The Crucible Comparison Essay

Our adaptation of a scene in The Crucible by Arthur Miller is set during the Cultural Revolution in 1975 China. During this time, Mao Wanteu reasserted power by rooting capitalists; communism became the new religion. Potential communists were attacked and false allegations were made against them, resulting in jail, torture, or even execution. Similarly, in the Salem witch trials in The Crucible, women were accused of performing witchcraft by people who wanted to seek revenge or vengeance. Both time periods consist of false accusations that are made for deeper motives.
Our adaptation centers around Wang Jiafan, a Chinese student, who was forced to accuse Chen Jiaqian of raping her. Jiaqian was set up because he offended the Party Secretary of his village, Teng Xinfu, and was a
We had first discussed a court setting, however we found that this restricted fervent debates. A challenge we faced was correlating the original scene’s dialogue with our adaptation. In The Crucible, Ezekiel Cheever’s job is to make arrests, while Reverend John Hale should be discovering the truth, but acts as Cheever’s shadow. In our adaptation, these roles flip; the Commander is subservient while Zhirong works to get an answer. Therefore, we matched Cheever’s lines with Zhirong’s and Hale’s with the Commander’s; this matched their dominance and actions. Another issue was the relationships between family members. In The Crucible, John Proctor defended his wife, however Chen lacked support from his family; his wife did not passionately stand up for him and his daughters were young when he was taken to jail. Therefore, we lacked a character who could fight for his/her family. However, we found that Chen’s daughter began to seek justice for her father after growing older. We used this version of her to have her stand up for her father against Chinese