In “The Crucible”, the character of Abigail Williams behaves in a hypocritical manner as she is the one who fuels the witch trials and depicts herself as a malicious person. At end of Act I, Abigail says how she wants the “light of god” and the “ sweet love of Jesus!”(Miller 48). Abigail is pretending to be the righteous and innocent person by hiding behind the name of god but her true intentions are very far from what she claims. The town believes her claim about others being a witch and her being a innocent girl who is just struggling through all of this. Abigail exposes her real identity to the audience as she confronts John Proctor. In the interaction of Proctor and Abigail, Abigail makes the statement about how she saw his face when
she was being kicked out and “You loved me then and you do now!”(Miller 22). At that time, it was believed that one should be a virgin until married.Abigail is a seventeen year old girl and yet she’s flirting with a man who is in his thirties and is married. Abigail has committed Adultery with Proctor but she shows herself as a good Puritan who praises god.She even asks Proctor to leave his wife for her. With the knowledge of how wrong she is, how selfish she is being, she never feels guilty or bad about Proctor or even the girls that she created fear in and goes against the moral values of god she claims to believe in. Abigail’s actions causes mistrust and chaos among the people. Near the end of Act IV, as everyone is gathered around the room, Abigail towards Mary Warren says “Oh Mary , this is a black art to change your shape...I cannot stop my mouth; it’s god's work I do”(Miller 115).Several lives are lost because of Abigail's false claims. Abigail lies to the church and court about herself and the other girls being able to see witchcraft. She as well persuades other girls to lie and accuse innocent people of the witchcraft. Her claims towards witchcraft are fraudulent and so is her pretended dedication to god because according to god, lying is a sin which Abigail has been committing.Abigail's actions not only demonstrate her as a hypocritical but also as a conniving and decietful human being who turns the town upside down.
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.
May it please the court, counsel, members of the jury; this is a case of conspiracy of the murder of Elizabeth Proctor. In the spring of the year 1692, Abigail Williams was accused of plotting the murder of Elizabeth Proctor.
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 The Crucible, two characters that serve as a foil for each other are Elizabeth Proctor and Abigail. Elizabeth Proctor is known as an honest woman, while Abigail is consistently seen as a dishonest person whose lies result in the widespread paranoia of the Salem witch trials. For instance, after she dances in the forest with other girls, she forbids them from telling the townsfolk about it and accuses other people of witchcraft, which leads to their deaths. Another example is the fact that she had an affair with John Proctor, Elizabeth’s husband, and tries to conceal it because she does not want her reputation to get ruined. Her motive for accusing others of witchcraft is because she wants to get rid of Elizabeth so that she could be John’s “perfect wife,” and because she does not want to get in trouble. Abigail is the perfect foil for anyone who is even slightly honest.
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
to dancing round a fire in the woods but she says that it was not
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 Arthur Miller's The Crucible, the main character Abigail Williams is to blame for the 1692 witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts. Abigail is a mean and vindictive person who always wants her way, no matter who she hurts. Through out the play her accusations and lies cause many people pain and suffering, but she seemed to never care for any of them except John Proctor, whom she had an affair with seven months prior to the beginning of the play. John Proctor and his wife Elizabeth used to employ Abigail, until Elizabeth found out the affair and threw Abigail out. Although John told Abigail that the affair was over and he would never touch her again, she tried desperately to rekindle their romance. "Abby, I may think of you softly from time to time. But I will cut off my hand before I'll ever reach for you again." (Page 23) She claimed that she loved John and that he loved her. Before the play began, Abigail tried to kill Elizabeth with a curse. She thought that if Elizabeth were dead John would marry her. Further into the play, Abigail accused Elizabeth of witchcraft. She saw Marry Warren, the Proctor's servant, making a poppet. Mary put a needle into the doll, and Abigail used that for her accusation. She stabbed herself with a needle and claimed that Elizabeth's soul had done it. Although Abigail claimed she loved John, she may have just loved the care and attention he gave her. John cared for her like no one else had. In a way he could be described as somewhat of a father figure to her. When Abigail was just a child, she witnessed her parents' brutal murders. "I saw Indians smash my dear parent's heads on the pillow next to mine..." (page 20) After her traumatic experience, she was raised by her uncle, Reverend Parris, who is somewhat of a villain. In the play it was written, "He (Parris) was a widower with no interest in children, or talent with them." (Page 3) Parris regarded children as young adults who should be "thankful for being permitted to walk straight, eyes slightly lowered, arms at the sides, and mouths shut until bidden to speak." (Page 4) Therefore, it is obvious to see that Abigail grew up without any love or nurturing.
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
Abigail Williams is manipulative and wants everything to go her way. She is the main character and causes trouble everywhere she goes. The Salem Witch Trials is about hearings and prosecutions of people who were accused of witchcraft. In The Crucible Abigail is a no good villain. Abigail first commits adultery with Elizabeth’s husband. Later on Abigail begins to accuse innocent people of doing witchcraft which causes them to die. Abigail Williams uses the Salem Witch Trials to put out all the resentment she has toward everyone.
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.
Abigail’s moral standard is an evil sinner who believed anything was possible. She could be considered a villain since she portrayed evil by trying to get revenge on Elizabeth Proctor, so that she could get John Proctor back. At a witch circle in the woods, led by Tituba, all of the girls’ conjured spirits to get men to love them, although, Abigail casted spells on Elizabeth. Once Abigail’s uncle, Reverend Parris, found them, Abigail lied to keep her secret of adultery hidden and began blaming others of witchcraft, leading nineteen innocent people to their death. It seems as if the only things Abigail is looking for are power and a man, John Proctor, to love her. In the book, The Crucible, Abigail was described in a way that explains her unfair and cruel actions, “Abigail Williams… a strikingly beautiful girl, an orphan, with an endless capacity for dissembling” (Miller 8). Dissembling means to give a false or misleading appearance to and she sought to be doing this when she blamed others for what she had done wrong, making her look like the better person, when in reality she is not. Abigail responded to John’s standards by messing with him even more by trying to get Elizabeth out of the way due to the fact of Abigail wanting John to herself. Altogether, Abigail has a higher standard than John. The crucible tested Abigail’s standard by her finally realizing she has pushed John into cheating on Elizabeth by hollowing him around and eventually luring him into having an affair. Unfortunately, Abigail Williams did not become successful or purify herself since after all the accusing she has done and the effort she has made to try and get Elizabeth away from John, she just left everything, stole her uncle’s money, and ran off with Mercy Lewis. As a whole, Abigail lacked the purification that John
The year is 1692 in Salem, a small town in Massachusetts, and the Puritans community is in serious trouble. In the story “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller, the Puritans community is in the Salem court where John Proctor admits to committing adultery to Abigail Williams who at the time was very young. Abigail Williams is where the court started after she is involved in the case where John Proctor is accused of committing adultery with her. Abigail also lead the girls and their witchcraft accusations in court. Abigail truly believed that John Proctor still had love for her.
Abigail Williams, a character in Arthur Miller’s 1953 play “The Crucible”, is a complex character that I believe can be portrayed as the main villain and victim of the play. Immature, violent, and mentally unstable are a few negative qualities that describe Abby as the baddy. But yet at the same time as the play unravels us as readers can see her as a victim of the Salem society that fails to help her recover from her parents ' violent death. One of the big things in The Crucible that Arthur Miller fails to provide is the fact that the other girls crying “witch” are just as guilty as Abby, yet she is the only one to have all of the blame pushed onto her. There are examples and quotes in the play that suggest that Abigail Williams is recognised
killed and allow her to get away with a lot of things, as they think