Film extract from The Crucible courtesy of Spark notes:

The Crucible

In the Literture exam you will have a choice of TWO questions of which you have to answer only on one.
There will be a question on character and another one will be on themes.
Make sure you know all the major characters:

• what they look like
• how they act
• how other people regard them
• and who they interact with

Make sure you have read the author's notes about the characters and make your own notes about them including a range of all purpose quotations!

The other question will be on a theme or issue, so make sure you could write on any of them e.g.

• witchcraft
• power
• jealousy
• ambition
• prejudice and bigotry
• conflict
• good and evil
• relationships
• etc

REMEMBER there is a playwright behind this story, which although based on real events is a fictionalised version of them.
How does the playwright, Arthur Miller, make the story dramatic? Think about:

• the way the play is structured into 4 acts
• the way he increases and decreases the tension
• the locations the acts take place in and what we learn in those settings
• the way he telescopes the action on the stage into apparently less time
• how several different things are happening at the same time and the action shifts between them to keep the tension up
• ALSO and very importantly the way Miller uses IMAGERY. Since witchcraft is a key theme there is an awful lot of imagery concerning hell and the devil in the play. The people of the era believed and feared wholeheartedly both, but in Miller's own time what had taken its place? In the 1950s there was a 'prodgious' fear of communism, mostly, it turns out imagined, but avidly promoted by the government and the media. Miller's point was that in every generation there is a 'bad guy' whom or which we are directed by people in authority to hate and fear and when times are bad ordinary people turn against those people or bodies. Think in our own times of the hatred directed against 'immigrants who take our jobs' or the 'fundamentalist Islamists' following the events of 9/11 or the vendetta against Saddam Hussain which led to the war in Iraq. Then of course there were the Jews in Germany before the Second World War. There always needs to be an underdog who can be blamed when things go wrong. [Please note the views expressed here are not necessarily the views of the writer they are merely for illustrative purposes!]

So a couple of sample questions then:
1       Discuss the ways in which John and Elizabeth Proctor's relationship changes over the course of   the play and consider the reasons for these changes.
2       Comment on some of the different views about witchcraft held by characters in the play.
3       How does Miller create tension in the courtroom scene in Act III?        

What you could include