1. THE CRUCIBLE

2. Your First Amendment Rights
Read the political cartoon and answer the corresponding questions.
What message does this cartoon send to audiences? What comment is being made about American society?
Link to The Crucible. What first amendment rights were ignored in the play by the main characters? List multiple examples for multiple characters.

3. Time Period: Colonialism
Time frame:
1607: Settlement in Jamestown, Virginia
1620: Pilgrims land at Plymouth, Massachusetts
1692: Salem witchcraft executions
1732: Benjamin Franklin opens first public library in Philadelphia
: Religious revival known as the Great Awakening
Famous authors:
Anne Bradstreet, Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, Cotton Mather, Captain John Smith, Edward Taylor

4. Colonialism Characteristics
Literature focuses on daily life, moral attitudes, and political unrest.
Literature is instructive, reinforces authority of Bible and church.
Types of literature: sermons, diaries, personal narratives.
The novel did not exist at this time.
Historical context: A person’s fate is believed to be determined by God, and all people are corrupt and must be saved by Christ.

5. Colonialism Characteristics
Large and dominant Puritan religious belief.
Extremists who actively and aggressively sought conformity in strict guidance of the Bible.
Most literature of the time instructed people to act accordingly to the Bible, aggressively condemned wide ranges of sinners, and focused on purifying the Colonial way of life.
Famous texts:
“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards, William Bradford’s “Of Plymouth Plantation”
Though not written in Puritan times, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Crucible by Arthur Miller depict Puritan/Colonial life.

6. Today’s Activity
Rotate through stations with your assigned group and study the nonfiction articles at each station.
Read the articles as a group and answer the discussion questions. Then, relate what you have read to our study of The Crucible.
What similarities exist between the “chracters”?
What themes and messages are similar?
Who and/or what is the target, and who is leading the charge?
Complete this for each station. We will share our reactions during the last 15 minutes of class.

7. Follow-up Activity
What similarities exist between Colonial Salem seen in The Crucible and our current 21st century world?