Examples Of Allegory In The Crucible

Have you ever been accused of something you did not do? Well that is what a group of people in Salem in 1692 experienced, however their outcomes were much worse—they ended up being hung. The Salem Witch Trials is a dark time in American history, where many innocent people were accused of witchcraft and the accusations were only based off of spectral evidence. Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is an allegory for the Salem Witch Trials. The Crucible revolves around a group of girls, which include Betty Parris and Abigail Williams, who accused several people of witchcraft. Betty Parris’s immature deception initiates the accusations and deaths of many innocent people. These accusations would not have occurred if Betty had not tricked her father into

One of the older and well-respected women in the town, Rebecca Nurse, states that “A child’s spirit is like a child, you can never catch it by running after it; you must stand still, and, for love, it will soon itself come back” (Miller 25). This shows that Betty’s behavior was not due to the fact that she was “possessed by the devil” or by a “spirit”, like they had thought, but rather that she was just being a child and playing a joke on them. Had Betty confessed to playing around, no one would have been accused of witchcraft. In addition to not confessing to her pretense, Betty also had proof that Abigail did not tell the whole truth as to what the girls were doing in the woods. Betty states, “You drank blood, Abby! You didn’t tell him that!” (Miller 18). Betty knew what the girls did in the woods (since she was there) but she did not tell the court that Abigail was not telling the whole truth. If Betty had given up everything Abigail did in the woods, everything that the girls said would be taken less seriously and many of the people accused would not have been killed. As well as having