The Crucible was based in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. The book starts off with Reverend Parris finding the girls in the woods dancing. Upon finding them Betty Reverend Parris’s daughter and some of the girls become ill. Abigail Reverend Parris’s niece tells him that when he found them in the wood Betty was so frightened when Parris found her she fainted and won’t wake. With Betty and the other girls unable to wake rumors of witchcraft start around the community. Reverend Parris begins to question Abigail about what they were doing in the woods. Betty still could not wake so Reverend Parris sent for Hale. Hale specializes witchcraft things. Hale believe that there is something supernaturally wrong with Betty. When Reverend Parris questions Abigail it he brings up that Abigail was let go by the Proctors and has been re-hired in months. The Putumn’s come to Parris’s house and tells him their daughter Ruth is sick to. Goody Putumn tells Parris that she sent Titiba to try to conjure the spirits of her dead baby’s because Titiba knows how to speak with the dead. Goody Putumn has lost 7 children and is trying to find out who has murdered her baby’s. When Parris and the Putumn’s leave Abigail begins talking to Mercy Lewis and Mary Warren. Abigail threatens them if they say anything about what happened in the woods. Has they talk we found out that Abigail drank blood has a potion to kill Goody Proctor. John Putumn then appears and talks to Abigail. We learn that John and Abigail were having an affair. That’s why Goody Proctor fired her. During them talking we
When death is on the line, the definition of justice becomes blurred. Both morally and physically, injustice runs rampant when a life hangs in the balance. Two examples of this conundrum are the play, The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller, and “A Plea for Mercy”, a portion of the concluding statements of defense attorney, Clarence Darrow. Both works deal with the trial of someone that has been irreversibly condemned by the government, and the people trying to keep them alive. The Crucible takes place in Salem, Massachusetts, during the brutal peak of witch-trials and executions. John Proctor, a man convicted of witchcraft by a jealous, adulterous young woman, is to be hanged for his perceived crimes. His wife, Elizabeth, convicted of witchcraft nine months prior by the same woman, is permitted to see her husband on the day of his execution. Proctor has confessed to his relationship with the woman, Abigail Williams, and feels that he
The Crucible is a play by Arthur Miller that takes place in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. At the time there are a series of trials, called the Salem witch trials. The play begins with us finding about a young girl who is unable to move in her bed. The villagers dubiously see witchcraft but they do not know that the night before all the girls left the village sneaked out to the woods where they made a potion, with the help of a black slave, Tituba, to let them have the man they love. It was fine until one girl, Abigail went too far and wished death on the wife of John Proctor. The girls went crazy, twirling and shedding but then Abigail’s uncle walks in and finds them. This is the real reason the girl is powerless to move, anxiety. The girls
All throughout the play John Proctor was a versatile character. From the beginning of the play was portrayed tormented for the affair he had with Abigail Williams which he believes his affair with Abigail damaged him in the eyes of god and everyone else in the town. For seven months john was cheating on his wife after while he felt the remorse and came to realize that the affair caused the accusations. Abigail being the leader of the group girls
This affair was never fully proven, but Proctor did say, “Abby, I may think of you from time to time but I will cut off my hand before I’ll reach for you again” (Miller 1140). Abigail was madly in love with Proctor and wanted Elizabeth out of the picture so she could have Proctor all to her self. Abigail was very jealous of Elizabeth. She thought that if Elizabeth would die, she would get Proctor all to her self. She accused Elizabeth of being a “cold, sniveling woman”(Miller 1140). Betty even said that Abigail “…drank a charm to kill John Proctor’s wife! You drank a charm to kill Goody Proctor”(Miller 1137)! All Abigail ever wanted was Proctor.
When Abigail gets caught by Reverend Parris she decides to lie and tell him that they were just dancing and Betty Putman fainted when she was frightened by Parris when jumped out of nowhere. When Mrs. Putnam comes in to talk Parris about the incident that happened before, she says “i’d not call it sick; the devil’s touch is heavier than sick. It’s death, drivin’ into them, forked and hoofed.” she is responding to her daughter Betty not waking up after she fainted and is suggesting that they have Reverend Hale in to inspect her. When Hale comes and talks to Abigail and the other girls that were dancing in the forest she blames it on Tituba by saying that she forced her to do these bad things. Then after being whipped by parris, Tituba decides to say that the devil is doing it and that she saw Goody Osburn with the devil. Then the other girls go along with what Tituba was saying and begin to blame innocent people. This is how the witch trials begin and well as John Proctor 's death will as well. Throughout the whole play these girls fake
“Controlled hysteria is what’s required. To exist constantly in a state of controlled hysteria. It’s agony. But everyone has agony. The difference is that I try to take my agony home and teach it to sing” (Arthur Miller, AZ Quotes). In the play, the Crucible, by Arthur Miller, Salem, Massachusetts was a place of constant hysteria in the 1600s because of what would come to be commonly known as the Salem Witch Trials. This was a full-blown witch hunt for people found to display signs of witchcraft. Abigail Williams was the main person to blame for this pursuit of witches in Salem because, first off, she was the one who caused hysteria about witchcraft just to cover up the fact that
Betty Parris’s great power throughout Act I can be seen by her ability to single handedly create chaos and hysteria within the town for her own personal gain. Her power can first be viewed after Susanna Walcott explains the possibility of a supernatural cause to Betty’s illness, leading Abigail to advise her Uncle about “the rumor of witchcraft [that] is all about: [She] thinks [he 'd] best go down and deny it [himself]. The parlor’s packed with people,sir” (10). This is the first hint that others in the town believe in the presence and of the beginnings of the hysteria that follows. Betty started this rumor in the town by pretending to act sick so that she would not get punished for dancing in the woods. She found a way to deflect the blame
In The Crucible, logic and reason play an active role as the counterpart to the fear that fills the Puritan society and the characters themselves. The characters Proctor and Hale represent the voice of reason against the voices of fear. Though they are outnumbered by those who give in to the paranoia, they stick with what they believe is right despite knowing they will become a pariah. On the other hand, Danforth and Parris represent the driving forces of fear and paranoia that plagues the minds of the people in their society. Society’s reaction to their driving force is to comply because to do otherwise is to be an outcast, and to be an outcast could result in one’s death.
The Crucible, a 1953 play written by Arthur Miller, an American playwright. It is the story of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Province of Massachusetts Bay during 1692 and 1693. It is more dramatized and fictionalized than the original story of the Salem witch trials. There were rumors of a girl that was bewitched her name is Betty Parris. She was always in her bedroom and was sick so her father was wondering what the problem was. The father of Betty Parris, Reverend Parris is an overly protective father who is always worried. Then one day he sees his daughter and his niece Abigail and some other girls dancing with a servant named Tituba. He is now even more worried that she does have a connection with witchcraft. If so, then
During the late seventeenth century in Salem, Massachusetts Bay, Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams were found dancing in the forest by Samuel Parris (minister of Salem). Later on, both of them started to do violent movements and to scream randomly. A doctor theorized that the young girls were acting strange because they were bewitched. Afterwards, different young girls in the area started to have resembling behaviors. After all of this chaos, Tituba (Reverend Parris’s slave from Barbados) and two other women were charged for witchcraft.
Abigail forces the girls of Salem to dance in the woods with her to help conjure spirits and make the charm to kill Goody Proctor. Abigail threatens the girls right after Betty took fright by saying, “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.” (Miller, 144). Later on as the trials prolong Mary Warren turns on Abby and is telling the court that she lied. When Abigail then accuses Mary of witchcraft she turns back to Abby and obeys her once again. The fact that Abigail has this much power, not just in the court, but over other people as well helps her to essentially control the whole
Salem, Massachusetts, 1692. A village of the Puritans where religion ran every aspect of society, also the place where the historic Salem Witch Trials occurred. The Salem Witch Trials were a mass hysteria where the villagers wildly accused their neighbors of conspiring with the Devil and casting spells to ruin daily life. The Crucible was written by Arthur Miller because of his personal experience. Earlier in his life, Miller was being trialed by a court for being a communist put through his own personal crucible about his beliefs which inspired him to write this play. Abigail and John both counter their religious expectations through their individualism due to Abby’s desire of vengeance and power and John’s contradicting actions in society.
What is a tragic hero? The most common definition of a tragic hero is a literary character that displays characteristics of bravery and courage, yet is destined to downfall. Often times, these characters have a tragic flaw which leads to the ultimate collapse of the hero. In Arthur Miller’s tragic play, The Crucible, John Proctor is a good, well-respected man, however he has one fatal flaw. His secret affair with Abigail Williams spurred the jealousy that Abigail has towards Elizabeth Proctor, John Proctor’s wife. Abigail then began to turn John Proctor’s life around by accusing Elizabeth of witchcraft. This fatal flaw eventually led John Proctor to his own death. The play is set in Salem during the Puritan era where many people, like Elizabeth
Published in 1952, during a period of cold war tensions, which culminated in the ideological witch trials of the mcarthy era in America; The crucible by Arthure miller is set in 1692 during the witch trials in salem massachusetts. The author has used allegory to position the reader to draw parrelels betweeen the to time periods and critisize the persecution that occured in both eras. One of the main themes that Miller has used to portray this viewpoint is the representation of personal integrity. Integrity is the quality of having strong moral pronciples.This is acheived through strongly contrasted characterisation of characters such as Abigail williams and and Rebecca Nurse, aswell as the inclusion of textual features such as irony, symbolism