How To Maintain Power In The Crucible

In the fervor of the witch trials, Abigail is put on a pedestal by the people of Salem and treated as though she has a direct connection with the Divine. Through cold calculation, Abigail carefully selects the people that she accuses in order to establish her credibility. Thus, she first accuses the town’s social deviants, as she knows the court is already predisposed to convict them. Soon a mere accusation from her becomes enough reason to convict even important, influential people. Abigail uses the witch hysteria that consumes Salem to secure herself from accusation, and gain control of the trials by accusing respectable people, before moving on to Elizabeth, and then in her desperation, she manipulates Mary Warren into eventually accusing John.

Putnam claims that “There is a murdering witch among us, bound to keep herself in the dark. Let your enemies make of it what they will, you cannot blink it more” (16). Putnam is yet another powerful male figure in Salem Betty has taken a grip over in the town. He, in this quote, truly believes that the devil is among the town of Salem based on Betty’s current condition. Reverend Hale, encouraging Tituba to give more names of witches, tells her to look at Betty’s “god- given innocence; her soul is so tender; we must protect her; Tituba; the Devil is out and preying on her like a beast upon the flesh of a pure lamb.

In 1692 a terrible tragedy occurred, it killed many and lead a town into ruins. This tragedy was the Salem Witch Trials. The witch trials started with two girls, Betty Parris and Abigail Williams, who were thought to have fallen ill. their illness was classified as bewitchment due to their abnormal symptoms such as twitching, choking, and contorting their bodies in abnormal shapes. They soon began to accuse people in the town of witchcraft.

Back in 1692, witchcraft was a very popular topic of conversation. Witchcraft became so bad in a town by the name of Salem. The Salem Witch Trials became very popular and lead many people to their death. Girls were caught dancing in the woods and was accused of doing witchcraft. By the end, everyone was accused of witchcraft and many people were executed.

People in the Red Scare were often accused of being communist oftenly when someone was accused of being a communist, people would accuse other people just to not be accused as an communist. This is the same for the salem witch trials. In this book the townspeople of Salem have been put in a state of mass hysteria. Abigail Williams attempts to survive using deceit,power and control over people.

The Salem Witchcraft Trials had many effects on the town of Salem, Massachusetts. A lot of the effects were negative, destroying the community, government, even individuals. The Witch Trials affected the community of Salem in multiple ways. The witch trials created many tensions between several families in the town. The most acknowledgeable dispute from the play was between the Putnam’s and the Nurse’s.

She is mean. She shows that she is mean by threatening the lives of the girls if they say anything about witchcraft. “Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you” (act 1 line 460) She also shows that she is mean when she is coping Mary making the pastors in the court believe that Mary is a witch. “

.This sickness then transforms into the first idea that the Devil is able “control” others, ultimately aiding his authority and command over the townsfolk. As well, in order to discover the truth, Parris and Putnam threaten Tituba with death. After listening to such violent repercussions, Tituba admits that she “don 't desire to work for him”(44) though implying contact between the Devil and herself. In spite of fear, Tituba openly admits to being controlled by the Devil, reassuring the prevalence of the Devil in Salem.

Abigail goes to any length without regards of the possible repercussions of her decisions. Abigail’s narcissistic character makes the reader wonder at what length will a person go to indulge their cravings. She terrorizes the town and forces the Puritans to both turn against each other as well as to burn themselves. Whether it is an obsessive love for another person or an intense hatred for a group of people, narcissism, grandiosity, and intolerance still plague our society. Whether it is in the late 1600s with the Salem Witch Trials, 1950s with the Red Scare, or just this month with ISIS attacks in Paris, they have gone, and will most likely keep going, to extremes to get what they want, much like what Abigail Williams did in Salem to get Proctor’s love.

All through history millions of individuals have been shunned, arrested, brutally tortured, prosecuted, and persecuted as witches. One would think that post colonization of the United States these unjust acts to human kind would have ended, but that was not so. In 1692 the Salem Witch Trials took place, an event that was a major catastrophe in United States history. It began when a group of young girls in Salem, Massachusetts declared that they were possessed by the devil and made accusations that several older women were practicing witchcraft and fraternizing with the Devil.

In the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller many characters turn on each other accusing them of witchcraft. Many people are getting hung by these false accusations, and the town is chaotic due to this. In the play The Crucible, Arthur Miller shows that characters are motivated and will stop at nothing to get what they want. Miller shows this through the accusations made by Thomas Putnam, Judge Danforth, and Mary Warren.

In these books the devil stands stripped of all his brute disguises … Have no fear now - we shall find him out if he has come among us, and I mean to crush him utterly if he has shown his face!” (Miller, 185). This statement shows that the power has gone to his head. He is promising that he will make everything right again and that he will obliterate the devil from Salem. He thinks he is the only one who can do this because he has read the books and obtained the knowledge needed to get rid of the devil.

The pursuit of power outweighs moral motives causing the manipulation of fear and its detrimental consequences. In The Crucible, Miller represents the dangers political power poses to individuals that are manipulated with fear for political gain through the parallel of the 17th century Salem Witch Trials to the 20th century McCarthy trials. In both contexts individuals experience social injustice as a result of political wrongdoing. Salem “developed a theocracy… to keep the community together” whose fundamental purpose was to guarantee that individuals in society adhere to a moral code of conduct. However, this theocracy enabled religious individuals to further their motive of power by dictating the lives of others.

I think there is a little bit of dark forces because they were dancing around a fire in the woods at night and Tituba was making a potion. The girls knew it was wrong to even be dancing because it was told that to dance is heathen. In Salem everything is either of God or of the Devil. So, the girls were caught dancing in the middle of the night by Rev. Parris who was afraid that they were involved in witchcraft.

In the late sixteenth century the idea of witchcraft was defined as working with the Devil to perform dark magic. In the town of Salem in Massachusetts, the idea of witchcraft spreads as many townspeople scramble to save their name from blackening. In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, the importance of reputation is depicted as many people of Salem use their reputation to free them from the numerous trials of accused witchcraft. John Proctor displayed the importance of his reputation by protecting himself and other citizens of Salem during many accusations against them.