dead poets society
“An individual’s interaction with others & the world around them can enrich or limit their experience of belonging”
Discuss this view with detailed reference to your prescribed text & at least ONE other related text of your own choosing.
An individual’s interaction can indeed enrich or limit one’s experience of belonging, as belonging is one of the essential needs of any human being. Belonging can be seen in the prescribed text of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society & Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, where the central characters are driven by their need to belong or not belong which is ultimately stimulated by the world & people around them.
The Crucible is based on the Salem community found in Massachusetts, a small & religious Puritan village of New England on the true story of how a group of young girls began the world famous Salem witch hunts that were responsible for the deaths of many innocent people due to their desperate need for belonging. The Salem community is set in an isolated area vastly distant from mainstream society, with its own social hierarchy, belief system & way of life. Its physical setting is metaphor of its seclusion and detachment from society, creating its non-belonging identity to the rest of the world.
Abigail Williams, the niece of the town’s reverend, becomes the catalyst for the play as her affair with John Proctor drives her great desires to belong as a wife. “I look for John Proctor who took me from my sleep & placed knowledge into my heart” says Abigail revealing that it was her relationship with Proctor that arouses her sense of belonging.
After failing to belong alongside Proctor she searches for other ways in which she may belong, finding it among a group of girls within the village who are fed up of being treated as children & want to be accepted within the community as respected adults. By dancing in the woods, they confirm their isolation from the Salem community as they
Discuss this view with detailed reference to your prescribed text & at least ONE other related text of your own choosing.
An individual’s interaction can indeed enrich or limit one’s experience of belonging, as belonging is one of the essential needs of any human being. Belonging can be seen in the prescribed text of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society & Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, where the central characters are driven by their need to belong or not belong which is ultimately stimulated by the world & people around them.
The Crucible is based on the Salem community found in Massachusetts, a small & religious Puritan village of New England on the true story of how a group of young girls began the world famous Salem witch hunts that were responsible for the deaths of many innocent people due to their desperate need for belonging. The Salem community is set in an isolated area vastly distant from mainstream society, with its own social hierarchy, belief system & way of life. Its physical setting is metaphor of its seclusion and detachment from society, creating its non-belonging identity to the rest of the world.
Abigail Williams, the niece of the town’s reverend, becomes the catalyst for the play as her affair with John Proctor drives her great desires to belong as a wife. “I look for John Proctor who took me from my sleep & placed knowledge into my heart” says Abigail revealing that it was her relationship with Proctor that arouses her sense of belonging.
After failing to belong alongside Proctor she searches for other ways in which she may belong, finding it among a group of girls within the village who are fed up of being treated as children & want to be accepted within the community as respected adults. By dancing in the woods, they confirm their isolation from the Salem community as they