Belonging - The Crucible And Related Text

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“An individual’s interaction with others and the world around them can enrich or limit their experiences of belonging.”
Discuss this view with detailed reference to your prescribed text and ONE other related text of your own choosing.

While the nature vs nurture debate still faces a hung jury, it is true that nurture, or our exposure to the outside world, plays a key role in human development, particularly concerning each individual’s evolving perceptions and experiences. Both the dramatic tension of Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible and Jon Turteltaub’s 90’s romantic-comedy While You Were Sleeping explore this concept, especially in regards to belonging. Characters from each text reveal that though belonging in its many forms is an inner need, it comes from, and is either nourished or left unfulfilled by interactions with the outside world.
In Act One of The Crucible, Arthur Miller uses an omniscient overture to reinforce the secrecy of something “no hint of [which] has yet appeared on the surface” – that John Proctor, “respected and even feared in Salem, has come to regard himself as a fraud.” The next scene reveals the source of this dramatic loss of self-respect – Proctor has committed adultery with Abigail Williams, his former servant girl. This infidelity has resulted in Proctor no longer identifying with the honest reputation of his former self, a man who had a “sharp and biting way with hypocrites”, having effectively become one himself by violating the moral code impressed and instilled in him by his upbringing and surrounding culture. With no judgment coming from the ignorant Salem, and grudging forgiveness from his wife Elizabeth, Proctor is left to judge himself, as described by Elizabeth in Act II – “The magistrate sits in your heart that judges you.” Thus the Proctor first introduced to the audience possesses an extremely limited, if not
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