tumultuous teenage lives, they are pushed and pulled by Arthur Miller’s powers. He makes them stand toe to toe with themselves, their real selves, their growing selves, and he makes them see that the most meaningful journey in life is that one that leads you to yourself, be you a salesman in Brooklyn, a farmer in Salem, or a student in Great Neck.
Alicia Pérez
Baruch College Campus High School, Manhattan
What causes someone to hate? What does it mean to abandon yourself or others? What is myth and what is reality? These are some of the questions posed to my eleventh-grade students as we delve into Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, a "touchstone text" to which the class refers throughout the year, even after they move on to additional books.
At first we examine the play in its most obvious context: the Salem witch trials and Massachusetts Puritanism. The class discusses how themes as broad as "hate" and "war" can have different layers: "Is hate an emotion that exists solely on its own?" I ask. "No," one student calls out, "it comes from jealousy or anger." The students discuss wars waged within the self, such as John Proctor’s anguished choice between betraying his wife, himself, or his community. They examine how Abigail betrays her religion, lying and disregarding a sacred commandment, and betraying the slave Tituba to save her own reputation. They consider Salem’s witchery as myth and reality, and refer to Santeria and other African-based religions in the Caribbean. (Many of the Hispanic and black students identify more with Tituba than with the Salem community in the play.) They also examine additional historical contexts for the play, from McCarthyism to the Japanese internment camps.
"‘Is hate an emotion that exists solely on its own?’ I ask. ‘No,’ one student calls out, ‘it comes from jealousy or anger.’"
After discussing the effects hate and war can have on a nation, the class divides into smaller groups and selects a work of contemporary American fiction from a list of five suggested texts: Christina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban, Gus Lee’s China Boy, Toni Morrison’s Sula, Tim O’Brien’s Going After Cacciato, and Leslie Marmon’s Silko’s Ceremony. Each deals with a different facet of American culture but shares themes with The Crucible; together they portray the multicultural ethos of this nation.
In the three years I have taught this unit, the students have overwhelmingly selected books which reflect themselves culturally or racially; the Morrison readers are generally African-American, Garcia mainly Hispanic, and Lee primarily Chinese. You might wonder how, if students gravitate towards literature reflecting themselves in such an overt manner, they can connect to a work such as The Crucible—so removed from them not only in time but in culture. But when given the tools to discuss literature and the opportunity to explore its variety of American voices, my students not only see the differences between us, but common threads as well.
Alyce Barnett
Grover Cleveland High School, Queens
One need only to stand in the dismal little houses preserved in Salem, Massachusetts, to understand the paralyzing fear that possessed the fanatically religious individuals who settled New England. Surrounded by an unforgiving wilderness, there was so much they did not and could not understand. When Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible, America was going through another period of all-engulfing fear. The McCarthy era was a time of political witch-hunts: intellectuals, writers, actors, journalists and others became grist for the anti-Communist mill. What better way for a playwright to speak out against disenfranchisement than to remind the nation as a whole of its own hysterical beginnings and continuing blind fear of the unknown?
Nor is our own society as cynical or sophisticated as we might some-times believe. Young adults have forever had a affinity for the superhero, the unnatural, and the bizarre. Ask a person under 20 to name the best movie he has seen in the last two years and the answer will likely be The Matrix. Young girls are frequently intrigued by Wicca —"good witchcraft." This fascination with the inexplicable augments their interest in the play and makes it easier to teach.
"Because the play speaks to young people, it feels as timely now as when it was written almost fifty years ago."
Small wonder, then, that The Crucible has had such enduring appeal. The author’s insight into human nature and historical complexities catches each generation’s attention, particularly young adults of high school age. In the classroom, once students have digested American history from Salem’s Witch Trials to McCarthyism, this play becomes a natural sequel. As Miller presents it, history is not just a series of events, but a long line of individuals who have created or played a part in history-making stories.
Because the play speaks to young people, it feels as timely now as when it was written almost fifty years ago. My students relate to the interaction among the characters. They have a complete understanding of the nature of the story and its narrative sequence. My students have become genuinely angry with John Proctor and they have also mourned his death. They have sympathized deeply with Elizabeth’s painful dilemma. So strong is their reaction that in class projects they have sometimes felt the need to change parts of the play to accommodate their feelings.
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