Crucible: what Dramatic Devices does Miller use to Keep Abigail Williams at the Centre of the Action?
Abigail Williams is constantly at the heart of the action in the play through
either her direct actions or speech. Miller concentrates on Abigail as
a consequence of her being one of the real historical figures. It is
obvious that Miller has tried to get his play as historically correct
as possible and therefore had lots of facts available for him to weave
into the play about Abigail. Although he did change certain points
such as Abigail's age because it would not have been morally correct
in a play to have a child and a man in a relationship. It is also to
give a greater impression of love, lust and want from Abigail, which a
child could not express as meaningfully.
I also think that she is concentrated on so much because she is so
volatile throughout the story and therefore offers so many dramatic
possibilities. Abigail was innocent and shocked with the judges making
her story extremely believable. She would be fierce and extremely
manipulative with her 'friends', and yet coy, persuasive and kind with
John Proctor. Through these endless possibilities, Miller guarantees
that Abigail is at the centre of the play's action
I think that Miller was writing a play based around fact, but still
holding a warning that the dangers superstition and 'witch-hunting'
can cause to a modern audience. Miller is very good at using powerful
speech to keep Abigail as a strong character within the play's
hysteria.
I feel that Miller's main intention of the play was to write a piece
of drama that contained the rich language and thought of seventeenth
century America with all of its superstitions and anxieties, while
still having an interesting and powerful story in modern times.
The most important way in which Miller keeps Abigail at the centre of
the plays action is that she is involved in nearly all of the dramatic
movements within the play. The crucial events of the play happen as a
consequence of her own actions to achieve her personal goals.
In Act One Abigail is at the centre of attention. She is focused on
with her interview with her Uncle Parris. This interrogation focuses
on the girls dancing in the woods. Through Parris' selfishness and
disbelief in his own niece, Abigail appears convincingly innocent.
Miller raises the tension by continuing accusations from Parris of
which Abigail seems hurt and angry at his foolish questioning.
"There be no blush about my name."
(pg 20)
This quote from Abigail follows Parris' querying as to whether or not
her name is white in the town.
A motivation can be described as a character having a reason to behave or act in a particular way. Someone or something can be someone's motivation. A child obeys its parents to avoid punishment or a clerk works overtime so that he can afford a better car are examples of motivation. In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, characters illustrate several types of motivations. Throughout the play, Abigail is motivated by jealousy, power, and attention.
In Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, Miller demonstrated that it was Abigail William’s flaws – mendacity, lust, and arrogance – that led her to be responsible the most for the tragedy of the witch hunt in Salem, Massachusetts. Driven by lust, Abigail was able to lie to the Salem community in hopes of covering her and her friends’ deeds and gaining the attention of John Proctor. Her arrogance enabled her t0 advance her deceit.
In the Crucible there was three characters that stood out from all the other ones in this wicked story. Abigail Williams was a big influence in this story she would lie and lie to get out of things and she was also the leader of the girls in the woods. Furthermore she also had an affair with John Proctor which made John and Elizabeth relationship unstable. Also John Proctor runs into a situation at the end of the story where he is put in the position if he wants his pride of not signing that paper full of lies or die knowing he did the right thing of not lying. Additionally, Elizabeth Proctor has never lied ever until the day John was being prosecuted for his witchcraft and possibly adultery and Elizabeth lied so that his name wouldn't be ruined.
In every family, there is one child that is always very misleading and evil, and besides that, they get away with everything that they do that is unsound. The certain person in the family may break on of you mom’s favorite plate, and then end up placing the blame on you, and then persuades your parents that he or she is telling the true. Abigail Williams is the poor duplicate of that sibling or relative. She influences everyone that she is an innocent teenage girl, but that is not the case throughout the play. In the play, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, Abigail is the bona fide misleading and evil teenage girl.
In Act Ⅱ Scene 2 of The Crucible, a 1953 play by the Arthur Miller, Abigail Williams, the antagonist, meets John Proctor, the protagonist, in the forest at night, where John asks Abigail to free his wife in court the next day, or otherwise he will expose their affair in public to ruin her. This fast-paced short scene portrays Abigail as pious and possessed, which contradicts the impression given by previous scenes. Most importantly, the scene reveals the crucial plan of Proctor which he is planning to use to take down Abigail. By excluding the scene, Miller eliminates the unfavourable danger of jeopardizing the credibility of the characters due to the inconsistency of descriptions, heightens the dramatic effect when Proctor confesses in Act Ⅲ, and prevents the readers from being misled by the affection Abigail has displayed in the scene.
First, In the book The Crucible Abigail Williams is the vengeful, manipulative, and a liar. She seems to be uniquely gifted at spreading death and destruction wherever she goes. She has a sense of how to manipulate others and gain control over them. All these things add up to make her one good antagonist with a dark side. In Act I, her skills at manipulation are on full display. When she's on the brink of getting busted for witchcraft, she skillfully manages to pin the whole thing on Tituba and several of Salems other second class citizens. Also since Abigail's affair with John Proctor, she's been out to get Elizabeth, his wife. She convinced Tituba to put a curse on Elizabeth, hoping to get rid of her and take
The Crucible by Arthur Miller shows how authority is a characteristic that can easily become a problem throughout a society. Many subjects were addressed in The Crucible such as guilt, hypocrisy, justice, hysteria, and courage. However, the most important subject throughout the play would be the nature of authority. There is a fine line between the concept of having authority and having power. In the book, the authority weakened and led to the antagonist Abigail Williams leading the law as opposed to the law leading Abigail Williams.
How can a girl who condemned seventy two to a death sentence and drank a charm to kill a man’s wife, a man she has slept with on more than one occasion be the victim? It’s possible when the town she lives in is worse than her. Although Abigail Williams is typically thought of as the antagonist of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, she is in fact a victim as much as any other tragic character in the play.
In The Crucible, Arthur Miller shows that the tragedy of the Salem Witch Trials stems from human failings, particularly the need for vengeance, greed, and fear. Abigail Williams is an example of all three. Her fear prompts her to first accuse random women, her need for vengeance directs her toward Elizabeth, and her greed for power affects the lives of everyone around her. Individual flaws, when acted on collectively, inevitably cause the downfall of Salem.
The statement,“The Crucible is essentially about courage, weakness, and truth,” is proven true numerous times, throughout the play. The Crucible was written by Arthur Miller, about the true events that happened in Salem, Massachusetts, between the years 1692 and 1693. The Salem witch trials consisted of many hangings, lies, and complete mass hysteria. The citizens of Salem followed the religion of Puritanism, and the ideas of predestination. The root of the mass hysteria comes from their belief in the sense that in something happens then it must have been planned by God. In Miller’s portrayal of the story, Abigail Williams was the ringleader of the witch trials, and she used the idea of predestination to cover up her own sins. Abigail was a very manipulative girl and ruined many lives. John Proctor, Mary Warren, and Elizabeth Proctor were just a few of the victims in Abby’s game. John, Mary, and Elizabeth exhibit the traits courage, weakness, and truth, whether it was in a positive or negative way.
It is clear that Abigail Williams is portrayed as the antagonist in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, taking place in the late 1600s in Salem, Massachusetts and based on the witch-trials therein. She serves as a catalyst for the witch trials by falsely accusing innocent townspeople with the intent of maintaining the position of power she gains from them. Due to the transparency of her actions, Abigail’s ulterior motives are also distinguishable. Certain effeminate stereotypes are presented throughout the course of the play. One of which, being that of the immoral, husbandless woman, Abigail embodies. Slave to emotion and motivated by lust, Abigail falls
Evil is defined as being profoundly immoral and malevolent. It is characterized by suffering, misfortune, and a force in nature that governs and gives rise to wickedness and sin. In Puritan times, all sins against the church were considered illegal and wicked. Sins such as adultery, vengeance, and manipulation were some offences considered to be immoral in the town. The Crucible not only touches upon these committed sins but also creates a character who is guilty of almost all of them. Abigail Williams, a seventeen year old young woman in the town of Salem, Massachusetts, finds herself tied up in a lie surrounding her use of witchcraft. In venture to rid the town of Elizabeth
Abigail Williams the main character in The Crucible by Arthur Miller draws the interest of the reader as she is a wicked, confident girl who lies to get what she wants and defends her name and her life.
The first way Miller illustrates the theme of lies and deceit is through Abigail’s conniving
The first scene of The Crucible can be seen as an opening scene, as it presents some of the characters of the book and the story. In fact, we see the presentation of the characters and it is shown to us how all the story started. However, the one that shocks me the most is Abigail Williams. Indeed, at the beginning of the book, we see that she appears as a delicate and sweet girl, a girl that couldn’t do any bad. However, we see as the story goes in this first act that she is not what she pretended to be. We indeed discover that she was the mistress of Proctor and that she destroyed one of the most holy things in the world: marriage. This scene with Proctor seems for me like a foreshadowing as we really start to see who Abigail Williams really is. Who will she become? That’s for us to discover.