Jealousy In The Crucible Essay

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In the play that dramatized the absurdity of the American court system and how hysteria could take toll on an entire town, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible showed just how chaotically a seemingly perfect society could come instantly unglued. Miller’s choice of representing the Salem witch trials as play that symbolized the idiocy of the more recent ideology, McCarthyism, made the play a theatrical classic. Miller showed that people are strongly motivated to lie, by the power of jealousy, to see through a personal vendetta. First, Miller showed the power of jealousy through Abigail Williams, who lied on several various occasions to seek out her vengeance on Elizabeth Proctor. Williams is envious of John and Elizabeth Proctor’s marriage and turns …show more content…

ABIGAIL: She is blackening my name in the village! She is telling lies about me! She is a cold, sniveling woman, and you bend to her! Let her turn you like a- PROCTOR, shaking her: Do you look for whippin'?” (N/A). However, many can’t seem to wrap their heads around the idea that Williams could possibly be motivated by jealousy. Few get angered by not realizing this truth, including Proctor and Danforth. Proctor was told by Elizabeth that Williams is seeking the benefits of having Elizabeth executed and Danforth had to maintain his superiority and pretend to ignore the possibility that Williams had lied, to further her personal vendetta powered by jealousy. Secondly, Miller’s choice of setting affected the way jealousy and lying couldn’t be seen a main motivator because the theological foundation that Salem stood upon. Salem is governed by the “true-judge”, being God who had men on Earth to provide justice. However, this system couldn’t been seen as accurate because they believed that the children were telling the truth because God spoke through them to dictate who was guilty or not guilty. The time period forced people to lie to stay alive, so when someone actually lied they couldn’t tell whether it was just an act of desperation to live or fulfilling a personal ulterior motive. Miller’s choice of setting screwed up the minds of the characters making them blind to other possibilities that people might have

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