thesis on crucible

The Crucible

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Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Arthur Miller's The Crucible . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

The Crucible: Introduction

The crucible: plot summary, the crucible: detailed summary & analysis, the crucible: themes, the crucible: quotes, the crucible: characters, the crucible: symbols, the crucible: theme wheel, brief biography of arthur miller.

Historical Context of The Crucible

Other books related to the crucible.

• Full Title: The Crucible
• When Written: 1950-52
• When Published: 1953
• Literary Period: Realist Drama
• Genre: Tragic Drama
• Setting: Salem, Massachusetts in 1692, when it was a Puritan colony
• Climax: The Crucible has an odd structure, in which each of the four acts ends on a climax. Act I: the girls scream out the names of witches. Act II: Proctor vows he will confront Abigail. Act III: Proctor reveals his adultery with Abigail, and Elizabeth Proctor lies. Act IV: Proctor rips up his confession.
• Antagonist: Abigail Williams

Extra Credit for The Crucible

The Real Salem Witch Trials. In his depiction of the witch trials, Miller took many major departures from fact. For instance, John Proctor was nearly 60 and Abigail Williams only 11 at the time of the witch trials. Any affair between the two is highly unlikely, to say the least. Miller was always open about the liberties he took with history, saying that he was writing "a fictional story about an important theme."

Some Like it Hot. Arthur Miller was not a star the way writers are stars today. He was much, much bigger than that. After he wrote Death of a Salesman , he was a tremendous national sensation. In fact, he was such a big star that he married Marilyn Monroe. The couple married in 1956, and stayed together until 1961.

Ideas for a Thesis on "The Crucible"

Jana sosnowski.

Abigail Williams and John Proctor become ensnared in a tale of guilt, false accusations and condemnations in Arthur Miller's 1952 play, "The Crucible." The play depicts Abigail's accusation against Proctor's wife after Abigail's affair with the farmer, and it is believed that Miller penned the play in response to the anti-Communist "witch hunt" of the 1950s.

Explore this article

• Thematic Theses
• Historical Relevance and Setting
• Character Analyses
• Miller and McCarthyism

1 Thematic Theses

Developing a thesis based on themes of "The Crucible" presents an opportunity to support or refute common themes associated with Miller's play. Puritan culture and its conflict with individualism may be developed into theses about the ability of individuality to exist in Puritan culture or how religious beliefs influence day-to-day life and affect individuals. The town-wide hysteria of the play also presents a theme for discussion, as Miller himself acknowledged the dangers of hysteria. The idea of hysteria may be developed into a thesis about human nature and the need to follow along with the masses or how standing up against the larger group presents problems for the individual.

2 Historical Relevance and Setting

"The Crucible" takes place in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692 during a historical period known for witch hunts, which Miller researched extensively, according to commentary by Harold Bloom. Theses that compare the play to the historical city may consider how Miller chooses to represent the early Puritan society or the commentary Miller seems to be making about the society. Additionally, you may research the witch trials of this era and develop a comparison between the historical facts and images presented in Miller's work.

3 Character Analyses

Another area for discussion is Miller's use of the protagonist and antagonist, John Proctor and Abigail Williams. Theses focusing on the characterization of each can look at the perceived gender roles of the Puritan era. Additionally, Proctor and Williams can be compared in terms of their acceptance of responsibility for their actions and how that ultimately manifests into the conclusion of the play. Analyst Karen Bovard looks at the more general scale -- the varying representations of the male and female characters. The two main characters can be compared in terms of what they might signify about the gender roles in Puritan society. Comparisons between those who hold varying social statuses, including ministers and servants, may be developed into theses about social stratification and truth.

4 Miller and McCarthyism

While "The Crucible" depicts Puritan society during the witch trials, Miller's experience with the Communist red scare of the 1950s, including the House Committee on Un-American Activities, is often said to be the basis for the hysteria portrayed in the play. Theses comparing the play to the McCarthy era may focus on the governmental condemnation that results when rumors are started about a fellow citizen. An argument may also be developed that Miller was, in fact, talking about himself in the writing of this play. A thesis might also focus on the power of one person to create false accusations in a community.

• 1 Bloom Guides; Arthur Miller's The Crucible; edited by Harold Bloom
• 2 Women in Literature: Reading Through the Lens of Gender; edited by Jerilyn Fisher and Ellen S. Silber
• 3 Critical Companion to Arthur Miller: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work; Susan C. W. Abbotson
• 4 The Crucible: Penguin Edition; Arthur Miller

About the Author

Based in Los Angeles, Jana Sosnowski holds Master of Science in educational psychology and instructional technology, She has spent the past 11 years in education, primarily in the secondary classroom teaching English and journalism. Sosnowski has also worked as a curriculum writer for a math remediation program. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in print journalism from the University of Southern California.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — The Crucible — The Role Of Fear In The Crucible

The Role of Fear in The Crucible

• Categories: Arthur Miller The Crucible

About this sample

Words: 828 |

Published: Feb 8, 2022

Words: 828 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

Hook Examples for “The Crucible” Essay

• An Ominous Opening: In the stifling atmosphere of Salem, Massachusetts, fear hangs heavy in the air. Join me as we unravel the web of fear that drives the events in Arthur Miller’s haunting play, The Crucible.
• A Compelling Quote: Arthur Miller once wrote, “Fear doesn’t travel well; just as it can warp judgment, its absence can diminish memory’s truth.” Let’s explore how fear distorts reality and leads the characters of The Crucible down a treacherous path.
• An Analysis of Hysteria: The witch trials in The Crucible are fueled by fear, but what does this hysteria reveal about the human condition? Dive into the depths of irrationality and paranoia as we dissect the role of fear in this gripping narrative.
• A Study of Character Motivations: In The Crucible, fear drives individuals to make choices they would never have imagined. Explore the intricate motivations and moral dilemmas faced by the characters as they grapple with the overwhelming power of fear.
• A Timely Exploration: While set in the 17th century, The Crucible’s themes of fear, scapegoating, and mass hysteria continue to resonate in today’s world. Join me as we draw parallels between the play and contemporary society’s responses to fear.

Works Cited

• ACLU. (n.d.). Religious Freedom. https://www.aclu.org/issues/religious-liberty
• Aljazeera. (2018, February 5). How Muslim Americans’ daily lives are shaped by bigotry. https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2018/2/5/how-muslim-americans-daily-lives-are-shaped-by-bigotry
• Amnesty International. (2021, March 31). Religious freedom.
• Fox, J. R. (2019). Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me: Why Governments Discriminate against Religious Minorities. Cambridge University Press.
• Human Rights Watch. (n.d.). Religious Freedom.
• International Religious Freedom Report. (2021). United States Department of State.
• Pew Research Center. (2020, June 29). Religion and Education Around the World.
• Pew Research Center. (2020, November 5). Unpacking Americans’ Views on Free Speech, Religion and the Press. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/05/unpacking-americans-views-on-free-speech-religion-and-the-press/
• The Guardian. (2018, May 11). The burqa has become a blank screen onto which anyone can project their prejudices.
• United Nations Human Rights. (n.d.). Freedom of Religion or Belief.

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Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder Reinvented These Classic Characters

The pair added new levels to Arthur Miller's classic play.

The Big Picture

• Daniel Day-Lewis brings depth to John Proctor, showing complex emotions and human flaw in T he Crucible .
• Winona Ryder portrays Abigail with sympathy and desperation, adding layers of complexity to the once-villainous character in the film.
• The final scene between Day-Lewis and Ryder is powerful, showcasing their masterful performances in The Crucible and leaving a lasting impact.

The '80s and '90s introduced movie goers to countless mega-stars, with Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder being two of the biggest. Day-Lewis' big break came in 1984 in The Bounty , a film that has since been followed by an illustrious career . Ryder had her break-out role as Lydia Deetz in the classic gothic comedy, Beetlejuice , and would quickly become one of the most in demand stars in the industry thanks to films such as Heathers and Little Women . She also nearly starred in The Godfather III . Their careers finally intersected in 1996 , when they starred in a film adaptation of Arthur Miller 's acclaimed play, The Crucible .

A fictionalized take on the Salem Witch Trials, The Crucible follows the story of John Proctor (Day-Lewis), a resident of Salem, who struggles with guilt and anger as his wife, friends, and neighbors are condemned for allegedly participating in witchcraft. The main accuser is Abigail Williams (Ryder), a 17-year-old girl, who begins the accusations to save herself and get revenge on Proctor's wife, after he and the young girl participated in an affair. The film culminates in Abigail running away, and Proctor being hanged in place of his wife.

The Crucible has been performed regularly since it first opened in 1953, with Proctor normally played as a stoic, determined man, and Williams staged as pure evil. While little is known about the real-life people upon which the characters are based, Day-Lewis and Ryder brought fresh, new takes to their roles . Day-Lewis' Proctor was a more nuanced, complex man, prone to outbursts, frustration, and even once in a while, giving into his lust. Ryder's Abigail is a much more complicated version of the character. Beneath her spiteful derangement is a young girl, obsessed with being loved. When the two come together, it makes for cinema at its best.

The Crucible (1996)

A Salem resident attempts to frame her ex-lover's wife for being a witch in the middle of the 1692 witchcraft trials.

Daniel Day-Lewis' John Proctor Is More Complex Than Others

Daniel Day-Lewis has always wowed audiences and critics with his diverse, intricate skills. The year he played two contrasting roles in very different films is still considered a cinematic triumph. When he took on the role of John Proctor, he set a new standard for the character. Proctor plays a large role in the conflict of the story, having had an affair with Abigail sometime before The Crucible begins. In many ways, Proctor is just as guilty as Abigail for the events that take place over the course of the story, yet he's typically played as stoic, and somewhat of a "hero." Day-Lewis brought much more nuance to the character; h e's troubled from his first appearance on the screen , and when he shares an early scene with Ryder's Abigail, he's almost flirtatious and amused by the trouble she's causing.

We Have Winona Ryder To Thank for Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula Movie

As the havoc caused by Abigail begins to become more serious, however, he plays the character, who is often a passive observer, with a building anxiety that reaches a boiling point when Proctor's wife is accused by Abigail and is taken to jail. Day-Lewis' building anger makes Proctor's mission to disprove Abigail feel far more urgent and noble, beyond just saving his wife — he's out to save the entirety of Salem. Such a portrayal makes Proctor much more relatable, thus making him a protagonist the audience truly wants to root for, instead of a secret accomplice .

Daniel Day-Lewis doesn't stop at complicating the character here, though. When Proctor thinks he's about to have a break through by getting one of Abigail's friends to confess to their lies, Abigail manipulates her into siding against Proctor, leading the character to deliver his famous "I say God is dead" monologue. The balanced build-up that he employs really feels like it has justified the explosive take Day-Lewis gives , and reflects the feelings that the audience has at this point. The actor has taken viewers on the ride along with a character who is typically passive, or cold. The anguish that Proctor feels practically leaps off the screen, and he has never felt more human.

Winona Ryder Makes Abigail Williams More Sympathetic

Abigail Williams has long been one of theater's most compelling characters. A 2023 revival of the play at London's National Theater served as a reminder of how compelling the character can be. When Winona Ryder got her hands on the coveted role, she brought the character to life like never before. Previously seen as a pure villain, Ryder did the impossible when she brought a sympathy and youthful naïveté to the character . Despite the horrible fates Abigail bestows upon many of the characters and the manipulative actions that would make the likes of Scarlett O'Hara blush , she is still a child acting out of desperation and jealousy.

The film begins with a scene only mentioned in the play. Abigail, her cousin, Betty Parris, and their friends meet up with Tituba, a woman from Barbados whom Betty's father, Reverend Parris, keeps as a slave. They dance in the woods and ask Tituba to cast spells to bring the girls the men for whom they long. Abigail, desperate to get John Proctor back, kills a chicken and drinks its blood in order to enact the spell. Despite not having any dialogue during the scene, Ryder plays the character with an unhinged derangement that is both frightening and desperate . It tells viewers all they need to know about the character: She is both intensely dangerous and madly infatuated.

Her character makes several attempts to win Proctor back throughout the film, all of which lead to rejection and threats. Ryder truly understood the pains and nuances that made the character tick, and, despite all the lives Abigail both ruins and ends, there is a strange sense of innocence and ignorance that makes her motivations believable. It's not an easy task to make a love-struck teenager a seemingly unstoppable adversary, but Ryder makes her evil character worthy of some sympathy. Both Ryder and Day-Lewis give the complex and toxic relationship their characters share a fitting end in one of the film's final scenes; a sequence that is both haunting and heartbreaking .

Winona Ryder Goes Goth Once Again in First 'Beetlejuice 2' Set Image

Winona ryder and daniel day-lewis' final scene together is cinematic gold.

As The Crucible comes to a climax, John Proctor is jailed for his actions and, desperate to save herself, Abigail steals from the Reverend and plans to sail away in the dead of night. In another scene Miller added to the film not in his play, Abigail visits the imprisoned Proctor to offer him to escape with her. She tries to justify her actions by telling him "I wanted you is all." Proctor remains silent as Abigail makes one last desperate attempt to convince him they belong together. When she finishes her monologue, Proctor responds simply, " It's not on a boat we'll meet again, Abigail, but in hell. " The line is powerful, yet simple and worthy of historical film consideration .

The scene is the literal personification of their characters, and both actors master the final sequence brilliantly. Ryder plays up the desperate justification that has motivated her character thus far, while Day-Lewis plays a burnt-out, almost completely disassociated Proctor with his single line delivery, capping his emotional build-up throughout the film. The picture concludes with Abigail running away, and Proctor hanged by the neck while reciting "The Lord's Prayer." It is a tragic ending for both, but a fitting one, with Abigail punished emotionally for the toll her actions took, and John finally finding peace by ultimately doing the right thing (refusing to accuse anyone of witchcraft) and dying with a clear conscience.

John Proctor and Abigail Williams are two of the most complex characters ever written, but actors Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder were more than up for the challenge. Day-Lewis brought new complexities to a formerly stoic character, while Ryder made the typically evil Williams deep, desperate and, at times, even sympathetic. While The Crucible has continued to be revived and performed in the decades since the film's release, the reinvention that the two skilled performers brought to the big screen version stands out as two of the finest interruptions the characters have ever seen.

The Crucible is available for rent or purchase in the U.S.

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Do Birds Dream?

What new research on the avian brain and REM sleep in birds might reveal about our own dream lives.

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By Maria Popova

I once dreamed a kiss that hadn’t yet happened. I dreamed the angle at which our heads tilted, the fit of my fingers behind her ear, the exact pressure exerted on the lips by this transfer of trust and tenderness.

Freud, who catalyzed the study of dreams with his foundational 1899 treatise, would have discounted this as a mere chimera of the wishful unconscious. But what we have since discovered about the mind — particularly about the dream-rich sleep state of rapid-eye movement, or REM, unknown in Freud’s day — suggests another possibility for the adaptive function of these parallel lives in the night.

One cold morning not long after the kiss dream, I watched a young night heron sleep on a naked branch over the pond in Brooklyn Bridge Park, head folded into chest, and found myself wondering whether birds dream.

The recognition that nonhuman animals dream dates at least as far back as the days of Aristotle, who watched a sleeping dog bark and deemed it unambiguous evidence of mental life. But by the time Descartes catalyzed the Enlightenment in the 17th century, he had reduced other animals to mere automatons, tainting centuries of science with the assumption that anything unlike us is inherently inferior.

In the 19th century, when the German naturalist Ludwig Edinger performed the first anatomical studies of the bird brain and discovered the absence of a neocortex — the more evolutionarily nascent outer layer of the brain, responsible for complex cognition and creative problem-solving — he dismissed birds as little more than Cartesian puppets of reflex. This view was reinforced in the 20th century by the deviation, led by B.F. Skinner and his pigeons, into behaviorism — a school of thought that considered behavior a Rube Goldberg machine of stimulus and response governed by reflex, disregarding interior mental states and emotional response.

In 1861, just two years after Darwin’s publication of “On the Origin of Species,” a fossil was discovered in Germany with the tail and jaws of a reptile and the wings and wishbone of a bird, sparking the revelation that birds had evolved from dinosaurs. We have since learned that, although birds and humans haven’t shared a common ancestor in more than 300 million years, a bird’s brain is much more similar to ours than to a reptile’s. The neuron density of its forebrain — the region engaged with planning, sensory processing, and emotional responses, and on which REM sleep is largely dependent — is comparable to that of primates. At the cellular level, a songbird’s brain has a structure, the dorsal ventricular ridge, similar to the mammalian neocortex in function if not shape. (In pigeons and barn owls, the DVR is structured like the human neocortex, with both horizontal and vertical neural circuitry.)

Still, avian brains are also profoundly other, capable of feats unimaginable to us, especially during sleep: Many birds sleep with one eye open, even during flight. Migrating species that traverse immense distances at night, like the bar-tailed godwit, which covers the 7,000 miles between Alaska and New Zealand in eight days of continuous flight, engage in unihemispheric sleep, blurring the line between our standard categories of sleep and wakefulness.

But while sleep is an outwardly observable physical behavior, dreaming is an invisible interior experience as mysterious as love — a mystery to which science has brought brain imaging technology to illuminate the inner landscape of the sleeping bird’s mind.

The first electroencephalogram of electrical activity in the human brain was recorded in 1924, but EEG was not applied to the study of avian sleep until the 21st century, aided by the even more nascent functional magnetic resonance imaging, developed in the 1990s. The two technologies complement each other. In recording the electrical activity of large populations of neurons near the cortical surface, EEG tracks what neurons do more directly. But fM.R.I. can pinpoint the location of brain activity more precisely through oxygen levels in the blood. Scientists have used these technologies together to study the firing patterns of cells during REM sleep in an effort to deduce the content of dreams.

A study of zebra finches — songbirds whose repertoire is learned, not hard-wired — mapped particular notes of melodies sung in the daytime to neurons firing in the forebrain. Then, during REM, the neurons fired in a similar order: The birds appeared to be rehearsing the songs in their dreams.

An fM.R.I. study of pigeons found that brain regions tasked with visual processing and spatial navigation were active during REM, as were regions responsible for wing action, even though the birds were stilled with sleep: They appeared to be dreaming of flying. The amygdala — a cluster of nuclei responsible for emotional regulation — was also active during REM, hinting at dreams laced with feeling. My night heron was probably dreaming, too — the folded neck is a classic marker of atonia, the loss of muscle tone characteristic of the REM state.

But the most haunting intimation of the research on avian sleep is that without the dreams of birds, we too might be dreamless. No heron, no kiss.

There are two primary groups of living birds: the flightless Palaeognathae, including the ostrich and the kiwi, which have retained certain ancestral reptilian traits, and Neognathae, comprising all other birds. EEG studies of sleeping ostriches have found REM-like activity in the brainstem — a more ancient part of the brain — while in modern birds, as in mammals, this REM-like activity takes place primarily in the more recently developed forebrain.

Several studies of sleeping monotremes — egg-laying mammals like the platypus and the echidna, the evolutionary link between us and birds — also reveal REM-like activity in the brainstem, suggesting that this was the ancestral crucible of REM before it slowly migrated toward the forebrain.

If so, the bird brain might be where evolution designed dreams — that secret chamber adjacent to our waking consciousness where we continue to work on the problems that occupy our days. Dmitri Mendeleev, after puzzling long and hard over the arrangement of atomic weights in his waking state, arrived at his periodic table in a dream. “All the elements fell into place as required,” he recounted in his diary. “Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper.” Stephon Alexander, a cosmologist now at Brown University, dreamed his way to a groundbreaking insight about the role of symmetry in cosmic inflation that earned him a national award from the American Physics Society. For Einstein, the central revelation of relativity took shape in a dream of cows simultaneously jumping up and moving in wavelike motion.

As with the mind, so with the body. Studies have shown that people learning new motor tasks “practice” them in sleep, then perform better while awake. This line of research has also shown how mental visualization helps athletes improve performance. Renata Adler touches on this in her novel, “Speedboat”: “That was a dream,” she writes, “but many of the most important things, I find, are the ones learned in your sleep. Speech, tennis, music, skiing, manners, love — you try them waking and perhaps balk at the jump, and then you’re over. You’ve caught the rhythm of them once and for all, in your sleep at night.”

It may be that in REM, this gloaming between waking consciousness and the unconscious, we practice the possible into the real. It may be that the kiss in my dream was not nocturnal fantasy but, like the heron’s dreams of flying, the practice of possibility. It may be that we evolved to dream ourselves into reality — a laboratory of consciousness that began in the bird brain.

With college decisions looming, students ask: What’s the cost, really?

Fafsa delays leave students seeking advice on paying for college without crucial information on financial aid.

In an Anacostia coffee shop packed with high school seniors desperate to know how much financial aid they might receive for college, Donnell Washington let a small group know they would have to wait for answers.

“Everything is delayed this year,” Washington, who works for a college prep program, told the students. “It will be May, June before you hear.”

“Colleges can’t tell us how much it costs to attend till they get our FAFSA,” said Aaron Mengesha, a 17-year-old from Silver Spring, Md., referring to the form that Federal Student Aid, an office of the U.S. Department of Education, uses to calculate a student’s eligibility for grants and loans to pay for college.

“How can we make a decision?” his twin brother, Ezra Mengesha, asked. “I have to make a commitment in early May. How will I know how much I will get?”

Washington was blunt: “You just won’t.”

Ezra dropped his head into his hand. He had been accepted at the University of Maryland and was waiting to hear from Columbia University. The financial aid packages colleges offer are central to the twins’ decisions this spring. Their parents had already helped their older sister pay for college. Now, the family is facing double tuition for the next four years.

Students across the country this spring are confronting one of the most momentous decisions of their lives without an answer to a fundamental question: How much will college cost? The federal government’s lifeline of aid to low- and middle-income students has been mired in bureaucratic delays that have left aspirational students without information they desperately need. Amid a national debate over college admissions in the wake of a landmark Supreme Court ruling rejecting race-based affirmative action, the issue of affordability is a crucible.

And the government isn’t helping.

“This is crunch time,” Kim Cook, chief executive of the National College Attainment Network (NCAN), said at that packed event at the Capital One Cafe in the Anacostia area of D.C. on a recent Saturday. Washington and other staff members from College Success Foundation-District of Columbia were helping anxious students fill out forms and answering questions — as much as they could, with the delayed and botched rollout of the FAFSA.

“They’re getting their acceptance offers from universities,” Cook said. “But they’re not getting the aid offers.”

College hopefuls face a grim realization that despite their best efforts to complete every step toward enrollment — filling out applications, writing personal essays, applying for financial aid — the federal government has thrown up roadblocks. Severe delays in the Education Department’s processing of the newly updated Free Application for Federal Student Aid have prevented colleges from issuing financial aid offers that students need to decide where to enroll.

Even as the department has ramped up the transmission of financial aid data to colleges, schools say it is a slow-going process. Some colleges have pushed back their dates when students must commit to attend, an acknowledgment of the extreme disruption nationwide. But many schools still require students to adhere to strict deadlines.

Meanwhile, some students are still trying to submit the financial aid form, which remains beset by technical glitches .

The problem is much more than paperwork: Higher education experts worry the delays and problems with the form will discourage students, especially those from underserved communities, from enrolling in college this year.

“That is a crisis,” Angel Pérez, chief executive of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, said in a recent phone interview. “We could see another major drop-off in the pipeline of students to college, like we did during covid — and that’s a direct pipeline into the workforce, as well. So I’m quite worried about that.”

An analysis of department data by NCAN found that as of March 8, FAFSA completions among high school seniors are down 33 percent from the same period a year ago. Submissions, which the group says are a key predictor of whether high school seniors head to college, are especially tepid at schools with high percentages of Black, Latino and low-income students.

Cook suspects some of the decline at those schools is a result of a flaw in the new form that has prevented U.S.-born students with undocumented parents from completing the FAFSA. Parents without a Social Security number have been locked out of the application since it debuted on Dec. 30. Last week, the Education Department announced two technical fixes but said separate but related problems still need to be resolved. Cook said she hopes the resolutions will result in an uptick in submissions.

This FAFSA cycle has become a painful test of a new financial aid system that higher education experts agree will ultimately deliver more money for millions of students to pay for college. Three years ago, Congress directed the Education Department to reduce the number of questions on the financial aid form and increase the amount of income shielded from a formula used to determine aid eligibility. The changes will ensure more students receive the Pell Grant , a form of aid for undergraduates with exceptional financial need. And a streamlined application that now allows families to easily import their tax data into the form means students ideally can breeze through the form.

“We have 5.8 million FAFSAs filled out now,” said U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education Cindy Marten, who stopped by the event in Anacostia. “I just talked to 10 kids who are part of that 5.8 million to hear their personal story of what the experience was like.” She said students were telling her the form was easy and fast to fill out.

But filling out the form is only one step.

A stressful process has become even more stressful this year, said Kevin Mungin, director of programs for the College Success Foundation. Surrounded by students typing on laptops and talking with staff members, he said everyone keeps asking how long it will take the government to process their forms, then how long it will take the colleges to process the information, then how long until they get letters with their financial aid offers. The hardest part, he said, is trying to keep students and parents calm “even though you’re talking about your future.”

More than 100 students showed up that day to drill into financial aid. Some needed help logging in to the federal system. Some had questions about the form. Some needed information about applying for scholarships or D.C. Tuition Assistance Grants. College Success Foundation staff members plan to be there Saturday in the same spot. And Capital One is hosting similar events nationally this spring.

Next month, the department is hosting a “week of action” to get the word out that all high school seniors should have completed a FAFSA. “I’d love to see more community-sponsored events like this, where kids come together on a Saturday with adult support and peer support,” Marten said. “They’ve got their laptops open, they’re scrolling through things, they’re asking questions.”

In one room, Washington and two of his colleagues were helping students try to estimate costs without the crucial federal information. “You don’t know how much Student Aid is giving you,” he said. “But what you can do is list out how much it will cost you to attend the universities” without financial aid.

Students can apply for scholarships now, he said, with help from an app that provides links to grants in the academic area they’re interested in.

“You need to be filling out a scholarship form every day,” he urged them. “You’ve got to go chase it.”

He told them schools can’t give them a precise aid offer until they have the federal data. Then the students will finally know how much it will cost them to go to that college. If they need to correct something on the form, they need to do it as soon as possible, to avoid further delays, he said.

But they can’t do that yet; the government has said the system can’t handle it, he said.

“It’s very confusing,” a student said.

The staff members nodded.

Washington told them to talk with the adults in their lives and vent: “Just lay it all out there. Because it’s a lot. … You’re still trying to graduate, and you’ve got all this other stuff. … It’s crazy. This is across America.”

Betty Wonde, an 18-year-old senior at Paint Branch High School in Maryland, hadn’t filled out the form before arriving at the event. Her older sister told her it was complicated and she would definitely need guidance to get through it. Wonde has been accepted with scholarships to the University of Maryland and Hope College. She is waiting to hear from Tufts University, Boston College and others.

She’s planning to study neuroscience and global affairs next year — after she gets through the FAFSA.

It was nerve-racking to fill out the form, said Selam Demeke, an 18-year-old senior at Justice High School in Virginia. “I was afraid I’d make some mistake — or translate something wrong for my father,” she said. Her parents came to the United States from Ethiopia in 2006 to give their children better educational opportunities. Like some other students at the event, she had learned of it through the African Diaspora College Access Program.

Demeke will be going to Brown University in the fall with tuition, room and board paid for by the school through a partnership with QuestBridge, a nonprofit that helps connect high-achieving students from low-income backgrounds with colleges. But she is hoping for aid to help her get to the campus and cover other personal expenses. She said her father is a taxi driver, her mother is unemployed and she comes from a family of six.

“That was super helpful,” Aaron Mengesha said as the event ended. He has been worried about how to pay for college and was happy to have gotten into U-Md. because it has in-state tuition and a strong engineering program. He filled out the FAFSA as soon as the form became available. “I’m hoping for a lot of aid,” he said.

“It’s unfortunate there’s a delay,” his brother said. “I’ve got to make my decision without knowing the biggest burden — price.”

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Old Crucible for New Igbo Trajectory

By Okey Ikechukwu

As Lead Speaker at the Ohaneze Ndigbo Retreat which ended a few days ago in Enugu, I saw the gathering as part of the cocktail of measures being put in place by the current leadership of Ohaneze to ensure greater group cohesion and more strategic engagement, going forward. As Ndigbo would say, the mother hen that does not bring its chicks together from time to time to educate them about their environment, to warn them about the dangers in that environment and also to explain to them how to successfully navigate the environment, has laid a solid foundation for their eventual decimation by hawks and other predators. Ndigbo say that it is by coming together to review existential issues that a family can periodically re-ignite and strategically address its interests in a lasting and sustainable way.

I had the option of giving the theme of the retreat, “Ako Bu Ije” a purely academic treatment. I could have delved into the foundations of this deep philosophical concept, its meanings, its implications for social morality and cohesion, and how this could be used to carry out a review of the Igbo worldview as a whole. But the clear and present existential dangers facing Ndigbo as a people ruled out that option. It was better to use the occasion to trace the possible root causes of these dangers and propose viable remedial actions; weaving same around the concept of Ako Bu Ije; as the essential philosophical, and even spiritual, underpinning of a way forward.

It is a matter of record that some of the problems of Ndigbo today are self-inflicted. It is also a matter of record that many of these problems have been externalized in such a way that others are being blamed for them. The factors undermining Igbo collective political and even spiritual well-being revolve around a mercilessly conspiratorial (and not objectively competitive) political environment that the people do not seem to fully understand.

I touched on the significance of the kolanut, on the essence of the ritual of the breaking of the kolanut and on why the kolanut is a symbol of communion and not a snack in Igboland. The full spiritual meanings, and implications, of the statement “He who brings kolanut brings life” was explained. The ceremonial consecration of the kolanut by Ndigbo was represented as no empty social gesture, but as a very important step of first calling on the forces of nature for protection and guidance in support of all that is good.

The bringing of the kolanut is, first and foremost, an opportunity for prayers for life more abundant. Since prayers bring blessings and is meant to strengthen life, whoever brings and offers the kolanut has brought an opportunity for life to be enhanced through prayers; hence the call at the beginning: “He Who lives Above, the Giver of life, protect us”.

The kolanut ceremonies also emphasize the interdependence in the community of all living things. That is why it is said: “May the river not dry up and may the fish not lack water to swim in”. The river looks more beautiful because of the fish, while the life of the fish depends on the steady flow of the river. Ndigbo also pray this before and after eating the kolanut: “Elders shall live and the young shall live. Our harvest shall be rich and none shall pray for the misfortune of another, lest his farm be the only patch of earth without rain’, etc.

From the foregoing, a proper understanding of who the Igbo man really is, is central to any attempts at finding a lasting solution to any, or all, of his problems. The average Igbo man likes to be consulted, noticed or at least taken into account as part of what is going on around him. He does not like to be hurried to a decision, or asked to simply comply with what has been decided upon. He would rather be involved in events he can influence to some extent. He likes to air his opinions and be acknowledged as a person, a contributor, or facilitator. He loves fair competition and visible, effective and sometimes dramatic performance.

Many proverbs bring out these points about the Igbo essence. He will proudly declare: “Onye aju na-ebu anaghi aza ide ji uno” (A person who is unsteady on his feet, drowsy, or staggering, is never given the title of “The pillar that holds the edifice). Ndigbo will also tell you: “Onye nmanya na egbu anaghii aza akwaa akwuru”. (A drunken person is never hailed as the unshaken, and unshakable, one)”. No family or kindred sends out its mad offspring to represent it in the village square as “Onu na-ekwuru oha” (Voice of the people).

These proverbs point to core values that make a clear distinction between the appropriate and the inappropriate, between the absurd and the norm, and between the sublime and the ridiculous. It was with this last observation in mind that the discussion dovetailed into the notion of Ako Bu Ije.

The deeper “sense” of Ako bu ije literally means “Wisdom and deep insight into the core values of life gives you the true path to anything lasting in the journey of life”. We can describe “ako” as “having deep inner promptings”, or knowing how to navigate life in a sustainable way and without undermining yourself or harming others in the long run. The Igbo saying “Agbusi gbaa otele, ya amuru ako’ (when the buttock is stung by an ant, it learns the wisdom of paying close attention before choosing where to sit) bears this out.

“Ije”, on the other hand, literally means to walk. But its deeper meaning refers to the journey of life, or the way to go in what you are doing and maintain an edifying and sustainable trajectory.

From the foregoing, therefore, we said, for the purpose of the retreat, that ako bu ije simply means: Life is best guided by wisdom, insight, discretion and a deep sense of propriety. The question that arose therefrom was this: In what ways can ako bu ije now become the rousing bell for a gathering of wits in the form of an Igbo renaissance? The answer is simple. It means that deep thinking, patient understanding of the operating environment, commitment to lasting values, or strategic engagement and evidence-based decisions and alliances, offer the best foundation for lasting success in every sense of the word.

The dummy out there, that the Igbo society is always essentially atomistic, and in a way that makes it largely ungovernable, does not have a leg to stand on at all. This questionable thesis is sometimes justified by referring to the misunderstood saying: “Igbo enwe eze”. (Igbos know/have no kings). This assertion simply means that Ndigbo do not confer on any single feudal authority an unquestioned, and unquestionable, right to decree and overrule all and sundry. When the Igbo man says: “Agbara nyekaria nsogbu ezi ya osisi esi nweta ya” (literally “when the oracle, or your talisman, becomes so powerful as to even try to terrorize its owner, then it is time to take it outside and show it the tree from which it was carved”).

Ndigbo are simply saying that the collective right of the people should be invoked to remind anyone with tyrannical aspirations that a hero is always a people’s hero. That is also why Ndigbo say that “A masquerade that flogs its drummers and followers ceases to dance, because it walks alone”.

From the foregoing, it should be clear that the Igbo concept of power and authority rests more on respect for the laws of the land, than on personal whims. The true Igbo concept of success is always linked with respect for Omenala. The people, and the laws of the land, always determine the difference between right and wrong. That is also why Ndigbo say: “Asokalie eze anya ekpuchie nkata na iru wee gwalua ya okwu aru”.

The idea of covering the face with a basket is often assumed to be out of fear for the life of the person who decides to speak out before the king. But it is not! No one has the right to walk up to the community leader and insult him, for any reason. It is just not done, no matter how wealthy you are. To dare such, you must either be part of a select group sent to admonish the leader, or you are stepping forward as the messenger of the community – sent by the community.

Once you are sent in this way, you no longer represent yourself; just as a man is presumed to have transcended to the spirit world once he is dressed up as a masquerade. The covering of the face upholds the dignity of the office of Eze and affirms that no one may insult the office in his capacity as a mere mortal. But this mysterious being from the beyond, speaking for the gods and men (but using the voice of a man) may do so to any unworthy occupant of an office.

The major trade mark of the traditional Igbo charlatan is that nothing he does can ever lead to sustainable development, or a healthy communal, religious or Family life. He is dangerous to social morality and the economic life of the people; because of his ‘Okpata otitaa’ approach to life.  It is such charlatans who parrot the proverbs like: “Ewu na eso onye bu igu” (The goat runs after whoever has palm fronds – read ‘green leaves ‘)

This statement is true, but it applies only to goats and any other nonvolitional living thing that behaves like a goat. Such sayings were originally meant to warn people against thoughtless materialism and immorality as a philosophy of life. But today it is freely used to justify irresponsibility, unfaithfulness and every form of debauchery.

How can it be true that only the person who offers immediate material satisfaction deserves loyalty? In Igboland, where the cardinal communal philosophy says: “A human being is no goat’’ The fact that this proverb and others like it have become the most popular in Igboland in recent times shows that we Ndigbo are facing greater existential threat at the philosophical level of distortion of pristine concepts than at the purely material.

The road from this culture of leadership charlatanry lies in progressively creating and nurturing new values. If all the avenues and platforms for opinion molding machines are deployed in the right way, there should eventually arise the needed critical mass of Ndigbo who will one day say: “Thus far and no further”.

Ako Bu Ije can only hold true where reciprocity is nurtured alongside the need for self preservation.

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