Mary Warren Who Is To Blame For The Crucible

Blame. Blamed for possible plotting of the hanging of one’s wife and many others, for the terrorizing of innocent girls, for lying, for choosing sides, for not knowing which side to be on, for signing a black book, for witnessing this and that, for happening to exist. Is it really possible for one person to be responsible something as broad as this? For this huge fit of madness? Some seem to think it’s possible, in fact nearly everyone did in Salem, all majorly towards the accounts of Mary Warren. What Mary really was lying about is truly unknown, but how could anyone expect to get answers out of her after everything she had been accused of and been through? Even things as small and kindhearted as making a doll for the woman she worked for,

ended up causing more distress than there should be.
Mary may be seen as someone who made one too many changes on whose side she was on, but she wasn’t the only one who was switching sides.

Abigail, is also guilty of switching sides. She seemed to be partnered with Mary in the beginning, but after Mary changed her mind and joined Proctor, Abby switched faces, accusing Mary of working with the devil. Mary never accused anyone of such things, never meant to sentence anyone to their death, but Abigail did all of that, and no one at the slightest suspected her of lying, not until she vanished at the climax of the trials. Reverend Hale also appears to be a victim of changing sides as well, wanting to find right in the village of Salem in the beginning, but then suddenly wanting to save lives, as if the importance of cleansing the community had vanished, and having less trails encrypted under his name became the higher priority. It was almost as if he himself began thinking that the rumor of witchcraft really was nothing at all, just as John Proctor had tried to tell everyone all along. These two people were highly respected, and nearly worshipped during the trials, everyone seeing them as people of good, people who wanted to bring the warmth of christ back into the cold bitter hearts of the accused and the accusing. But wasn’t that what Mary Warren was trying to do as well? And as she tried, she did it in a much healthier matter than Abigail and Hale. Mary never accused anyone, never was responsible in the hangings of nearly a

whole community, yet she ended up with the unfortunate position as Abby’s pawn, and Abigail played her over and over again.
The biggest reason most despised Mary Warren was that everyone seemed to think she was a liar.

Was she? Maybe, but there isn’t much evidence on what Mary was actually telling the truth about, especially on if she possessed the ability to faint at her own will, whenever she might think appropriate. She claimed she couldn’t do it when the ability was revealed at the final court session over Elizabeth, and that the feeling wasn’t there when she was forced to make an attempt. Of course, this seems like enough proof to show that she was lying about that ability, and that it really was the devil taking over her, making her faint at the same time as anyone else. But the situations in the court were very stressful, the decisions and drama in the room were more than likely enough to make anyone’s head hurt. Plus, the season that The Crucible takes place in was spring, when the climate was most likely warming up, or at least warm enough for girls to be dancing naked in the woods and for farms to be growing crops. This could’ve easily added to the heat created by a crowded courthouse, enough to cause heat exhaustion and dehydration, causes of fainting. How all of the girls fainted at the same time? It’s a mystery, but it could’ve been a chain reaction from the sight of one person fainting as

well.
So how did so many people think Mary was a figure of witchcraft, after all of this? I don’t understand it myself, because Mary Warren isn’t the person to be harsh and demanding in a situation like this. She never yelled, used violence, or sacrificed the innocents threatening her life to get her way. In fact, she never tried to get anyone to do anything. Mary Warren isn’t guilty of what many think she is accused for, but rather manipulated into situations she didn’t want to be in. By Proctor, Abigail, Danforth, and many other personas of persuasion and guilt. Possessed by the devil or not, she is still human, and no human could undergo such pressure and not come out the same shape they were in the beginning.