Examples Of Revenge In The Crucible

How Revenge Drives People to Do the Unthinkable
Make notes in your reading of the theme of revenge. Analyze the theme of “revenge” as Miller develops it in The Crucible.
The feeling and act of revenge is known to many people. It is often characterized as getting payback on a person in order to gain self-satisfaction. We can most likely all look back at a time when we thought somebody wronged us or made us feel pain. Do you not ever want the person causing the pain to feel a piece of the hurt? This is the feeling of revenge. You can find an easy picture of what revenge looks like when you watch young children argue or fight. Children who hurt others feel that they have been hurt and they try to even up the score. Sometimes people will go through

extreme difficulties in order to get revenge and build their self-esteem. The theme of revenge is shown as an essential part in Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible. It directly affects the actions and emotions of the characters, and the mood of the play. This play shows readers, how much a person’s desire of self-satisfaction can drive them to do cruel and unreasonable things to others.
In the town of Salem, in the Crucible, you will find many people who would be similar to people you may know today.

There are people who are rich and there are people who are poor. There are people who are religious and there are people who are not. There are people who hold grudges, who dislike certain people, and do not get along. They feel as if their lives would be better off without the people whom they dislike. So, when witchcraft is brought up as a possible solution to the minister’s daughter’s illness, people start to accuse the people they dislike because they know that witchcraft is a crime worthy of hanging. The characters get revenge on their fellow townspeople by blaming them of being involved with witchcraft. In doing this, they use the church as a standard for persecution and they are not directly involved with the almost certain death of the person they

accuse.
One person who seeks great revenge in the Crucible is Abigail Williams. With a cold heart, Abigail says, "It's a bitter woman, a lying, cold, sniveling woman, and I will not work for such a woman." (page 11) Abigail speaks of Elizabeth Proctor, putting revenge on the woman who is married to the man Abigail wants for herself. Abigail's love for John Proctor drives her to do everything in her power to ruin not only Elizabeth's life, but John's as well if she can't have him. When Elizabeth finds out that she is accused by Abigail, she says to her husband John, “It is her dearest hope, John, I know it. There be a thousand names; why does she call mine? There be a certain danger in calling such a name – I am no Goody Good that sleeps in ditches, nor Osburn, drunk and half-witted. She’d dare not call out such a farmer’s wife but there be a monstrous profit in it. She thinks to take my place, John.” (page 58)
Abigail also threatens revenge on the girls who were also involved the dancing and witchcraft if they said anything out of line about what happened in the woods. She says, “Now look you. All of you. We danced. And Tituba conjured Ruth Putnam’s dead sisters. And that is all. And mark this. 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. And you know I can do it; I saw Indians smash my dear parents’ heads on the pillow next to mind, and I have seen some reddish work done at night, and I can make you wish you had never seen the sun go down!” Abigail’s words show us how the past has influenced her and made her into her present being. Like a lot of the characters in the story, she has a lot of pain and sorrow in her life that she feels she needs to take out on the people around her and in the process she hurts many people.
An additional act of revenge was found in the relationship of Ann Putnam and Rebecca Nurse.

Ann Putnam had spent a great deal of her life trying to find out how only one of her eight children survived at childbirth. The blame simply had to go to someone and who better than the midwife of these children? She claims that Rebecca Nurse, her midwife, used witchcraft to kill her babies at birth. Rebecca Nurse is one of the most respected, wise, sensible, and upright women in the community but was still put to death as a result of Ann Putnam accusing her. She was put to death to help Ann Putnam feel a sense of justice, revenge, and self-satisfaction. This is an example of the extremes people will go to in life so that they can have a high self-esteem and someone can be put to blame. The people in Salem got so caught up in the people they disliked and their misfortunes that they lost sight of

reality.
Since the beginning of mankind, the scheme of revenge has been proven. With Kane killing Abel in the Bible, came the concept of revenge. It is something that everyone has done and everyone has desired to do. Revenge corrupts people’s minds trying to influence them to do things that are immoral in order that a person benefits. Many of the characters ignore their own values in seek of a hostile vengeance. They take advantage of people’s fears of witchcraft and the devil. Taking great pleasure in putting the guilt on others is a trait many of these characters possess. It drives them to do the unthinkable and turn backs on people they once called their friends. It brings out the hatred in the hearts of people as people are only concerned for their reputation and for their own self-satisfaction. In the play, the Crucible, we can see just how far we as humans can take revenge and the things it can drive us to do to one another. It is important to learn that the past is the past and that we cannot change it. No act of revenge can make a mistake or misfortune better and this is a lesson The Crucible teaches us.