In “ The Crucible, “ Miller uses the character Mary Warren to describe the confusion, anxiety, and peer pressure that the people of Salem felt at the time and to further put the audience in the shoes of one living in this crucial time in early history. Mary Warren is a vital character because she demonstrates an accurate illustration of how young women in this time period get peer pressured into committing crimes against innocent people. The author goes on to give insight to how a young woman in that situation might have lived and realistic experiences someone might have went through. The reader can learn lifelong lessons and themes from the role of Mary Warren because of the facts the things she did resembles a lot of recurring crimes faced today.
Abigail oftentimes makes me wonder what people would do in order to have a good reputation. In the play Abigail only cares about herself and what she can do to protect herself. When the girls talk in Betty’s room and Mary shows weakness and wants to tell everyone about what they did in the forest, Abigail gets really angry. She threatens the girls and is not afraid to show what she is willing to do. “Now look you.
Obsession, Love? The Crucible by Arthur Miller is a play which contains a multitude of complex characters . In the play, the characters’ motivations and inner processes are explored. Because of the historical setting, the characters live in a society of judgement and extreme religious devotion. This is a factor that places any of the characters’ choices and morals in a public balance to be judged by others.
Abigail Williams: The Conniving Woman of the Crucible The Salem Witch Trials began in Salem Massachusetts in 1629. Many people were accused of being a witch and many lives were lost. In Author Miller’s The Crucible, Abigail Williams is the most to blame for the events of the Salem Witch Trials. Abigail is one of the main characters in the play.
In Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible”, Abigail is most to blame in the Salem Witch Trials. The Salem Witch Trials is based on a period of time where the devil’s work has found its way into the Christian city of Salem, causing everybody accused of witchcraft to confess, or be hanged. Abigail, a teenage girl at the time, has fell madly in love with a man by the name of John Proctor. John is a married man, but in his past he has had an affair with Abigail which nobody knew of. Abigail’s immaturity shows throughout the story, along with major jealousy over Elizabeth Proctor, John’s wife.
“Nobody, but he who has felt it, can conceive what a plaguing thing it is to have a man’s mind torn asunder by two projects of equal strength, both obstinately pulling in a contrary direction at the same time (Laurence Sterne).” In The Crucible, playwright Arthur Miller wrote the character of Mary Warren to be coerced into two differing conflicts driven by her obligations and influences in acts two and three, just as Sterne’s quote describes. Throughout the play, the character of Mary Warren was pulled by the compelling influences and obligations put on her by John Proctor and Abigail Williams; this relates to the theme of power and what people do for it that was presented throughout the play. Furthermore, in acts two and three Mary Warren was obligated to help John Proctor get Elizabeth out of jail.
The Crucible has many characters to blame when it comes to questioning why everything happened the way they did. It’s hard to describe a reasoning for all of this or exactly who to blame because there is so many different opinions and reasons to why everything is happening. A quote I think that does a fairly good job at this is, “There are wheels within wheels in this village, and fires within fires!”(Miller, Pg.148). The character I think that you can point to first and blame the most when asking why everything in Salem happened is Abigail Williams. There are three major reasons to why Abigail is to blame and the first is because she slept with John Proctor.
People fear of things they don’t know. This fear can grow to a size that people start to get rid of the subject of the unknown and sometimes it can end up a Salem witch hunt or McCarthyism. There are many people that use lies to get what they want and there are even more people who would believe in those lies. That is the case of Abigail in The Crucible. It starts when she is lying to save herself from being accused of practicing witchcraft but after some time she is starting to use power of the fact that others believe in her lies.
The Crucible Essay The theme of hysteria is evident throughout Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and in everyday life and society. Driven by self-preservation, hysteria influences many characters’ actions and leads to the devastating witch trials in Salem. For instance, many characters in The Crucible are driven to execute drastic actions to sustain their reputation and protect themselves.
In Salem, Massachusetts a series of hearings and prosecutions started, commonly known as the Salem Witchcraft Trials. The witchcraft trials in Salem became a big concern after two-hundred innocent people were accused and twenty people were executed. Many people of Salem believed the court was just in accusing all these victims. A seldom amount of people went against the court in saying that the court was a fraud and that the decisions were biased being made. Abigail Williams held all the power in the court and determined who was “guilty” or not.