In The Crucible, Abigail Williams, John Proctor, and Elizabeth Proctor are arguably the most important characters. The affair between Abigail and John drives the plot of the play. Abigail begins accusing societal outcasts as witches and gradually works her way up the social ladder until she is able to accuse an upstanding citizen like Elizabeth Proctor of being a witch and having people believe the accusation. She accused Elizabeth of being a witch so that Elizabeth would be hanged. Then, Abigail would have John Proctor all to herself. Abigail, while certainly diabolical and ruthless, is rather misrepresented. Abigail has received nothing but tragedy in her life; short, though it is at this point. Her parents are killed in front of her at a very young age and while there is not anyway you can take that in a sympathetic aspect, seeing as she uses it to convince the girls to do her bidding, it is very clear that this image has stuck with her. The Crucible paints John in the position of a tragic hero and then ineluctably places Abigail in the light of an antagonist with no hope of retribution. Once you commend John for his actions, you must implicate Abigail for hers. Simply stated, Abigail should not just be incriminated based on what information we are provided. Abigail, while still very much faulty in her actions, deserves to be examined at a deeper level to provide you with the full understanding of just why this woman’s scorning was her breaking point.
To initiate this
Fear can cause people to make bad decisions causing the situation to worsen. According to the play The Crucible is about a group of girls who were caught practicing witchcraft who were forced to tell lies about the devil forcing them to participate in villainous actions and then forced to name those involved in the fear of being hanged by the court. Head of the group was a young woman named Abigail Williams, who was infatuated with a married man and determined to get rid of his wife. In the play The Crucible, Arthur Miller personifies Abigail Williams as a manipulative character as seen when she successfully manages to convince the court that Elizabeth and other innocent citizens work with the devil and how she controlled the group of girls into pretending to have encounters with evil spirits of the accused. Arthur Miller wrote the play as an allegory of the McCarthyism in the 1950s. Focusing on the inconsistencies of the Salem witch trials in seventeenth-century in Salem Massachusetts, and the extreme behavior that can result from dark desires.
I am going to write a essay on The Crucible by Arthur Miller. Throughout the play, John Proctor makes three important confessions. First one being when he told his wife he cheated on her with Abigail, second one is when he confesses he committed lechery in court, and the last one being that he confessed that he was a witch. The first confession was made to get back together with his wife. The second was to expose Abigail Williams for what she has done. And the last one was to save his life but he took that confession back. So all of his confessions have different reasons. But none succeeds in improving his situation.
TV shows and Movies with a focus on cliques, either in high school or in the work force, are popular in our society today. For instance the movie Mean Girls is about a teenage girl moving to a new school and being recruited into a high school clique. In this clique, the members exhibit the behaviors of people experiencing the psychological phenomenon, Groupthink. Groupthink is the practice of thinking or making decisions as a group in a way that discourages creativity or individual responsibility. There are eight symptoms of Groupthink- Invulnerability, Rationale, Morality, Stereotypes, Pressure, Self-Censorship, Unanimity, and Mindguards. Groupthink has also taken place in our history a a country. The play, The Crucible by Arthur Miller is about a the real-life Salem Witch Trials that happened in 1692 - 1693, in Salem, Massachusetts. Some symptoms of Groupthink found in the Crucible are Rationale, Pressure, and Self-Censorship.
The Salem Press Salem Witch Trials March 23 1692 SALEM WITCH TRIALS A FRAUD By: Alloyius Cole Recent updates have proven that John Proctor and others are indeed innocent after eyewitnesses saw Abigail Williams running up Proctor’s Ledge screaming.
Abigail Williams is completely out of line throughout The Crucible. She would not be considered a victim because she caused all of the gruesome events that happened. If Abigail did not pretend to be under a witch's spell, multiple people from her village would not have been hanged. She also gave a judge names of innocent people for the sole purpose of getting the affection of a man, John Proctor. Abigail was only interested in what was best for her; she did not consider anyones feelings. By the end of The Crucible, Abigail felt bad about what she had done. She only felt bad about her lies because she ended up getting the man she loved hanged. She was also given a chance to confess for lying, but she did not take it. Through her
An array of Aristotelian tragic heroes can be found throughout American literature. One of which includes John Proctor, main character farmer in mid-30s, from Arthur Miller 's play, The Crucible. Yet, in order for him to obtain such a title he must possess specific characteristics. Five of which include possession of hubris, a flaw or decision leading to desire for revenge, a reversal of good fortune brought forth by the error of judgement, acceptance of poor fortune brought forth by their actions, and lastly the fate dealt to these characters must be greater than deserved. Aristotle once said that “ A man doesn 't become a hero until he can see the root of his own downfall.” Before the play even begins John Proctor has already conducted adultery, a fatal flaw in judgement, with Abigail Williams, a sneaky seventeen year old. This crucial crescendo leads to the development of the Salem Witch trials and the downward spiral of John`s comfortable lifestyle.
In the late 1692s of the Crucible in Salem Massachusetts where individuals lived with contemptibility lives where individuals would preferably trusted in individuals' lies than hearing the genuine truth. Regardless of how you have faith in them, individuals will advise misleads spare and ensure of their notoriety and great picture. A residential area in Salem Massachusetts was submerged because of the announcements. John Proctor, a solid and good rancher, was one of the general population (accused of a wrongdoing) of doing enchantment spells/utilizing supernatural forces.
In The Crucible its all about these people who are practicing witch craft and falsely accusing people just so they can live. There are many characters that change tremendously. One in particular is John Proctor. He is a man that has many problems but in the end transforms to an amazing character. A quality of John Proctor is that he is honest and a rather blunt man. In this essay John Proctor will be my main topic and I will be describing the man he was throughout the play.
John Proctor, a prominent individual in both the Salem Witch Trials and The Crucible, was tried and executed for witchcraft in 1692. "When the witchcraft hysteria first began in Salem village in the winter of 1692, Proctor became an outspoken opponent of the trials and stated to many that the afflicted girls, who had been accusing many of the villagers of witchcraft, were frauds and liars" (Brooks). There were many parallels between John Proctor and his character in The Crucible, including his vocal opposition towards the trials and his strong Puritan values that influenced his actions. As an involved member of the Salem community, Proctor was incredibly concerned with his reputation. Proctor 's young slave Mary Warren began experiencing fits after the scandal broke out. "She [Warren] testified that Proctor 's spirit beat her and forced her to touch the Devil 's book" (Brooks). His involvement was interpreted by the community, as him performing witchcraft in attempts to possess the girls.
With all that is going on in the world today, what is more important to you freedom or Safety? In The Crucible, Abigale choose her own safety over hers of her friends and family, and in Fahrenheit 451, Guy choose his freedom over the safety of him and his wife and, in Berlin you either live on West Berlin were you were free or you lived on the other side of the wall where you had no freedom but you were safe. So which side of the wall do you want to live on?
In the 17th century a group of Puritans migrated from England to America - the land of dreams - to escape persecution for their religious beliefs. Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is based on the real life witch hunts as well as his own experience with the anti-communist campaign in the United States during the 1950s. In the 1692 Salem, Massachusetts the superstition of the existence of witches existed and the inhabitants of the town were Puritans who followed the Bible in a very strictly. A small group of powerful people wrongly accused and killed many people out of their own fear, ignorance, jealousy, or vengeance is a main point in the play. An abundance of people in Salem believed or pretended to believe the show the girls put on from what they felt was the Devil’s work.The Salem witch hysteria would not have occurred if the people of the town did not follow the rules of their religion as severely as they did.
As the various characters in The Crucible by Arthur Miller interact, the dominant theme of the consequences of women’s nonconformity begins to slide out from behind the curtains of the play. Such a theme reveals the gripping fear that inundated the Puritans during the seventeenth century. This fear led to the famous witch-hunts that primarily terrorized women who deviated from the Puritan vision of absolute obedience and orthodoxy. Arthur Miller presents his interpretation of the suffering by subtly introducing women who strayed from convention and paid the consequences. Throughout The Crucible, Arthur Miller delineates the historically austere Puritans’ perception and punition of women who differ from expectations, all while unraveling, through the characterization of Tituba, the harsh truth of how women were vided as lesser than men and feared if deviating.
What the hell is going on in Salem? Everyday someone new is being accused of being a witch. No one is safe. Hide your kids; hide your wife, because they are accusing everyone around here. In the play, The Crucible, the Salem Witch Trials are taking place and many people are being falsely indicted of practicing witch craft. Thus, meaning many innocent individuals are being hanged because of the lies of four young girls. The Crucible, has many themes, but the most impactful one is hands down “Power Corrupts”. It outlines every little detail in the story of how Judge Danforth, Abigail, and Reverend Hale become evil and corrupt with the power they obtain throughout the plot of the story.
When eras of horrendous history are forgotten, along with valuable lessons learned from the turmoil, who suffers from the negligent ignorance? The Crucible by Arthur Miller is a compelling play about the undertakings of the Salem Witch Trials. Miller uses creative license to mold history into something literarily symbolic: the Witch Trials taught man no significance; the failure to learn from one 's mistakes caused history to repeat itself, the people that initially suffered having gone through their troubles for nothing. Therefore, the subsequent victims embody the consequences of the same unlearned lesson, and the cycle repeats. A product of the 1950s ' Cold War: a domestic struggle with the anxiety of communism, McCarthyism rooted from Americans ' suspicion of alien policy, a potential threat to their familiar ideals. The religiously intrinsic Puritans of 17th century colonial New England held firmly to their faith and disapproved of other ways to knowing God 's will, much like how Americans, dreadful of their government becoming something of the tyrannical enemies ' of Nazi Germany and communist Russia, held firmly to free will, democracy, and the ways of patriotic government. Thus, fear of foreign ideas that might endanger one 's safe and comforting standards puts those accused of such in a bind. To confess to witchcraft in 1692 meant life - and a blotched reputation; to deny, meant death. To confess in the 1950s meant an end to the relentless interrogation - and
Throughout this past semester, we have covered a lot of plays and their films that correspond within those plays. While I have learned a lot along the way I have found that there are certain plays that stuck out. Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, and The Importance of Being Earnest were among some of these plays from this semester. However, one of my personal favorites is The Crucible. I was able to uncover many themes from this play such as secret sin, lies and deceit, and religion.