English Advanced - The Crucible Common Module 20/20 Essay Assignment PDF

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This is essay written on The Crucible and Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and his years of Pilgrimage (2014), for the English Adv Common Module, 20/20, 1st in school....

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Literary texts are microcosmic spaces that invite disempowered individuals to reflect personally on the power of motivated confrontation within the struggle between intrapersonal and interpersonal structures. Arthur Miller's Modern Tragedy, The Crucible, emerges as a confronting critique of past and contemporary societies, interrogating the individual experience of anomalous individuals living under a collective dogma of totalising power structures. In establishing the theocratic microcosm of Salem as a disguised allegory for the 1950s McCarthy-era, Miller attempts to radicalise disempowered individuals to grasp the parallels of political corruption, and thus the necessity to confront oppressive absolutes and break the recurring pattern of irrational human behaviour. Haruki Murakami's novel, Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and his years of Pilgrimage (2014), emerges as a monomythic narrative responding to the existential anxieties magnified by conditions of cultural decline in late-capitalist Japan, welcoming responders to contemplate on the paradoxical yet therapeutic possibilities of confronting one’s trauma within the individual experience.

Through the dramatic vehicle of The Crucible, Miller uncovers a synchronic cross-section of history that parallels 17th century Salem with 20th century American McCarthyism, exposing audiences to a cycle of irrational human behaviour within the collective experience that must be dismantled. Miller invites suppressed individuals to grasp the power of preserving the integrity of personal values in the face of oppressive regimes, through establishing a desolate theocratic space where Proctor’s motivated psychological preservation exposes and damages the monolithic collective conscience of the Salem theocracy. Proctor’s act of asserting his name to guard his values in a confrontational rebellion against Danforth, anaphorically lamenting: “Because it is my name…Because I lie and sign myself to lies!” is prefaced evocatively with the stage direction “[with a cry of his soul]” , exposing and repudiating Salem’s flawed theological maxims built upon the dogmatic conjectures of the “crazy children who are jangling the keys of the kingdom”. By affirming his own fundamental values and motivations in a confrontational rebellion against the totalising structures of Salem, Proctor upholds his historical separation as an anomalous ethical agent similar to Nietzsche’s Overman, raised above the substratum of cult and ritual beneath him, where “a fire, fire is burning “and “Common vengeance writes the law”. Proctor is apotheosised from a victim of a corrupted collective to a dynamically characterised martyr who will “Give them no tears’…Show honour now, show a stony heart” to “sink” Salem’s theocracy, symbolising Proctor’s personal repudiation of a failed fundamentalist value system, while eliciting from the audience an emerging comprehension of the power of self-preservation through confrontations. As the responder undergoes a growth in its own consciousness analogous to Proctor’s, it comes to emphasise and connect with a self-motivated individual who holds to the uniqueness of their own principles, and is thereby invited to contemplate on the power of confronting dogmatic social-political orders, which unravels and erodes its conceptual grounds of flawed motivations.

Responding to the existential anxieties within late-capitalist Japan and his experience as an anomaly within Japanese literature, Murakami constructs “Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki” as a literary remedy that invites disempowered individuals to grasp the paradoxical yet regenerative possibilities of confronting past traumas as a motivated individual. Confrontation as a catalyst for psychological renewal is crafted through a monomythic narrative, which diachronically juxtaposes the differing psychological conditions within

Tsukuru’s process of Jungian individuation, positioning audiences to parallel his growth from existential dread to cognitive restoration as he confronts the truth regarding his social- expulsion. Murakami’s evocative representation of Tsukuru’s existential-dread, “Like Jonah in a Whale's belly, Tsukuru had fallen into the bowels of death, lost in a dark, stagnant void”, contrasts with the epiphanic line, “There is no silence without a cry of grief, no forgiveness and acceptance without bloodshed”. Tsukuru’s catharsis illuminates his personal psychological development from the "bowels" of existential anguish to a state of cognitive maturity, thus welcoming responders to grasp how the “bloodshed” of confrontation is able to paradoxically emancipate the individual from existential-realities. The monomythic narrative also weaves a backdrop in which a voice of reason emancipates the individual by motivating them to confront their intrapersonal wounds. This is evident through Sara’s philosophical aphorism: "You can hide memories, suppress them, but you can't erase the history that produced them", which guides Tsukuru to the catharsis: "I have to revisit the past. Otherwise, I'll never be free from it.’ Tsukuru’s epiphany on the emancipating prospects of confronting his past traumas invites responders to parallel his moment of transcendence, and thereby grasp how a motivated confrontation of the past is able to liberate the individual, thus seeing the past as a space for selfgrowth and restoration. As audiences parallel Tsukuru’s psychological development from despair to reconciliation within the monomythic narrative, Murakami constructs a microcosmic literary remedy that galvanises disempowered individuals to reflect personally on the therapeutic possibilities of confronting past traumas.

Holistically, the literary universes of The Crucible and Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki taps into the minds of disempowered individuals respectively within McCarthyism, late-capitalist Japan and future voices, constructed as microcosmic spaces where the protagonist’s motivated act of self-preservation continues to ignite an emerging comprehension on the power of confrontation in dismantling oppressive social-political orders and existential anxieties, ultimately emancipating the individual, thus, offering new insights into the malleability of human experiences, which can be altered by self-motivated individuals....