What Role Did Abigail Williams Play In The Crucible

It starts when she is lying to save herself from being accused of practicing witchcraft but after some time she is starting to use power of the fact that others believe in her lies. She accused Elizabeth Proctor of witchcraft so she can be with John and she is lying to force Mary Warren to join their side again. In the beginning of the play, when the girls are just about to try to wake up Betty but Mr. Parris will come in while, Abigail says, “No, he’ll be comin’ up. Listen, now; if they be questioning us, tell them we danced-I told him as much already” (Miller 174). She is lying to save herself and she is expecting others to do the same and they will.

She is a cold, sniveling women, and you bend to her!” (24 Miller). When is she rejected, Abigail immediately begins to criticize Elizabeth in hopes that John will leave Elizabeth for her. Abigail lies to John in saying that Elizabeth is a horrible women who does not love her. She does this in expectations that John will trust her in this. Nevertheless this method does not work which is when Abigail decides to increase her

No, I cannot, I cannot stop my mouth; It’s God’s work I do” (875). That is until Mary caves under the pressure and accuses John Proctor of being the Devil 's man, so nothing bad occurs due to Abigail. In addition, Abigail tells lies, manipulates her friends and the entire town, and eventually sends nineteen innocent people to their deaths. Throughout all of the hysteria, Abigail’s motivations are based off of a simple jealousy and a desire to have revenge on Elizabeth Proctor. There are a few background

Abigail Williams’s intentions when she dabbles in witchcraft are anything but innocent, as she is trying to kill Elizabeth Proctor after she was fired from the house when she learned about the affair with John and Abigail. However, after suspicions arise that she is a witch, she coerces the court into thinking several people of were witches to alleviate the blame from her. She paints herself as a worried, innocent girl who just wants to rid the town of evil, when on the inside she is dogmatic and manipulative, which causes her to indirectly sentence about twenty people to death. Her ruse starts when she needs to distract the people from her own iniquity and she spouts out a stream of accusations: “I saw Sarah Good with the Devil! I saw Goody Osburn with the Devil!

When a woman is accused of being a witch and her life is in danger in 1600’s Salem, MA what recourse does she have to protect herself? Women of the time had no authority; they were seen as property of the men they married or were born to. Arthur Miller’s The Crucible takes place during the famous Salem witch trials. It all starts when young Abigail Williams has an affair with John Proctor and practices witchcraft in an attempt to kill John Proctor’s wife, Elizabeth. When Abigail is accused of witchcraft, she confesses and in order to take blame off of herself, she accuses many others as well.

She starts accusing people that she doesn’t like of practicing witchcraft, including Elizabeth Proctor. Elizabeth Proctor is John Proctor’s wife, and Abigail doesn 't like her because she wants to be with John, who she had an affair with. Abigail thinks that by accusing Elizabeth of witchcraft Elizabeth will be killed and then she can finally be with John. During these witch trials, many other people were accused and blamed for things that they did not do. It was mostly because of Abigail and her friends were lying about innocent people doing witchcraft.

The Crucible is Inspired by the McCarthy time the 1950’s, Arthur Miller’s play, mainly focused the Salem witch trials, carelessness that can result from desires, and pleasure for others. Arthur Miller bases the play on historical things of the Salem witch trials. He starts of the play with Revered Samuel Parris’ daughter, his niece Abigail, the slave Tituba, and some village girls dancing in the woods. Rather than suffer punishment for their actions, the girls accused other women and men of witchcraft. The girls say that they saw the other people practicing witchcraft.

In “Half Hanged Mary” the town hangs a woman called by Mary Webster for witchcraft. “Under stress, a society will always scapegoat a person or a group of people” in hopes to get rid of a huge issue at stake, not thinking of the damages of the people not associated with the problem. A presentable text to justify this statement is The Crucible by Arthur Miller. In this story a small village in Salem, Massachusetts has a scare of witchcraft. Instead of taking the

Fear and hysteria strike Salem over the belief that the devil is in the town because Parris’s niece, Abigail Williams, was found dancing in the forest with other girls and Parris’s servant; and soon after two young girls fall sick. The town suspects the girls of witchcraft; however, Parris does not want to believe witchcraft is the cause of the trouble in Salem; so he calls in Reverend

In the beginning, Mary and her friends danced in the woods, but they are caught by Reverend Parris, and afraid they will get in trouble, two of the girls pretend to be afflicted by a witch. The two seemingly afflicted girls send widespread chaos through the town, and the remaining girls have to figure out what to do to get the attention away from their dance in the woods. Mary is understandably terrified as she is a rule follower and has never broken a rule in her life. Mary knows that “the whole country's talkin witchcraft!” (Miller 1107). Mary desperately wants to tell the truth because she believes their punishment will be less severe if they are truthful.

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. To begin with, Abigail had control over the rest of the girls who were also caught dancing in the woods. The girls, after the incident in the woods, lied along with Abigail. Whatever lie Abigail came up with, the girls would support it. Even in court, Abigail had the support of the girls when she claim to have seen a yellow bird.

Two of those characters are Abigail Williams’ and Samuel Parris. Act one begins with Samuel Parris discovering that his niece, Abigail, was dancing in the woods. Today, this would not be overly concerning, but back in that time children were hardly allowed to speak to anyone. Since children were supposed to be so submissive towards adults, it was shocking that a group of kids would go out to dance by themselves and was suspected to be witch trials. As most would in the late 17th century, Parris believed that his niece and daughter were performing witchcraft in the woods and that was why his daughter Betty had fallen sick.

Tituba also afraid of facing consequences blames someone else. This blaming caused a domino affect, all started by Abigail Williams. In act one in The Crucible, Abigail Williams was the person for creating disorderly witchcraft in Salem. Abigail lied about herself to stay away from punishment, Betty also revealed that Abigail was partaking in

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.