Crucible Response

Act I:

So far in The Crucible, I'm not having much trouble following along, except for the characters. It's hard to remember which one is which, since there are so many. The ones I have the most trouble with are the adults. Other than that confusion, I'm actually enjoying the story; it's interesting to see how the law system worked back then. The town sounds like it's a huge soap opera because of all the gossip. There's really nothing that can be kept secret; everyone knows something or at least accuses someone about something. Being able to accuse someone of associating with the devil makes it almost impossible to keep the town united, as there would be a ton of ratting out. I've never read anything like this kind of story before, so I'm pretty surprised at how much I like it. The idea of people believing in witchcraft and things of that nature are very strange, considering not many people talk about it now.

Act II:

Now that we're farther into the story, it's becoming a bit clearer to understand who is who and what they're doing. I feel like some of the encounters can be a bit dragged out and chatty. This can make it a bit difficult to understand, because I get lost in all the conversation and forget about what it all means in the real story. Other than that, I find the characters very interesting. They all seem to have very strange reasoning. They're all okay with lying and accusing people close to them, and they never actually see things for themselves, they only hear things. It reminds me of a group of gossipy pre-pubescent teenage girls. As for the storyline, I'm not having that bad of a time understanding what's going on.

Act III:

When I was reading the part in Act III about John Proctor confessing his adultery and Elizabeth lying to protect him, I was very surprised. It's easy to assume that Proctor would be the one lying and Elizabeth being upset and ratting him out, but this switched things up. This gave me a huge amount of respect for her. Even though she lied, she did it so he wouldn't get in trouble, whereas I felt Proctor wasn't that excited to protect her from court. I also got extremely angry when I read the part about Mary Warren being accused in court, such as when Abigail was pretending she was a bird and so on. I put myself in Mary's shoes and I realized that I would be so furious with the girls that I would probably rip up the courtroom in a fit of maniacal rage.

The Crucible:

Overall, this book wasn't at all like I imagined it to be. I learned many new things that I didn't know where considered offensive to the religion at that time, such as dancing. Would that mean they'd think I'd be associated with the devil? It's strange to think about. Even though I'm usually not crazy about cliff-hanger endings, I felt that this one was fitting. There's not really a better place to end the play but there. It would be very difficult to continue on with the story- one of the main characters is about to die. The story itself was very interesting. I personally love stories about criminal justice in court because I like to argue... But the way it was written really helped keep readers hooked. Seeing it being acted as a play or movie would be even more intense than the story, I think.