The Choices In Arthur Miller's The Crucible

It is prohibited to dance because of their religion and soon everyone knew that the group of girls were dancing in the forest naked. Abigail threatened the girls by telling them if they said that they did more than danced in the forest she’ll “come to [them] in the black of some terrible night and [she] will Lopez 2 bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder [them]” (Miller 148).Abigail and the girls started blaming random people in the town. Abigail’s intensions were to blame goody Proctor and have John Proctor all to herself. The girls made bad actions instead of confessing. With the huge act they had going on; they caused people to die based on their lies.

It all started with Abigail and Betty lying to stay out of trouble. Then, Tituba and the girls accused innocent people of witchcraft because they could. Finally, John Proctor takes pride in his faith and honor and is hanged for not signing his name to a lie. Every decision made in Salem after the witch hunts started depended on truth versus lies because if they told the truth, they would die and if the lied they would live. This essay proves the development of the theme truth versus lies in the crucible by stating three major events in the play where truth versus lies depends on what the results are.

Abigail blames different people but she also blames John Proctor’s wife, Elizabeth. Abigail goes to Proctor and begs for him back and also confesses to the accusations being false. Many people start going to court and confess to signing their souls over to the devil. Proctor, to save his wife’s life, tells the truth but the court does not believe him and he is hung. The Crucible does a great job in showing the prejudice and hypocrisy in real life events.

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.

During Act 1 Mary attempted to be righteous, by trying to get Abigail to confess about what the dancing in the forest. She doesn’t want to be hanged for witchcraft and breaks down to the point Abigail smashes her across the face. Mary claims that they’ll “only be whipped for dancing’.” (Miller 18).“Abby, we’ve got to tell. Witchery’s a hangin’ error’.” (Miller 18). Mary was afraid of Abigail Williams and didn’t tell the truth fearing that Abigail would hurt her.

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. “Abby' s lust threatens Proctor in many ways: she tempts him to sinning adultery in the first place;

He threatened excommunication and hell fire in my last moments if I continued obdurate.” (Shelley 94) The Crucible featured a trial in the third act where several characters accuse Abigail Williams, the main antagonist, of deceiving the court by falsely accusing people of witchcraft. As their evidence they present a follower to one of the girls, Mary Warren, to provide witness testimony to this. Abigail interferes by accusing her of witchcraft. As the trial goes on Mary Warren collapses under pressure and continues to go along with the game since she feared death. (Miller, Act 3) Both of the locations of the trials mattered to the outcome of the verdicts.

Danforth stated “Hang them high over town…” Hale tells Danforth that the other girls are lying about the witchcraft but Danforth didn’t listen to Hale that the accused is wrong Danforth began the hanging ( Also signed the warrant of 72 people). “The accuser is always holy” (Act Two) Proctor states that the accuser is right because they are holy, but the 72 innocent people are killed because all of them were misjudged for being or dealing with witchcraft. “I, Sir, am innocent to a witch. II know what a witch is”-Martha Corey “If you know not what a witch is , how do you know you are not one”-Judge Hawthorne Martha was trying to prove her innocence to Judge Hawthorne in the court but then Hawthorne flipped her word around and made her look more guilty than she already is. Mary Warren states “What'll we do?

Abigail Williams is the woman that started it all by telling the other girls to lie about dancing in the woods. Because of that, I do not believe she acts like a traditional Puritan woman should. One reason Abigail did not act like traditional Puritan women was because she danced in the woods. Abigail herself states that anyone caught dancing will be whipped. When her uncles caught the girls in the woods dancing by the fire, Abigail did not mention they were saying boys' names wishing they could marry them.

The Crucible is the story of a young Puritan woman in 1692 Massachusetts who made false witchcraft accusations in an attempt to save her life and to end a rival’s life. While her actions are horrific and the cause of numerous deaths, the actions of the adults around her that enabled her lies to cost lives are despicable. Through his dishonest characters, specifically Reverend Parris, Judge Danforth, and John Proctor, Miller exposes the evils of lying to save one’s name and the destruction that inevitably ensues. The first dishonest character mentioned in the play is Reverend Parris, a man who has worked to be a reputable, trustworthy church leader. After he saw his niece, Abigail, and daughter, Betty, dance in the woods, he suspects that they were involved in witchcraft.

Around the time of the witch trials, the people in Salem were very religious. Rumors were easily spread and it was nearly impossible to prove yourself innocent if people were talking about you otherwise. During the witch hysteria, innocent people were imprisoned and and executed because someone has accused them of being a witch. It is understandable that some would accuse others to save themselves from imprisonment or from possible death. However, I believe Abigail should be held responsible for the imprisonment and execution of innocent people because she threaten the girls, so they would act bewitched and she also lied about getting stabbed by a needle and making it look like as if Elizabeth Proctor did it with witchcraft.

People were so full of fear that they would do anything to eliminate their anxiety. The McCarthy hearings of the 1950s reenacted the hysteria of the Salem witch trials of 1692 by spreading mass fear of prosecution, creating false accusations, and blacklisting people. The Salem witch trials were considered to be America 's most notorious episode of witchcraft hysteria. Many innocent people were killed as a result of false accusations, and many other women were put through trials to determine if they were witches. All of the evidence that was given, in other circumstances, would be deemed unreasonable.

Though Abby wasn’t the only one who was caught, she lied to Reverend Parris so that she would not be hung once witchcraft was being talked about throughout the village. She threatens the other girls to not tell the truth about what truly was happening in the woods. “... We danced. And Tituba conjured Ruth Putnam’s dead sisters. And that is

22. Tituba was forced to confess what really happened because, they were going to beat her until she confessed about what happened. She confessed to witchcraft, and also because Mrs. Putnam’s told Tituba to do the ritual and that is why Tituba did what she did 23. Abigail and the girls knew that at one point they would get caught so Abigail would do anything to keep herself from getting in trouble, so when she found out that people were accusing them, she stared to say that the devil forced them in to doing all those things because she knew that they would get some serious consequences for doing what they did by dancing and doing witch things and plus she is the leader of the group so they do what she says 24. She wants john to go in town and tell the authorities that the girls are lying about what really happened.

During the witch trials, the accused were interrogated and forced to plead guilty of witchcraft or die. Most pleaded guilty just to save their life, but they were also forced to give up the names of other “witches”. Blaming others could also direct the blame from the accused to someone else, this way the accused could escape the pain and shame of being called a witch. In Cotton Mather Biography, it is stated that, “As the trials progressed, and growing numbers of person confesses to being witches.” This portrays the on going snowball effect of blaming other people of witchcraft. This is also depicted in the McCarthy hearings, for accused communists were pressured to give up the other communists.