Abigail Williams and her friends were caught dancing in the woods, around a fire, naked. This is forbidden in the town for it is a sign of conjuring with the devil. When the girls were found and getting into trouble they started lying and saying they were under a spell, the rest of the people in the town started thinking that the devil was involved. With the thought that the devil was involved it drove the people to selfishness and stinginess. If one person had the ability to get rid of someone, they would take the chance because that would mean more land that they could buy.
The girls lying would be an evil force because they have taken it into their own hands to blame others so that they don’t get into trouble. They don’t care that some of them will be in jail for life after lying and saying that they do conjure evil, just to save themselves from being hanged. The girls are just scared to tell the truth which is causing problems for the whole town. Once the girls started blaming other people, the people they blamed, blamed others. People were being hanged and thrown in jail for something that was just superstition.
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It has to do with the way the people in the town turn on each other. Abigail turned on Tituba. Mary Warren turned on Abigail. Proctor turned on Abigail and himself. When Proctor turned on himself, he confessed to sleeping with Abby, hoping he wouldn’t get hanged for it, but ended up hanging anyway when he refused to let the town know of it. Abigail, in the beginning, told the girls that if the turned on her she would ring them a new neck, which she later proved when Mary Warren tried to tell the truth. The people blaming each other for something they know isn’t true is the darkness for the fact that some of the people died. The evil is the way the girls, mostly Abigail, manipulated everyone into thinking they were under a spell and being held by Satan
We have all heard the tales and seen the movies of evil witches cooking little kids up for supper. For the people of salem in 1692-1693 this was a reality. In the matter of less than a year more than two hundred people were accused of witchcraft and more than twenty were executed. In these historic events author Arthur Miller wrote a play about the people and events in this play there is a man, Reverend Hale is well versed in the study of witchcraft and has come to try and save the girls that have been gripped by the Devil. Miller has Hale change very much throughout the event of this play. In the beginning he believes that the Devil is at work in Salem, how ever near the climactic ending of this play he realises that this witch talk has gotten completely out of hand
Abigail and her friends start to accuse people in the town of witchcraft; by saying a person’s spirit attacked them. The people who were accused were usually the outcast of the town or someone Abigail and her friends
During the time of the Salem Witch Trials the intertwining of religion and government did not allow citizens of Salem, Massachusetts the right to a fair trial, so it was the states responsibility to separate the two. In the 1600’s the Puritan religion was greatly enforced by the government. It wouldn’t be until many years later that separation of church and state became a law.
The Anti-hero in The Crucible A hero is defined as "someone admired for his bravery, great deeds or noble qualities". There are three categories to which all heroes can be classified into, one of which is the anti-hero genre. An anti-hero has the role of a hero thrust upon them.
Many of the characters in Arthur Miller's The Crucible have specific human flaws that cause the tragedy of the Salem Witch Trials. The Salem villagers exhibit failings, including greed, vengeance, and fear, which eventually lead to the downfall of their town. Many villagers, especially Abigail Williams, take advantage of the opportunity to seek vengeance on others through the trials. Greed for power and land often holds precedence when the hysteria takes over. Fear of being arrested or put to death is the key motivation in turning others in as witches. From these three human flaws, the town of Salem falls into chaos with many innocent people paying the price.
So the cause of disease was because of some bad rye grain and it made them think it was witchcraft. Then the feud with the Parris’s and the Nurse family cause the revenge part of the Salem Witch Trials. Then for attention more people went to the hangings and they faked being hurt in the court when a witch walked in all for attention. The significance of the trials were don’t make some stuff up it will kill people and make innocent people die. That is how the Salem Witch Trials were
Also important to the play is how Arthur Miller depicts how one selfish, evil person like Abigail Williams can bring others down and make others follow her to commit evil acts. These evil acts affect even the most honest people in the town like John and Elizabeth Proctor, and Rebecca Nurse who cannot fight the accusations made against them by those following Abigail. Those following Abigail are considered to be holy men that are full of honesty and justice, but the play shows that even those who are thought to be respectable and right, like people of government or community leaders can bring death to innocent people if they are driven by something wrong. II. Plot: The plot begins with the inciting incident where Rev. Parris finds his niece Abigail Williams and his daughter Betty along with his slave Tituba doing some dance in the forest.
As the adolescents wail in their pretentious horror of a fictional bird, Proctor slowly realizes the conformation that Satan has entered Salem. Arthur Miller’s tragic allegory, The Crucible, shows the destruction of sinister Salem in 1692. The protagonist, John Proctor, a damnable farmer, has a lecherous affair with the antagonist, Abigail Williams, an ignorant and covetous juvenile. Satan mixes their interior motives to manufacture a catastrophic concoction. The ingredients of destruction consist of selfishness, immaturity, and corruption. The voracious desires of the natives of Salem lead to their evil and self-indulged intentions.
During the early winter of 1692 two young girls became inexplicably ill and started having fits of convulsion, screaming, and hallucinations. Unable to find any medical reason for their condition the village doctor declared that there must be supernatural forces of witchcraft at work. This began an outbreak of hysteria that would result in the arrest of over one hundred-fifty people and execution of twenty women and men. The madness continued for over four months.
Vengeance is the act of taking revenge for a past wrong. In the Crucible, Thomas Putnam and Abigail Williams both took advantage of circumstances to carry out vengeance against different people.
In The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, justice and injustice is portrayed through the characters of John Proctor, Elizabeth Proctor and Abigail Williams. It is also shown through the minor characters of Mary Warren and Mercy Lewis, followers of Abigail Williams, and through Danforth and various townspeople.
In the book “The Crucible” , Arthur Miller explains this conflict between goodness and evil between society and it's people. The setting takes place in the late 1600's and the early 1700's in a little town in Salem, Massachusetts. The people in this town were settling in this new land, and they had been going on for about a few years settling in quietly. But things started to arouse, as people heard of this new magic called witchcraft, in which it has said that witchcraft is used by witches, who use this power to abuse others, and cause chaos to the world, and it is only given to witches by none other than the Devil himself. Now, most of the people in Salem didn't believe in this witchcraft, and went on with their daily lives. But when a group of young girls, along with a black slave-woman, committed a ritual to get in contact with the Devil in some way, the ritual apparently was interrupted and was deemed incomplete, due to one of the people in Salem finding out that a ritual to conjure to dead was commencing. Soon, more and more people hear about the use of witchcraft, and started to blame others in the town, because they had very bad relations with each other. In the end, the town eventually dwindled down to the point where hundreds of people were accused and ...
Danforth, Abigail, and Hale all spread fear throughout Salem, Massachusetts through various means. Not all of their reasons were bad or for their own well being. The responsible parties were, in a way, forced to do the actions they did by the stakes that were laid out unknowingly. Each of their stakes were different and their methods of spreading fear were different. They all, however, spread fear throughout Salem, and cause of massive uproar of panic and death.
In The Crucible, Arthur Miller portrays the two main characters, John Proctor and Reverend John Hale as "good men". The term "good men" in this play is ambiguous. Reverend John Hale was a good man in the sense of being the perfect and good citizen of Massachusetts in the 1600's. He was pious, adherent to the laws and beliefs, and a good Puritan Christian. John Proctor, on the contrary would not be considered the greatest citizen. He was not so religious, nor the perfect Christian, and was not so adherent to the Puritan's laws and beliefs. However, he was still considered a "good man", as a person rather than being an ideal Puritan citizen. He was very honest, moral, loyal to his friends and family, and was generous. The two men can be contrasted as good Puritan vs. good person.
Being isolated from any other group of people with different beliefs created a church led Puritan society that was not able to accept a lot of change. The church was against the devil, at the same time it was against such things as dancing and other premature acts. The reputation of the family was very important to the members of the community. When the girls were caught dancing in the woods, they lied to protect not just themselves but the reputation of their families. They claimed that the devil took them over and influenced them to dance. The girls also said that they saw members of the town standing with the devil. A community living in a puritan society like Salem could easily go into a chaotic state and have a difficult time dealing with what they consider to be the largest form of evil.