Since the beginning of time people have gone through trials in court to either be proven innocent or guilty. In the Crucible by Arthur Miller a massive number of people were being convicted in Salem, Massachusetts because of the witch trials. The law of the land states that everyone is above suspicion until they are demonstrated to be guilty by legitimate evidence; in the play the Crucible if a person was accused of an unlawful act they were summons for being a witch and working for the devil without proper confirmation. Citizens in Salem were imposed to establish their innocent or be put to death, which caused conflicting issues in the village.
In the play Abby tries to do witchcraft to kill John Proctor's wife Elizabeth. She almost gets caught doing it so she accuses many people of bewitching her and got many people hanged. She accuses Elizabeth of bewitching her to kill her. The court will not kill her because she is pregnant but John Procter ends up being hanged because he was accused.
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.
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.
When Giles’ wife is accused of witchery, when Giles mistakenly says that she reads many books, he is devastated. He gathers evidence as to why people who dislike him would lie and have his wife accused of witchery. When Giles presents this evidence to the court, Danforth and Hathorne command Giles to tell them the name of the man from whom he obtained this evidence. Giles firmly says, “I will not give you no name. I mentioned my wife's name once
She gets accused for forbidden crime witchcraft. She about to be put in jail accused of practicing witchcraft. Abigail blamed her for stabbing a needle in her, using her witch powers. Mary Warren states that Elizabeth was accused,but she defended Elizabeth and the court dismissed the accusation. Elizabeth thinks that Abigail wants to kill her for John because Abigail wants to take her place as his wife.
The Proctors had been tried in court and gone against by every girl in the court accusing Elizabeth. Abigail claimed that this was true because Goody Proctor and her had been in a affair and this had made Elizabeth mad and made her want to kill Abigail. The judge asked John Proctor if he had actually committed adultery with Abigail. Going against his own name Proctor cried YES that he had actually committed adultery with Abigail.
People in the village had power by influencing others to lie in order not to receive the consequences of witchcraft. Abigail shows power in the play by influencing the girls and what to say and do. She threatened all the girls she will hurt them if they open their mouth and say the truth. Abigail threatens, “Let either one of you breathe a word, or the edge of the other thing and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will being a pointy reckoning that will shutter you.”(Act 1). Abigail tells them she will shutter them with something that will hurt them in a dark night.
As a result, many are hung, as they would not confess to consorting with the devil and performing witchcraft. Abigail even goes as far as stabbing herself with a needle to support her claim that “[Proctor’s] wife’s familiar spirit pushed it in” (Miller 74) in the second act. In addition, when Proctor, in defense of his wife, attempts to reveal the truth behind Abigail’s accusation, she manages to bend what she had done onto Proctor, which convinces the judge—Danforth—to convict him. At the end while Proctor is executed, Abigail manages to leave the town with her uncle’s money, showing that she successfully defeated the protagonist by exploiting weaknesses and channeling her
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.
The play The Crucible written by Arthur Miller, is a story that takes place in Salem during the time when witches were real. The story of these people accusing each other of witchcraft to cover up their own story of attempting witchcraft which leads to innocent people being hanged for something they are not. Those people would rather die than to lie about confessing they have been with the Devil, because only cowards lie and the brave keep to the truth till the end. John Proctor’s wife Elizabeth is accused of witchcraft by Abigail. Because John rejected
The crucible is a play written by Arthur Miller which focuses on the inconsistencies of the Salem witch trials and the extreme behavior flaws that the people represented during the 1690’s. In the story all the characters lived in a puritan town where several young women were exposed or afflicted to witch craft. These young women decided to accuse people of witch craft in order to save themselves from punishments such as, torture and execution, the people being accused by these girls were usually people that their families didn’t like or have had issues with in the past in order to get them out of the town. The main women to continue the act of accusing innocent people in order to save themselves from punishment was Abigail Williams. Around the same time of these events Abigail had relations with a married man named John proctor.
The Crucible is a tragedy play written by Arthur Miller. In the play there was a character by the name of John Proctor; Proctor was a family man that made a huge mistake. A character named Abigail lived with proctor and his wife and his two sons. Proctor’s wife, Elizabeth, is accused of being a witch and Proctor has to make a moral decision in order to save his wife. Proctor showed a difference throughout the story and those differences also relate to Kohlberg’s “Developmental Stages of Human Moral Reason.”
"We lie,we all do. We exaggerate,we minimize,we avoid confrontation,we spare people's feelings,we conveniently forget. We keep secrets,we justify lying to the big-guy institutions. Like most people,I indulge in small falsehoods and still think of myself as an honest person. Sure I lie,but it doesn't hurt anything.
Though the Crucible is fiction, the allegorical character of John Proctor reflects the author, Arthur MIller in the following ways. The Crucible is a comparison to the real life “witch trials “ which we're going on in the real world. Arthur Miller used The Crucible as a way to protest the Red Scare to compare how very similar Salem’s witch trials were to this accusation of communism. The red scare was the inoperable fear of communism within the United States. The Salem trials and communism were times so fearful, when accused you were guilty no matter the verdict.