Teaching Canonical Texts in Modern Times: The Continued Relevance of The Crucible

Reimagine canonical texts as living conversations that help students grapple with power, justice, and moral choice.

DR. JEN GOWERS
Instructional Specialist

​Seeing a canonical text on your list as a teacher or a student can be intimidating, delightful, or might even unearth deep sighs regarding the potential boredom you may endure. However, most canonical texts remain relevant for a reason. Though we’re reading about specific characters in a specific time period, as with many canonical texts, we are really reading about what it means to be human: to be reminded of our interconnectedness and the universality of relevant and of recurring themes, to empathize and relate to the plight and what is endured, and to take any lessons learned or crucial moral back into our own existential journey. 

In teaching these texts, we must find ways to keep them engaging, exciting, and enlightening for young people, whether that’s through intentionally critiquing them using critical lenses or culturally relevant frameworks; putting canonical texts in conversation with more contemporary texts to open up dialogue between texts for students; or bringing canonical text to life with Literacy Unbound, which offers practical, arts-based strategies that any classroom can use. 

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The Case for The Crucible

Arthur Miller’s The Crucible — which centers on a community swept up in the Salem witch trials, as accusations escalate and truth becomes increasingly hard to find — is one such text that endures, because it has something powerful to say about the human experience. 

In 1996, almost 50 years after he created it, Arthur Miller himself reflected on why he wrote The Crucible, noting:

“I was motivated in some great part by the paralysis that had set in among many who, despite their discomfort with the inquisitors’ violations of civil rights, were fearful…the more I read into the Salem panic, the more it touched off corresponding images of common experiences in the fifties. Apparently certain processes are universal.”

When young people (or teachers!) are encountering difficulty processing the state of the world, engaging with literature like The Crucible — through close readings, performing, and writing — can offer us the opportunity to wrestle with and learn from history, especially its darker and more challenging parts. History has a way of echoing itself, and Miller knew this all too well. As the playwright says in his reflection in the New Yorker, 

“It is only a slight exaggeration to say that, especially in Latin America, The Crucible starts getting produced wherever a political coup appears imminent, or a dictatorial regime has just been overthrown. The play seems to present the same primeval structure of human sacrifice…that goes on repeating itself forever as though embedded in the brain of social man.”

By exploring these patterns, teachers and students alike can think through the impacts of injustice, mass hysteria, and the abuse of power, contemplating the integrity and moral courage needed in such moments as these. And it’s in this space — where students grapple with big questions and their own interpretations — that the real work of thinking begins.

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Bringing a Text to Life

If The Crucible is on your reading list — whether you’ve chosen to teach it or it’s part of your curriculum — our Literacy Unbound initiative has practical ways to bring the text to life in your classroom.

Alongside assigning parts to read aloud, you can add in Creating the Scene, an activity where we collectively envision and co-create the space by naming what the set looks like, calling out where various people, places, things, furnishings, nature, etc. live in the scene before it’s read aloud to the class. This collaborative approach helps students visualize the story more vividly while actively participating in its creation.

These exercises also allow students to consider choices made within the text, and how one might respond in character, such as John Proctor. Though, of course, he has been understandably reflected upon as a villain, Miller says: “That John Proctor the sinner might overturn his paralyzing personal guilt and become the most forthright voice against the madness around him was a reassurance to me, and, I suppose, an inspiration: it demonstrated that a clear moral outcry could still spring even from an ambiguously unblemished soul.”

Alongside exploring major plot points, you can add in Polaroids, an activity where a scene unfolds over time, slowly developing, then gelling, like a Polaroid picture. Students can capture the scene the way they would a picture by having each person walk in and take their pose or place in whatever is occurring in that moment, then freezing for commentary, questioning, or synthesis. This helps solidify the understanding of key plot elements while still making space for student choice and engagement.

Alongside discussing major themes, you can try Sculpture Garden, an activity where young people alternately act as clay and sculptors of each other when prompted with words like “injustice” or “hysteria.” Students walk around to view all of the sculptures — students silently acting out the theme after having been sculpted in a particular pose by their peers. By embodying the text in this way, students gain insight into characters’ experiences and develop a richer, more empathetic understanding of the text’s themes.

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If you’re interested in learning more about how to bring texts to life through Literacy Unbound, consider joining us this summer for a one-week institute made for teachers and high school students to experience literature in hands-on, collaborative ways. Together, we will make sense of a shared text — this year, The Crucible! — and create an original production that expresses our shared interpretation. 

When we engage with stories like The Crucible, we’re reminded that we are not the first to face the challenges of our times — and that reading, writing, and discussing the struggles of the past can help illuminate our present and shape our future. And we learn, too, that flawed or not, each of us has the capacity to choose our actions and our response — to remember that action is always possible, whether small or sweeping, even when the personal stakes feel high.

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Apply for Literacy Unbound

Bring literature to life
From July 13-17, teachers and students will work together as creative collaborators to explore literature through drama and play, challenging traditional ideas of reading and writing. This dynamic experience at Teachers College, Columbia University — centered around The Crucible​ by Arthur Miller — removes barriers to literacy, making learning relevant, accessible, and impactful for everyone. Learn more & apply →​