Playwrights often utilize various tools and tactics to enhance the emotions they weave within their work. With this in mind, playwright Arthur Miller portrays how paranoia is achieved and the effects of such panic throughout The Crucible using specific stage directions, a tension-building environment, and a carefully crafted dialogue.
The dialogue Arthur Miller chooses for the characters creates a frenetic atmosphere. Miller demonstrates the tactical dialogue towards the end of the play, when Mary Warren becomes overwrought with the girls’ lies and eventually confesses the truth to John Proctor. Her act of confession brings everyone to the church where the girls are separated to intensify the distance that has grown during the story. Humiliated, …show more content…
The opening of Act 3, “the room is empty but for sunlight pouring in through two high windows in the black wall. The room is solemn, even forbidding” (83). Miller uses strong diction such as “sunlight pouring” contrasted against a “black wall” to craft an impression of desolation and solemnity defining the society in which they live in. The creation of this setting adds to the ghostly feeling of paranoia. Miller furthers the mood when he writes that “[Abigail] takes a backward step, as though in fear the bird will swoop down momentarily”(115). This predicts what will happen and how Parris and Danforth will react, demonstrating an off putting action. Abigail is directed to take advantage of the scene and she does so by getting significantly louder and louder. Similarly, Mary becomes “overwhelmed by Abigail’s-and the girls’- utter conviction, starts to whimper, hands half raised, powerless, and all the girls begin whimpering exactly as she does” (116). The stage directions Miller includes emphasizes the nervousness the characters are experiencing, livening the work entirely and allowing the audience to truly feel the paranoia and panic that work as the primary moods within the
The dialogue Arthur Miller chooses for the characters creates a frenetic atmosphere. Miller demonstrates the tactical dialogue towards the end of the play, when Mary Warren becomes overwrought with the girls’ lies and eventually confesses the truth to John Proctor. Her act of confession brings everyone to the church where the girls are separated to intensify the distance that has grown during the story. Humiliated, …show more content…
The opening of Act 3, “the room is empty but for sunlight pouring in through two high windows in the black wall. The room is solemn, even forbidding” (83). Miller uses strong diction such as “sunlight pouring” contrasted against a “black wall” to craft an impression of desolation and solemnity defining the society in which they live in. The creation of this setting adds to the ghostly feeling of paranoia. Miller furthers the mood when he writes that “[Abigail] takes a backward step, as though in fear the bird will swoop down momentarily”(115). This predicts what will happen and how Parris and Danforth will react, demonstrating an off putting action. Abigail is directed to take advantage of the scene and she does so by getting significantly louder and louder. Similarly, Mary becomes “overwhelmed by Abigail’s-and the girls’- utter conviction, starts to whimper, hands half raised, powerless, and all the girls begin whimpering exactly as she does” (116). The stage directions Miller includes emphasizes the nervousness the characters are experiencing, livening the work entirely and allowing the audience to truly feel the paranoia and panic that work as the primary moods within the