The Crucible Essay

The focus for your Crucible Essay will be the literary term “motivation.” Motivation explains why people do things. When we see people eating, we know their motivation: they were hungry. When someone robs a store, we assume they needed the money. But there might be other motivations as well: perhaps the person is in love with violence or power; perhaps the person is an ex-employee with a grudge against the store; perhaps the person has a death-wish.

Motivation is the untold portion of any action. To understand motivation, we need to act as amateur psychologists—as in the example of the store-robber above. With motivation, we are given half the equation: the eating of food, the robbing of a store. It is our job as amateur psychologists to determine the other half of the equation: a person’s being hungry or being in need of money.

The hidden motivation behind a character’s actions plays an important part in The Crucible—much more important in this story than in most. The dramatization gives us the characters and their actions, but until we deduce why the characters act the way they do, we haven’t fully “read” The Crucible. It is our job, as readers, to fill in the “between-the-lines” portion of the text; until we have reasoned out the likely motivations for the actions we encounter, the play is still a half-read play.

Requirements of the Crucible Essay

ASSIGNMENT: Write an essay of 1,000 words in which you analyze the concept of motivation as it applies to The Crucible. Your body paragraphs are more important than your intro and conclusion, so the body paragraphs should be longer: if you wrote three 250-word body paragraphs, a 125-word introductory paragraph, and a 125-word conclusion, you would reach the 1,000-word target. Double-spaced, Times New Roman, 12 pt. font.

· For this essay, we will dispense with the Works Cited page. However, you must quote properly, using the information contained in the “Quoting from Drama” section.

· In the introductory paragraph, begin by discussing the concept of motivation (but don’t copy what was said in this handout: make up your own material). Don’t mention The Crucible till you get near the end of your paragraph. Instead, gradually and gracefully “sneak up” on the idea that you will be applying the concept of motivation to the play The Crucible.

· Each body paragraph will focus on a single character; therefore, each of your topic sentences will name a character and provide a general statement of what you will say about that character within the upcoming body paragraph. Important: major characters are likely to have more than one motivation; furthermore, the motivations of a character may change over the course of a story. If so, show this progression. Use transitions within your paragraphs to show when you are moving from one idea to another.

· Body paragraphs should not contain general statements; also, you need to avoid plot summary for the sake of plot summary. The only reason for any event from The Crucible to appear within a body paragraph is for the purpose of supporting the point you are trying to make. You are claiming certain motivations: the events of the story are considered evidence. You use this evidence to support the motivations you are claiming. Don’t get sidetracked and start telling the story. Assume the reader already knows the story.

· The conclusion should bring the essay to a satisfactory close without simply restating what was already said in the essay.

· Try to employ quality writing. Your writing voice should model the voice of an intelligent, educated writer as much as possible. Sentence structure should display occasional signs of complexity. Some attempts at higher-level vocabulary (without stretching to the point of awkwardness) should be evident.

· You are accountable for using the information from “Typing Conventions,” “Formatted Document Sample,” and each of the “How to” links found on Mr. Moeller’s Web page. This means that the paper should be formatted correctly and should be close to error-free.

The Crucible Essay Rubric

The introductory paragraph is written according to the essay prompt. (5):

Each body paragraph begins with a topic sentence (an accurate statement of the idea that paragraph will explore). (10):

The body paragraphs only use material from the story in order to support the main point of the paragraph. Nowhere is material from the story used to fill space retelling the story for the reader. (20):

The body paragraphs provide intelligent, insightful information for the reader, thus helping the reader to understand the characters and their motivations more fully. (30):

Quotations from the selections are used and integrated gracefully. The quotations are not pointless, but serve a useful purpose. (10):

The conclusion brings the essay to a satisfactory close without simply restating what was already said in the essay. (5):

Sentence fluency, voice, and vocabulary. (15):

The paper is formatted according to How to Set-Up a Word Processing Document. (5):

On-time—yes:

On-time—no: – 10% –20% –30%

Meets the minimum word requirement (1,000 words)—yes:

Meets the minimum word requirement (1,000 words)—no:

Quoting from Drama

Many plays—like Shakespeare’s—are written in verse. But we will be quoting from The Crucible. For the most part, the conventions for quoting from a non-verse play are the same as the standard MLA conventions.

Citations

When citing from a play, we would normally include the act number, the scene number, and the line number. We will not need the name of the play, nor will we need the name of the author. We already know what play we are referring to, and we know who wrote it.

Because our version of The Crucible has no line numbers, we will leave line numbers out, thus leaving us with the act and the scene.

The act can be listed either in the text or in the citation. The following examples present a made-up line from act 5, scene 3:

· In act 5, Proctor claims that if the girls are witches, they “should be able to fly around the room” (3).

· Proctor claims that if the girls are witches, they “should be able to fly around the room” (5.3).

(If we had line numbers as well, our citation would look like this: (5.3.121)

The rules above apply to shorter quotations from a single character. But there are two other situations to consider:

A Longer Quotation from a Single Character

If a quotation from a single character takes up more than four lines of text in your manuscript, use the same one-inch indentation from the left that you would use in standard MLA style. Precede your quotation with a colon:

John Proctor, apparently, knows little about witches:

You say you’re witches? I don’t think so. If you are really witches, why don’t you have black pointy hats on? And why aren’t you flying on broomsticks? And shouldn’t you be standing around a big cauldron chanting rhymes and such? (3.8).

Quotations from Multiple Characters

Again, set the text in one inch from the left margin. But now there is an extra step. Any text that does not appear on the first line spoken by a character must be inset an extra quarter inch. Also, you must use the characters’ names, typed in all capital letters, the way they are in the play:

In act 2, we find that Proctor is caught off guard:

ABIGAIL: Trick or treat.

PROCTOR: Here you go. Here’s a Snickers bar for you.

ABIGAIL: John, don’t you even recognize me?

PROCTOR: No, I don’t. Wait. Abigail, is that you?

ABIGAIL: Why, of course it’s me!

PROCTOR: Oh, gosh. I didn’t recognize you in that witch’s costume (11).

But how does one manage to perform such fancy text arrangement?

In the MLA Style handout we learned how to inset text an inch from the left:

How to inset text an inch: Select the text you want to inset. Open the paragraph dialog box (Alt + O + P). Set Indentation Left to 1 inch. Click OK.

To inset subsequent lines (those lines that are not the first spoken lines), we add one extra step. While the paragraph dialog box is open, we find Special. On the drop-down menu we click Hanging. The By setting will be 0.5. We change this to 0.25. This gives us the extra quarter inch.