Getting paid to read The Crucible
 

Well, that's not exactly what I was being paid for today, but that's what the workday ended up amounting to.

I was substituting today in a junior-level English class at one of the local high schools, and the lesson plan for the day was basically to have the students listen to a CD of a performance of Arthur Miller's The Crucible while reading along in their books. And that's what I did while they were listening, so that by lunch (they were not all at the same place on the CD), I had read all of the first two acts. I read the rest of play during my prep period, since I didn't have anything else to.

I'm a little bit embarrassed to say that I had never read it before (I read Death of a Salesman in high school).

A great play, and a very cool way to spend a day at work.

Funny you should mention this actually. I was forced to read this in school and hated it - as with most things I was forced to do in school. A few days ago though I was randomly surfing wikipedia and clicking random links when I happened to stumble across the witch trials. I read through the court transcripts, quotes, etc. and found it really fascinating, and now I'm itching to read this book again.

I hated Death of a Salesman when I read it in high school. In our literature classes, we always had to write an essay about each book, and I wrote a rather irreverent and satirical essay arguing that it really had a happy ending (and, fortunately, had an English teacher who appreciated that sort of thing). I've wondered how differently I would react to it now, but that's probably one reason I had never read The Crucible.

I dug the Crucible, but never really got into Death of a Salesman. The Crucible was much better IMHO.

God it depresses me to think about how many people hate great plays because they had teachers that couldn't bring them alive.

Crucible is a very good play, although for my taste it gets a bit sentimental at the end. Miller having to make the truth teller the hero in such a plain way is the weak point of the text.

Salesman is a really great play, but I wonder how long it will speak to us. Is it too tied to a specific period of American history or is the struggle of Willie universal?