Tuesday’s literature exam probably seems quite a daunting prospect. Having to write extensively and analytically about two texts is no mean feat. You can make it easier by ensuring that you know the texts VERY well. You will be given a copy of the text in the exam, but you do not want to waste lots of time fumbling for quotations.

One way of overcoming this, is to be aware of key quotations linked to the main ideas in each text. As a short cut, I’ve selected various quotations from The Crucible to get you started. Remember that it’s not enough to simply know the quotations, you must be able to explore their relevance to Miller’s key ideas and the language/structural effects that he uses to express these ideas.

Religion

religion

Act One:

Proctor to Parris: There are many others stay away from church these days because you hardly ever mention God any more

Hale to Putnam: We cannot look to superstition in this. The Devil is precise.

Hale to Tituba: You are God’s insrtrument put in our hands to discover the devil’s agents among us.

Parris to Proctor and Giles: There is either obedience or the church will burn like Hell is burning!

Abigail to John: I never knew the lying lessons I was taught by all these Christian women and their covenanted men! 

Abigail to Hale: I want to open myself! I want the light of God, I want the sweet love of Jesus! I danced for the Devil: I saw him: I wrote my name in his book.

Act Two:

Elizabeth to John: Abigail brings the other girls into court and where she walks the crowd will part like the sea of Israel. 

Hale to the Proctors: I thought, sir, to put some questions as to the Christian character of this house, if you’ll permit me.

Proctor to Hale: There be no love for Satan in this house, Sir.

Elizabeth to Hale: I am a covenanted Christian woman.

Hale to Proctor: Theology, sir, is a fortress; no crack in a fortress may be accounted small.

Act Three:

Proctor to Danforth: God is dead!

Parris to Danforth (about Proctor): Such a Christian that will not come to church but once in a month!

Parris to Danforth: All innocent and Christian people are happy for the courts in Salem! These people are gloomy for it.

Abigail to Mary Warren: No I cannot, I cannot stop my mouth; it’s God’s work I do.

Danforth to Proctor: You are combined with anti-Christ. I have seen your power; you will not deny it! 

Act Four:

Proctor to Danforth: God does not need my name nailed upon the church! God knows how black my sins are!

Hale to Elizabeth: I have gone this three month like our Lord into the wilderness. I have sought a Christian way, for damnation’s doubled on a minister who counsel’s men to lie.

Reputation/Importance of one’s name

reputation

 

 

Act One:

Parris to Abigail: Do you understand that I have many enemies? There is a faction that is sworn to drive me from my pulpit.

Parris to John: I am not some preaching farmer..:I am a graduate of Harvard College. 

Miller’s notes on Proctor: Respected and feared in Salem

Miller’s notes on Hale: He felt the pride of the specialist whose unique knowledge has at last been publicly called for.

Abigail to Parris: There be no blush about my name.

Act Two:

Elizabeth to Hale: There be no mark of blame upon my life.

Hale to Nurse: If Rebecca Nurse be tainted, then nothing’s left to stop the whole green world from burning.

Act Three:

Proctor to Danforth: A man will not cast away his good name. You surely know that.

Elizabeth to Danforth: My husband is a good and righteous man.

Proctor tp Danforth: She only thought to save my name.

Act Four:

Proctor to Danforth: God does not need my name nailed upon the church! God knows how black my sins are!

Proctor to Danforth: Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies!

Hale to Elizabeth (on Proctor): What profits him to bleed? Shall the dust praise him? Shall the worms declare his truth? 

Danforth to Giles: This is the highest court of the supreme government of this province.

Hysteria/Fear

hysteria

 

Act One:

Hale to Tituba: The Devil is out and preying on her like a beast upon the flesh of the pure lamb.

Parris to Tituba: You will confess yourself or I will take you out and whip you to your death, Tituba!

Abigail to the girls: Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you.

Abigail to Hale: I saw Sarah Good with the Devil! I saw Goody Osburn with the Devil!…

Act Two:

Elizabeth to John: The Deputy Governor promise hangin’ if they’ll not confess, John. The town’s gone wild, I think.

Elizabeth to John: Abigail brings the other girls into court and where she walks the crowd will part like the sea of Israel

Mary Warren to Proctor: The Devil’s loose in Salem, Mr. Proctor; we must discover where he’s hiding!

Hale to Proctors: No man may longer doubt the powers of the dark are gathered in monstrous attack upon this village. 

Hale to Proctor: The world goes mad and it profit nothing you should lay the cause to the vengeance of a little girl.

Proctor to Hale: We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law! 

 

Proctor to Mary Warren: Now Hell and Heaven grapple on our backs, and all our old pretense is ripped away – make your peace! 

Act Three:

Proctor to Danforth: A fire, a fire is burning!…and as you quail now when you know in all your black hearts that this be fraud.

Hale to Danforth: I may shut my conscience to it no more – private vengeance is working through this testimony!

Abigail in court: (looking about in the air, clasping her arms about her as though cold) I – I know not. A wind, a cold wind, has come.

Danforth to Abigail: You will confess yourself or you will hang! 

Act Four:

Danforth to all: Hang them high over the town! Who weeps for these weeps for corruption!

Hale to Danforth: It is a lie! They are innocent!

Parris to Danforth: There be a faction here, feeding on that news, and I tell you true, sir, I fear there will be a riot here. 

Happy Revising 🙂