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Summary of the Crucible by Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller's hidden meaning behind the crucible
Analyse crucible by arthur miller
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Imagine people are so in love, that they would do anything for that person, even kill. Abigail Williams, in The Crucible is that person. She is galvenized by lustful desires and jealousy for John Proctor and it causes mayhem in Salem. Abigail Williams is motivated by the lustful desires and jealousy towards John Proctor. “You love me, John Proctor, and whatever sin it is, you love me yet! John, pitty me, pitty me!” (150)! Abigail says this becase she wants John Proctor to want the same lustful desires that she wants with him. Abigail is wanting John to leave his wife Elizabet Proctor and his two sons because she wants to be the wife of John . She becomes manipulative to do this very thing. Abigail plots and schemes a plan ,but it does not work they way she expected it to. She becomes so overly jealous that …show more content…
She contradicts he statement by drinking blood at a ritual with Tituba to kill Elizabeth Proctor and then accuses people of withcraft so that her reputation stays good and isn't ruined and the act of her committing adultry with John doesn't come out. She turns the tables fast by saying “I want the light of God, I want the sweet love of Jesus; I danced with the devil; I saw him, I wrote in his books; I go back to Jesus; I kiss his hand.”(162). Abigail admits to this so all eyes are off her and she can be free from what she did. Abigail shifts albatross of herself and onto the others she blames. As the trials begin Abigail and her friends start pointing fingers in all direction to innocent people. Abigail blames Marry Warren of “sending her spirit out.” (160). and “taking the form of a yellow bird and was about to swoop down. ”(160). She does accuse Marry so that she does not tell the courts she is lying about it all. Abigail is a killer, because she knows what she is doing is wrong but she does not speak up for the innocent she lets them get sent to the gallows to be hung to
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.
In Arthur Miller's play The Crucible Abigail Williams, an unmarried orphan in the Massachusetts town of Salem, incessantly grows more jealous, her desire for vengeance only grows stronger, and her selfishness escalates. She repeatedly lies to save herself by denying her involvement in witchcraft. Abigail's Jealousy of Elizabeth Proctor intensifies in attempt to realize her desire for Elizabeth's husband John Proctor. In order to save herself she accuses the innocent, without any sense of ethical violation. Abigail proves to be a selfish antagonist in The Crucible that shows no sense of right and wrong.
It is evident that Abigail is being so at the beginning of the story when she is attempting to convince John Proctor to continue their wrongful affair when she says “you loved me, John Proctor, and whatever sin it is, you love me yet! John, pity me, pity me!” (Miller 24). Abigail is insulting her lover John’s wife (Elizabeth Proctor) and is trying to regain his love and affection. In writing this, Miller’s intention with the scene was to show Abigail’s fervent efforts with her words to change John’s mind. As in the beginning of the play, Abigail continues to have great selfishness and manipulative ability to get things to be done in her way. For example, later in the story, she depicts the same tendencies when Mary Warren tries to cross her or even overthrow her power. She persuades all the other girls to say her words and tries to get inside Mary’s head to make her return to their side by saying “Oh, Mary, this is black art to change your shape. No I cannot, I cannot stop my mouth; it’s God’s work I do” (Miller 115), which ultimately works. She maintains her power over Mary and the girls for her benefit. Miller uses this to show Abigail’s established dominance over the other girls. Once again, Miller shows Abigail’s remorselessness by making her wrongly influence others. Although the story develops and situations change her character traits remain the same.
In The Crucible by Arthur Miller John Proctor and Abigail Williams are alone together and we learn of the affair between them. This can be seen when Abigail begs for soft words to be said to be spoken to her. Since Abigail Williams is motivated by lust, her ability to make precise decisions in the court deteriorate.
Abigail, a former house servant to the proctor family, began to imagine her life along side of John Proctor. She becomes infatuated with John and although he is married, she is intent on being with him. When their passion becomes too strong to resist, they have a torrid love affair and she becomes more or less obsessed with him. When he says to her “but I will cut off my hand before I reach for you again” (Miller 22) and refuses to speak any more of their affair, her jealousy rages out of control and she has to devise a plan to win him over.
In “The Crucible”, by Arthur Miller writes about the Salem witch trials. He writes about a group of girls who have practiced witch trials and how the girls are to blame innocent people. One of the girls, Abigail, a young girl from this story, she accuses others, has an affair and tells all kinds of lies, doesn’t follow beliefs and she is evil.
Abigail Williams was one of the main characters of the play and movie, the Crucible. Abigail is one of the main reasons the Salem Witch Trials were a huge thing in 1692. She was the first one to all of a sudden start acting strange, because she had supposable saw the devil, and witnessed others with the devil. All of Salem were strictly ordered to worship god, and to know all commendments of the bible. So worshipping or even being seen with the devil was considered a crime in Salem. All were to be hanged if they broke the rules, and not confessing to their wrong doings. Abigail was a cold hearted teenage girl and would lie through her teeth to save her own self. She stated that she saw a lot of people with the devil which never were. Abigail also had an afair with a married man named John Proctor. John Proctor was hanged at the end along with his wife because of Abigail Williams.
Abigail Williams, the obvious villain of the play, is petty, jealous, and revenge-driven. Throughout the film, we clearly see her intentions and motives as she seeks out to have John Proctor all to herself. It seems that she has deluded herself into believing that she and Proctor are “meant to be,” and this is the main foundation for which she builds her plans. Originally, Abigail joins in on what seems to be some kind of cult ritual sacrifice out in the woods, led by her uncle's slave, Tituba, along with many other of the town's young girls. Williams pleads with whatever entity they're attempting to call, wishing for the death of Goody Proctor (John Proctor's wife), going as far as drinking the blood of her chicken sacrifice. At the point in which she and her friends are sought and suspected of witchery, Abigail's tactics take a swift turn.
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.
In The Crucible, Abigail Williams is a seventeen year old girl, who lives in Salem. She never had a childhood nor purity, because of the age that she is, the essential dark side came along with a continuous amount of unfortunate events. Every time something had gone awry in the town of Salem, it had looked as if it always lead back to Abigail. The majority of what she has done was lie and created a shattering destruction and even in some cases, ruin lives. Abigail Williams is motivated by her love for John Proctor; this creates her decision to have an affair with John, accuse numerous innocent people that stood in her way of witchcraft, and disappears when she thinks the tables may turn on her.
Abigail Williams is a character in The Crucible whose every objective is to get revenge. Abigail had an affair with John Proctor while
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
In the play John Proctor made the mistake of fooling around with Abigail Williams. He was not thinking straight and this lead to one of the main conflicts in the play. Proctor claimed to not love Abigail and that hurt her feelings. A quote that proves that Proctor does not want Abigail is “ Abby, you’ll put it out of mind. I’ll not be comin’ for you more”. He tell Abigail this and then Abigail loses it and tries to get revenge by lying to people that Elizabeth Proctor is a witch. Another situation in the play is when Abigail and her friends start imitating Mary Warren while they are in court. The people start to believe that Mary Warren is a witch because they think that she is causing Abigail to repeat everything. Abigail yells at the crowd “ Mary, please don’t hurt me!” and Mary replies to Danforth “ I’m not hurting her!”. Mary tries to defend herself but the people believe Abigail so they send Mary to prison even though she is not a
This all starts when John Proctor and she have an extramarital affair. She was the servant of John and his wife Elizabeth when she caught his eye. This was not her fault by any means; it only shows her as more of a victim of John’s lust. She is only a young girl of seventeen, not mature or ready for such an encounter. This is shown perfectly through one of Abigail’s own quotes in act one, “I look for John Proctor that took me from my sleep and put knowledge in my heart! I never knew what pretense Salem was, I never knew the lying lessons I was taught by all these Christian women and their covenanted men! And now you bid me tear the light out of my eyes? I will not, I cannot! You loved me, John Proctor, and whatever sin it is, you love me yet!” (Page 22). This directly reveals how she is holding on to John because he took away her innocence; refusing to believe he doesn’t love her. She references the ‘knowledge’ he put in her heart; this being the knowledge of adults and mature citizens. John exposed her much too early. She holds on to this for a while before giving up hope, as seen in their conversation in the act two appendix at the back of the novel. While not necessarily an official part of the play, it certainly allows readers to further inquire about the two characters. Throughout the appendix, Abigail tells John how much she wishes she was his wife. She directly references her lose of innocence in this quote,
In Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, Abigail Williams is one of the most influential people in this play. Even though she is a very underrated character, the power she has over everyone is tremendous. She deceived everyone to believe that there’s a large amount of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts. So once things started to get out of hand, she had no other choice but to just go with it. You see, Abigail’s a very good liar, so when people got in the way of what she wanted, they got accused immediately. Though Abigail only wanted one thing from the beginning and that was John Proctor. Because of her lying, she had thrown herself into a big mess by her lying, no remorse, and her selfishness desires.