This Resource is for teachers and students studying English in the Victorian Curriculum to help visualise and brainstorm Persuasive Writing Analysis.
What is a Fishbone Diagram?
A fishbone diagram, also called a cause and effect diagram or Ishikawa diagram (named after Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa who invented it) , is a visualization tool for categorizing the potential causes of a problem in order to identify its root causes.
Using a Fishbone Diagram in Brainstorming for Persuasive Writing
A fishbone diagram is useful in brainstorming for persuasive writing to identify the problem in the persuasive topic and include the facts, consequences and solutions to the issue. Each bone of the fish can be broken down into more detail as ideas are developed by students. By brainstorming ideas and ascertaining main points the fishbone diagram can be used to classify arguments for and against, grouping common themes and identifying the most appropriate examples. Researching information to brainstorm the issue is a vital part in the process to canvass a range of views that will be used as evidence in your essay.
The Fishbone Diagram Design
The design of the diagram looks much like a skeleton of a fish. Fishbone diagrams are typically worked right to left, with each large “bone” of the fish branching out to include smaller bones containing more detail.
This Resources is created by englishtutorlessons with Online Tutoring of English Using Zoom
This resource is for Mainstream English students studying the play ‘The Crucible’ in the Victorian Curriculum.
Theme of Fear & Mass Hysteria
An important theme is that of fear and mass hysteria which leads to extreme acts in the play as the human inclination to ascribe blame for pain and suffering to others and then destroy the supposedly guilty party surfaces. In Salem the witch trials are a clear example of mass hysteria, with residents engulfed in a frenzy of accusations.
Context of Fear & Mass Hysteria in Salem
In ‘The Crucible’ Salem is a strict religious community where superstition is rife and scientific explanations minimal. In the puritanical colony of Massachusetts, reading books other than the Bible was forbidden, hence any scientific thinking was unlikely.
Mass hysteria and mob violence can infect the collective consciousness when fear, ignorance and isolation are not countered with universal education. In Salem, personal vengeance, paranoia and fear, rather than grief and illness, is what escalates the social panic.
Miller writes that because ‘it is impossible for most men to conceive of a morality without sin’ Salem, and analogously his own 1950’s zeitgeist, was ‘gripped between two diametrically opposed absolutes.’ Such binary thinking and absolutism is another catalyst for mass panic or mob violence.
The society in Salem is spurred on to collective hysteria by a dualistic belief that things they don’t understand or can’t explain must be ‘evil’. Satan, when referred to in the Bible, is thought of as the evil one, the tempter, the wicked one. To the people of Salem, the Devil is the adversary of God and an invisible threat. But Miller’s audience sees that it is the villagers’ own inner demons that bubble to the surface and wreak havoc on the town, combined with their irrationality.
Martha Corey has done nothing particularly adversarial, she merely reads books that are not approved of by her neighbours, but she finds herself charged as a witch.
The end of Act One and Act Three of the play show just how infectious a group mentality can be. Close study of Miller’s acting directions in these two sections of the play reveals the range of causes for such a frenzy; whether that be characters offloading their own shame and resentment, or being so fearful of punishment that they will say anything to avoid it.
Briefly What is Causing Fear in The Crucible?
In ‘The Crucible’ Abigail and the group of girls spark fear in the town after being accused of engaging in sacrilegious activities while playing in the forest
The people in Salem are convinced that the Devil has arrived and must be driven from his conspirators
What begins with a handful of girls dancing in the forest manifests within eight days into a society whose feverish desire to rid itself of an unseen evil allows the suspending of human decency
Unfortunately fear leads to a rapidly growing series of accusations against various members of the community
Innocent people are labelled witches and forced to confess or suffer death
What does Miller Believe about the Spread of Fear?
Miller presents the witch hunt then as a consequence of the hysterical fear that grips citizens when faced with social and religious upheaval
Miller seeks not only to explore the evolution of mass hysteria but additionally to delve into what causes individuals to abandon personal loyalties in such times
Even justice and reason are sacrificed and religion, which should provide a moral and ethical blueprint, is used to fuel the emerging fear and hysteria
The theocratic society in Salem and the power of the state is under threat as individuals begin to question entrenched conservative, Puritan religious values
Miller explains this as a paradox as individuals seek greater freedom they become a threat to the religious and political status quo
Arthur Miller was interviewed about why he wrote ‘The Crucible’and his thoughts about fear, hysteria and the threat of the Devil in Salem. See Arthur Miller’s views:
Fear Motivates People to Behave Unscrupulously in The Crucible
As Miller comments (on page 17 of the play in his notes before Act One), that “Old scores could be settled on a plane of heavenly combat between Lucifer and the Lord”.
Personal fears instigate some characters to cry witch
Reverend Parris fears losing his job provokes him to cry witch and if Abigail is exposed as the fraud she is he will be punished for supporting an illegitimate court procedure
Parris also fears that the rebellion in Andover about the hangings will occur similarly in Salem
Abigail uses fear of consorting with the Devil in her motives of vengeance against Elizabeth Proctor to accuse her of witchcraft
The group of girls do what Abigail says for fear of getting caught so deflecting blame away from themselves is their only option
The Putnams use fear and the hysteria of the accusations for self interest in acquiring land from those about to hang
Deputy Governor Danforth uses the fear as a reason for his agenda to protect his reputation, the court and the theocracy it serves
Mob Mentality, Punitive Justice & Binary Thinking
‘The Crucible’ is a legal drama. An entire scene takes place in the Salem meeting house which is now Judge Danforth’s court, but every scene in the play is concerned with the process of arriving at a legal judgement. Because the play is an analogy for Senator McCarthy’s HUAC hearings, the audience is positioned to regard the justice system of Salem as being similarly flawed and equally ideologically motivated. Justice is not delivered by this legal system.
Indeed, the audience is led to the conclusion that the most dangerous person in the play is Judge Danforth. His lack of mercy, his willingness to believe evidence that has no proof, and his preoccupation with his own reputation, all serve to remind Miller’s audience that justice denied anywhere diminishes justice everywhere.
In ‘The Crucible’, Elizabeth humbly tells her husband that she cannot judge him; ‘The magistrate sits in your heart that judges you. I never thought you but a good man, John’ (p. 55). Elizabeth believes in the supremacy of the individual’s conscience, of his own accountability for decisions and actions. Miller shows that only when John Proctor explores the depths of his own guilt can he begin the redemptive process.
At the end of the play he dies on his own terms and sees ‘some shred of goodness’ in his decision. Proctor does not fear death because he has made his peace with himself and is free from self-admonition. His death is a great injustice, but the courage and moral conviction he shows is his legacy and his epitaph.
This Resources is created by englishtutorlessons with Online Tutoring of English using Zoom
Creative Story on ‘The Boat’ from Island by Alistair MacLeod for students studying English in the Victorian Curriculum.
Note that this creative story was developed with inspiration from ‘The Boat’ short story and all ideas are original to englishtutorlessons.
Do not plagiarise this story.
Plagiarism is a copyright infringement.
Creative Prompt:
Years later, one of the daughters has to tell her daughter about her childhood, the role of the island and why she eventually left Cape Breton. Refer back to the story in Island ‘The Boat’.
Research:
Scottish Gaelic names for father = dadaidh formal, dadai = dad or daddy
Creative Story Based Around ‘The Boat’ Short Story
Looking through my kitchen window over the Cape Cod seashore I heard the sharp laughter of a gull. The moment was broken as my 15 year old daughter Alana called out “Hey ma, I have to do a literature assignment on our family’s ancestry which is due Friday can you help me with it?” This middle daughter was just like me and her grandfather. We all loved literature and reading. Yet she was tall, willowy with fine facial features set off by long dark hair tinged a reddish copper colour, energetic and beautiful like her grandmother. “Sure” I called back to Alana as she lopped into the kitchen with her notebook and pen; “What do you want to know?” “I need information about where you came from, you know ma, the traditional stuff you never talk about”. I looked at her striking face and my mind wandered back to an old-fashioned kitchen with a wood and coal burning stove next to a heavy table, around it stood five wooden homemade chairs. Alana said “For instance ma why did you give the three of us girls a weird middle name like ‘Innis’, what does it mean?”
“Innis is Scottish Gaelic for island” I told Alana. “I wanted to link you and your sisters like a chain of tradition back to my home land of Cape Breton. It was my way of retaining the custom of someone of the sea like my mother’s people”. Was that my real reason for calling the girls ‘Innis’ I wondered? My five sisters and brother Callum were all born at Cape Breton but my three girls Fiona, Alana and Catriona were born at Harwich Port Massachusetts. Looking over the Cape Cod seashore and the Atlantic Coast, Harwich Port is 848 miles from the bitter windswept island of Cape Breton. No one at Harwich Port had to carve out an existence as a fisherman or give up their dreams to sustain a family of seven children. Not like my old father who yearned for a life taken from the imaginative stories in his books away from the sea.
As children we called our father by the Gaelic ‘dadai’ an informal way of speaking to him while he was in his room lying on his bed smoking his handmade cigarettes. His ashtray overflowed with tobacco shreds and ash as my sisters, one by one, sat on his bed or in a single chair reading his stack of paperbacks. No one called our mother anything but the more formal ‘mathair’ because we were all scared of her as she would look at us with her dark and fearless eyes. ‘Mathair’ never thought reading trashy books would help anyone in life. I remember clearly she slapped my sister so hard she left the print of her hand upon my sister’s cheek just because Fiona was reading one of ‘dadai’s’ paperbacks. We all knew it was difficult to defy our ‘mathair’ but the call of reading books outweighed our restlessness and we lost interest in darning socks and baking bread.
“So who are your mother’s people of the sea then?” Alana asked me. I explained the ancestry story as clearly as I could; “The Cape Breton Islanders were mostly families from the Highlands in Scotland who were forced to leave their homes in the 1800’s. ‘Mathair’s’ family were all inshore fisherman sailing Cape Island boats in search of lobsters, mackerel, cod, haddock and hake. Her brothers all had large families to sustain. In fact my uncle Bryce had thirteen children to support while he worked with my ‘dadai’ on our boat the Jenny Lynn”.
Alana was intrigued and followed up with a question about what the people of the sea were like and the importance of the ‘boat’. As I told her about the boats racing out to sea with their traps I could see in my mind uncle Bryce tall and dark like ‘mathair’, standing at the tiller guiding the boat between the floating pans of ice and my ‘dadai’ in the stern with his hands upon the ropes that lashed the cargo to the deck. I remember watching from the kitchen window of our old house that faced the sea, while my ‘dadai’ was away fishing in the boat. We were always working on repairing clothes, preparing food or just looking for the return of the boat. When ‘dadai’ returned home the first question my ‘mathair’ would ask was “Well, how did things go in the boat today?”
Alana stretched out her long legs and stood up with a yawn and said “OK I know about dad’s family history settling in Boston from 1630, but why did you choose to leave Cape Breton for Harwich Port?” How do you explain to your own daughter that restlessness that you get at 15 looking for a life elsewhere and the imaginative world that books inspire? Each of my five sisters felt the need for change from raising hens to growing vegetables. When the Sea Food Restaurant opened it catered to tourists that flooded the island during July and August. I got a job as a waitress and met people who were not classified as “our people” according to ‘mathair’, but they were fun, carefree and well educated. Sometimes my sisters and I would stay out late on hot summer nights and try to dodge ‘mathair’s’ questions about who we were associating with. ‘Dadai’ understood as we talked softly to him late at night about our ambitions beyond the island while the music of his radio floated up the stairs.
I cleared my throat and said to Alana “Then one day your father and his family came to Cape Breton for a summer holiday. I was swept off my feet by your father’s brilliant smile and his welcoming family. I didn’t care that ‘mathair’ believed he was not one of ‘her people’ or that she couldn’t understand I wanted a life outside of ‘the sea’ at Cape Breton”. “Wow ma that’s why we never see our grandmother but what happened to your ‘dadai’? Alana asked me.
It was long after I left Cape Breton and settled in Harwich Port with my husband and three young daughters when I received a call from Callum to say that ‘dadai’ had drowned at sea. It seemed nonsensical that my father and my uncles who were all experienced fisherman sailing the Atlantic waters could not swim a stroke. The news of my father’s drowning devastated all of us. It left Callum with a terrible choice whether to continue the seafaring tradition of ‘mathair’s’ family or leave Cape Breton for his own dream of becoming a university professor. In the end the Jenny Lynn left my mother with bitterness that neither her husband nor her son was able to sustain the fisherman’s life.
Answering Alana as best I could I just said “My father drowned at sea during a violent storm when he was fishing with Uncle Callum. The towering waves hit him as he stood in the stern of the Jenny Lynn and he went overboard”. As Alana hugged me I did not tell her the details of how my father’s body was found at the base of rock-strewn cliffs where he had been hurled and slammed many times so there was not much left of him physically but for the brass chains on his wrists and the seaweed in his hair.
All Resources are created by englishtutorlessons with Online Tutoring of English for Years 11 & 12 using Zoom
What is a Fishbone Diagram?
