Tragedy and Realism Essay Example for Free

Tragedy and Realism Essay John also portrays the tragic hero in The Crucible. His hanging shows the audience incredible strength and is incredibly admirable. The role of a tragic hero is filled by this character because John has not upheld morals as well previously in his life, shown by his affair with Abigail, but makes the right decision at the end of the play, and acts as a martyr to his cause, and dies merely due to an error of judgement, such as Mary Warrens confession and his believing in Elizabeths truthfulness. The play is written to be viewed as a slice of life or using the audience as the fourth wall where the action taking place does not involve the audience at all, with no asides directed towards them and as if the audience was not involved and was looking through a window at the lives of the characters. The appearance of reality draws on several different ideas to make it effective and believable. Unity of Time and Place is not one that The Crucible uses well. However, it is said that to effectively use this technique, the action should take place in real time. A play that takes place over three hours should take three hours to view. Millers piece does not do this as it takes place over three and a half months. Despite this; in relation to tragedy, the piece works well with the unity of time, action and place. The play uses place well as it does not take the action outside of an internal space another rule of The Appearance Of Reality; using only Paris house, Proctors house, the side room to the court and the prison cell as sets. Each of these are separated by acts, with each act taking place in a different set, minimising the amount of scene changes; this allows the audience to still feel involved with the play as a piece of realism because they are areas which almost belong to one or more of the characters. An example of this is Act 2 in Proctors house belonging to Proctor, so this does not break the spell of reality for the audience. Also, Reality beyond the stage space is used to create an air of realism, but again The Crucible does not completely apply to this rule as it not only makes mention of what has just happened, such as John planting the fields, but also of the past, such as Proctors and Abigails affair. Although, despite the reference to previous events, the only mentions of them are incredibly beneficial to the plot, therefore, working in conjunction with the tragic plot line. For example, the first communication between Abigail and Paris, discuss the happenings the night before in the woods, a particularly important part to the play as it outlines the entire reasoning for the witch trials initiating. Realistic Dialogue is greatly used in order to create a sense of a different time period. Miller uses dialogue from court records of the time, taking phrases and terms to make the time period come to life. This means that the characters use 17th century terms and dialogue, making the audience quickly adapt to, and accept the time in which the play is set. Examples of terms include Goody Proctor instead of Mrs Proctor or Miss Proctor and Aye rather than Yes. This also incorporates the idea of Realistic Characters, because the characters on the stage behave and, in a sense, show that they think the same way as real people in the 1600s would. For example, it was still the natural way of life for men to go out and work the fields while the women stayed at home and bore and raised the children. The play was also set within the time period when the slave trade was still around; allowing Titubas character to be looked down upon and spoken to in the way we see Paris doing in the scene with Hale where they are accusing Tituba of witchcraft. You will confess yourself, or I will take you outside and whip you outside and whip you to your death, Tituba. This shows the extent of the slavery at the time because this phrase is not reprimanded by any of the other characters present at the time. The use of accurate language and the building of these ideas, which an audience in modern day would know are historically accurate, allows the sense of the era to come alive, challenging the audiences morals because we know that this sort of treatment is wrong, but as you become more submerged in the play, you feel as if you are there and can understand the priests actions and feelings. The sub-text of the piece is what really involves the audience and makes them feel as if they are there. For example, although it is not outline clearly in the text, we can see Elizabeths struggle with her emotions for John. Her closed presentation of her character would allow us to see that she is almost a woman scorned, angry at his betrayal, but her willingness to try and help him do the right thing shows us that she is truly hurt by his actions and truly does love him as she has stayed with him and supported him. The aspect of Elizabeth and Johns conversation that deals with Johns affair with Abigail never directly mentions the affair, it is a sub-text, left to the audiences imagination to picture what happened, as they merely talk about the way Elizabeth has acted since and how John has earned the treatment. This also builds tension between the characters in a greater sense than it would had they been open and stated the facts about the affair. This sub-text is also explored at the beginning of Act 1 when Paris asks Abigail if her name is good in the village. The whole aspect of realism is deeply written in with the involvement of tragedy, allowing some aspects of a typical realistic piece to be diminished to allow for the tragedy to be involved. 1 Show preview only The above preview is unformatted text This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our GCSE Arthur Miller section.