Towards the end of the play, Hale goes back into the town Salem and tries to have people confess to save them from being hang. Hale wants Proctor to confess so he can be with pregnant wife. Proctor ends up confessing to the judges to save Rebecca. In order for the confession to be complete Danforth tells Proctor to sign a paper stating that he is confessing about doing witchery.
Power in our society nowadays is very misgiven and abused. When people have power they tend to use it for their own benefit and to manipulate people into believing them. In the play, The Crucible, Arthur Miller dramatizes the Salem witch trials of 1692 in order to show his audience how easy it was to be accused and hung for witchcraft. In the Crucible a group of young girls were caught dancing in the woods and in order to not receive a punishment they lied saying they got witched. The girls blamed many people of the town of being witches and caused conflict all over the village.
Mary- Abby stop it, Abby- Abby stop it”.(act 3) Abby is a killer. She killed a lot of people during the salem witch trials including John Procter. Finally Abby is a liar. Abby lies many times in the play.
Like Abigail utterly told liars about how Elizabeth spirit had stabbed her at the dinner table but actually Abigail framed Goody Proctor with the doll Mary Warren had made as evidence to stable herself. Also Abigail accused Mary Warren for working with the devil in the setting of act three in the courtroom. The girls in courtroom acted as if Mary spirit was attacking them ,to scare her back to their side. Giles Corey also accused Thomas Putnam for being gluttonous for more land and therefore accusing his neighbors for it.
”(Miller 100). At that point in time Mary Warren and John Proctor both tried to prove Abigail Williams and the other girls of faking it until, act 4 when she backstabbed John Proctor and made her own claim that John Proctor was satan. ”You’re the devil’s man.” (Miller 110). Mary knows what Abigail was always a threat and being on her side was an advantage, John Proctor was foolish for thinking Mary would keep her word and tell on the girls.
“The Crucible” is a play written by Arthur Miller, a playwright, and is about one of the many events that took place in Salem, Massachusetts, 1692 at the height of the belief in witchcraft, the Devil, and his followers. In turn, when a group of girls are caught dancing around a fire with a slave from Barbados and a girl, Betty—the daughter of Reverend Parris—falls into a mysterious, coma-like state, the citizens of the town spark rumors of witchcraft and necromancy. Later, when Abigail—the leader of the group of girls—and Tituba confessed to consorting with the devil, the sparks were replaced by an uproar of blame. Although a man by the name of John Proctor, a farmer, does not appear in the middle of the Act One, he is the protagonist as it is his story of failure, guilt, and redemption.
Why did people believe in witches and why was witchcraft a crime? By: Kaya Saito Introduction This essay is about why people believed in witches and how witchcraft was a crime. This essay is split into 3 different parts the belief, explaining the belief, and witchcraft crimes. The Witches are from the 16th century to the 17th century in Europe. Witches were usually women sometimes men who made an agreement with the devil to help by causing harm and bringing suffering to innocent people.
The number of people testifying made it seem as if Goody Nurse was more likely to be a witch, but this is not true because the witnesses are untrustworthy and biased against the Nurse family. The witnesses moved their bodies in court the same way Goody Nurse was moving her body to make it seem like Goody Nurse sent out her spirit to control (Lewis). This made it look like Goody Nurse is a witch, but we believe that the Putnams and their friends were doing this as a ruse so that Goody Nurse could be convicted when in reality she is not guilty. These actions by the
parsonage. Even though the oppressed girls were among the main accusers during the trials, many historiographers believe the deranged girls parents, particularly Thomas Putnam and Reverend Samuel Parris, were inciting the situation with the girls and purposely influencing them to accuse certain people in the community they were not particularly fond of, to gain revenge or just out of spite. Cotton Mather was the minister of the Salem church, and truly believed in witchcraft. He had decided to investigate the unusual behavior of the children who belonged to John Goodwin, a Mason.
Samuel questioned the girls until they eventually told him that his slave Tituba was a witch. The girls also named Sarah Osbourne as well as Sarah Good as the ones tormenting them. On March 1, 1692, Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osbourne were arrested for practicing witchcraft. Tituba confessed to having made a pact with Satan, causing a psychological dam to brake, releasing a torrent of emotion and hostility on the part of the girls and shortly thereafter on the part of the entire local community.9 The start of the accusations by the girls also initiated the executions. Over 150 men and women were accused and arrested for witchcraft and some were executed.10
Judges forced the suspected witches to undress down to their undergarments in public and were examined for marks. These marks consisted of blemishes, birthmarks, moles, and even scars. The community believed these marks were the Devil’s way into a person 's body. Many individuals in the village went as far as scratch, freezing, and burning marks off of their bodies to be innocent. The judges would also bring in experts called Pickers.
One of the first accused was Samuel Parris’ own slave, Tituba. It was unheard of for a Reverend to have witchcraft practiced under his own roof, and Parris could not afford to lose his reputation. Samuel stood by his children in court as they testified against the accused, and he even helped them by testifying against Rebecca Nurse. People thought for certain that if the Reverend was standing with the girls against the so called “evil witches” that there must be a real problem. Parris even made a statement that the witches were plotting against Christianity, which made sense if the witches were indeed working for the Devil.
The Crucible and McCarthyism are not all that different. They were both very dangerous and evil events that have happened, which have ruined many people. In The Crucible, There were many people that were trying to save themselves or another person by using others. John Proctor’s wife Elizabeth was accused and sent off to sit in jail until she hangs or confesses. John did not want his innocent wife to be hung for something she did not do.
In The Crucible, many of the characters were slightly altered from the original Salem Witch Trials to make the story more interesting. Abigail Williams was one of those characters. She has several changes, some major, some minor, but they affect the story in a big way. While there are many differences, there are also some historically accurate things about her thrown in as well.
Mass hysteria was present in both The Crucible and McCarthyism. Mass hysteria is when people went crazy because people were accused of being communists and or witches. Mass hysteria was however started by specific people in both scenarios. In Mccarthyism Joseph Mccarthy a United States Senator and in The Crucible Abigail Williams who was accused of having an affair with John Proctor her employer were the specific ones who accused people of being communists and witches. Even though the Salem witch trials happened in the late 1690s and McCarthyism in the 1950s they paralleled each other.